: I'm pretty sure it's my Apple Silicon hardware. Relating to that, I can't get
: a linux VM started, even following this guide, and this supposed patch
: to add support for it is just gone.
: I think I'm just boned for the time being.
Did you try my steps? That "no valid state has been set by load or init-program" message is exactly what I get when I don't give it a valid boot image, so I think there's a pretty good chance that it's just your boot image, although it's possible that you'd get a lot faster performance by compiling it from source rather than running it in Rosetta.
