M68K and PowerPC architectures died out, and were available in consumer systems (Macintosh) and while not "dirt" cheap still in the ballpark of affordable. And

M68K and PowerPC architectures died out, and were available in consumer systems (Macintosh) and while not "dirt" cheap still in the ballpark of affordable. And you could find old cheap ones and run linux on them too. The real reason Intel/AMD64 is popular is the same reason Windows is popular -- mindshare and economies of scale. IBM and the x86 platform won the business desktop in the 1980s and that has been propelling everything on that architecture ever since.