With the release of Ubuntu 25.04 this month I’ve looked at its performance on x86_64 laptops and desktop hardware to nice gains on server. That testing so far was focused on Intel and AMD systems given my abundance of x86_64 platforms. Last week I began testing Ubuntu 25.04 ARM64 on the System76 Thelio Astra powered by Ampere Altra processors. For those considering the Ubuntu 25.04 upgrade and not minding that it’s not a Long Term Support (LTS) release, Ubuntu 25.04 is also allowing for greater performance on ARM hardware.
One of the most intriguing hardware releases of last year was the System76 Thelio Astra as a high-end ARM64 desktop. Such an interesting ARM Linux desktop/workstation not dependent upon the likes of unofficial Linux support on Macs and being much more powerful and greater connectivity than what’s available with a single board computer was sorely needed in the Linux developer ecosystem. Albeit this was long overdue with the Ampere Altra processors being available for several years already at this point. Compared to Ampere Altra servers, the System76 Thelio Astra is extremely quiet while delivering good thermal and compute performance. Like the other Thelios, it uses a custom-manufactured chassis by System76 out of their facilities in Colorado. My ongoing tests with the Thelio Astra have continued working out well and with Ubuntu 25.04 is even more performance headroom.
Being curious about the Ubuntu 25.04 ARM64 performance, I ran some benchmarks comparing Ubuntu 24.04 LTS to Ubuntu 25.04 on the System76 Thelio Astra with 128-core Ampere Altra Max 3.0GHz processor, 8 x 32GB DDR4-3200 memory, 1TB Kingston NVMe SSD, and NVIDIA RTX A400 graphics.
Besides the greater performance, another exciting aspect around the Ubuntu 25.04 ARM64 support is Canonical now providing desktop image (ISO) builds. Up to now you had to rely on the Ubuntu Server ARM64 ISOs and then install your desired desktop packages manually while now is a complete desktop ISO option too with a working GNOME install just like you find on Ubuntu 25.04 x86_64 desktop images.
Thanks to UEFI boot support with the System76 Thelio Astra, booting the new Ubuntu Desktop 25.04 ARM64 image was just as easy as any modern x86_64 system.
System76 shipped its Ubuntu 24.04 pre-install using the 64K kernel image. With the Ubuntu 25.04 desktop ISO for ARM64 it’s using the 4K kernel by default but with a simple APT install the 64K kernel could be installed to match the page size of the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS benchmarks. Here’s a look at how Ubuntu 25.04 is performing on the System76 Thelio Astra with Ampere Altra Max. Unfortunately with having needed to send back the AmpereOne server last year after a short round of testing and not seeing any AmpereOne hardware since, I don’t have any insight to share on how that newer AmpereOne performance is looking on Ubuntu 25.04 but there’s the potential of even more uplift there due to the newer platform.
