Ubuntu for Arm64 laptops (plus RISC kit)

A subthread of the Ubuntu Summit was Ubuntu on Arm and RISC-V kit: a fast-growing area of interest for many people. Arm is back in the spotlight, thanks primarily to Apple's new range of Apple Silicon Macs – but it's not the only game in town, either for RISC-powered laptops or indeed for Arm-powered ones. Two talks at the …

[spireite]

Asahi-flavoured?

Too late, I created that 2 years ago when I knocked to bottle over on my Ubuntu laptop.

[Proton_badger]

Asahi

The Asahi team have done an incredible job, even as far as the remarkedly stable AGx driver in Rust that currently passes OpenGL 3.3 tests and was written in a very short time span and proved the suitability and benefits of Rust for drivers. It also supports the Vulkan driver that's coming along nicely. Also Eileen Yoon's repositories on github got updates these last two weeks for decoding h.264 and vp9 with the Apple Silicon Video Decoders, 265 to come.

But importantly: The Asahi team have discovered many Aarch64 related issues all over the place - kernel, Firefox, Pipewire, QT JavaScript, etc. etc. And not only do they submit bug reports, they usually attach suggested fix. Some of these bugs are present in rare cases on AMD64 but was found while testing on Asahi. So this project is benefiting the entire community.

[jglathe]

Thank you for the reminder.

I was signed up for the summit, but only remotely. The X13s talk was not streamed, sadly. Next time in person, then... anyway. The X13s is well supported on Ubuntu 23.10, on mine everything works except for touch screen (didn't bother) and camera. Haven't found an installation image, though. Still, some great progress, IMO beyond what was communicated here, too. Integration with USB-C monitor and dock works, but not every combination. I like it.