October 31, 2025
1% faster, 100% drama
Introducing architecture variants
Ubuntu adds a ‘go faster’ mode—hype, eye-rolls, and nerd fights
TLDR: Ubuntu 25.10 adds an optional “faster on modern PCs” package set, promising small gains and bigger boosts for number‑crunching apps. Comments split between excitement and skepticism: fans love free speed, critics want proof and warn about compatibility and package lag—useful, but not life‑changing.
Ubuntu just flipped a new “go faster” switch for 25.10: optional packages tuned for newer chips, called x86‑64‑v3 (think “most PCs from the last decade”). The room went loud. Some cheered free speed, others asked if this is more than a rounding error.
Tech sticklers dropped receipts: theandrewbailey kept posting the reference and reminded everyone v3 means AVX2—chip tricks that make number‑crunching faster. Meanwhile, smlacy wanted the hype to come with hard wins: “show benefits!” Mobilio waved the announcement and past benchmarks: most packages see ~1% bumps, math‑heavy apps more.
Cue jokes: “I upgraded and my browser launched one frame quicker,” and “1% faster = 100% more bragging.” Then came the spooky bit—early adopters may hit bugs, and if you install v3 packages, moving that drive to an older machine might fail. Meme of “Grandpa PC not invited” achieved liftoff.
Physicsguy poured cold water: in science land, distro packages lag upstream, so serious workloads recompile anyway and skip pre‑built Python wheels. Translation: great for everyday users, but power users won’t wait. Ubuntu says the big rebuild and real testing lands in 26.04 LTS, and even the weird “apt downgrading” message gets fixed.
Key Points
- •Ubuntu 25.10 introduces architecture variants, allowing packages optimized for specific x86-64 levels, initially focusing on x86-64-v3 (amd64v3).
- •Infrastructure changes to dpkg, apt, and Launchpad enable building and distributing multiple package versions per architecture level.
- •Most packages in the main component (about 2,000 source packages) were rebuilt for amd64v3, but have not yet received full testing.
- •Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is planned to include amd64v3-enabled versions of all packages with rigorous testing.
- •Users can opt in to amd64v3 packages on x86-64-v3-capable systems, with instructions provided; moving such installations to older, non-v3 hardware will not work.