https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/06/ubuntu-riscv-rva23-support Skip to content * Contact Me OMG! Ubuntu * * * * * [ ] OMG! Ubuntu [ ] * Ubuntu 24.10 News * Hardware * Eye Candy * Distros + elementary OS + Bodhi Linux + KDE Neon + Linux Mint + Pop!_OS + Regolith Linux + Zorin OS * Buy Me A Coffee [?][?] * Send Me News/Tips --------------------------------------------------------------------- * * * * * * Ubuntu 25.10 * Hardware * Distros + Linux Mint New + Pop!_OS + Zorin OS + KDE neon + elementary OS + Bodhi Linux * How-Tos * GNOME Extensions [ubuntu-logo-riscv] Distro to focus on newer, more capable hardware going forward Ubuntu 25.10 Raises RISC-V Profile Requirements [5fd9] by Joey Sneddon * Updated 10 hours ago * Comment Canonical is bullish in promoting Ubuntu for RISC-V devices, be it enthusiast-orientated hardware like DeepComputing's RISC-V tablet, single-board computers, or embedded equipment. Questing Latest Ubuntu 25.10 Snapshot 2 Available to Download Ubuntu 25.10 Will Be Wayland-Only (No X11) Ubuntu 25.10 Switches to Rust-based Sudo 2 New Apps Confirmed for Ubuntu 25.10 But with a new long-term support (LTS) release looming, it's rethinking the kind of RISC-V hardware it wants to support going forward. A recent bug report filed against Ubuntu's upgrading tool confirmed a major change with regards to the RISC-V requirements for the upcoming Ubuntu 25.10 release -- most existing RISC-V devices will not be able to run Ubuntu 25.10. How come? A New Baseline for RISC-V Ubuntu 25.10 plans to bumps its baseline RISC-V profile (RVA) from RVA20 to RVA23. It may sound like a small jump but it has a big impact since the bulk of RISC-V devices currently sold don't support it. An RVA (RISC-V Application) profile is a specification that outlines the vector processing capabilities a RISC-V system must have, so "software can rely on the existence of a certain set of [...] features in a particular generation of RISC-V implementations". That's according to RISC-V International, the main collaborative group steering and overseeing development of this open source and royalty free processor architecture. "RISC-V was designed to provide a highly modular and extensible instruction set (ISA) and includes a large and growing set of standard extensions, where each standard extension is a bundle of instruction-set features," RISC-V International explains. The RVA23 profile makes a number of 'extensions' mandatory, notably Vector and Hypervisor extensions to power "math-intensive workloads including AI/ML & cryptography, and enterprise hardware, operating systems and software workloads." Per Samsung, the RISC-V 'V' Vector extension "allows CPUs to perform many operations simultaneously, making them faster and more efficient". With RVA23 RISC-V reaches a clear feature parity level with ARMv9 and x86-64v4. It is (naturally) more involved than that. Plenty of deep-dives on RISC-V Vector extensions are available online if you find yourself curious about the computational underpinnings and future opportunities they stand to provide. Impact on Existing Hardware According to an open issue on Launchpad, the "ubuntu-release-upgrader should stop upgrades beyond Ubuntu 24.04 on hardware that does not support the RVA23U64 profile", noting that "RVA23U64 is the profile relevant for user space". Support for earlier versions of Ubuntu on existing RISC-V hadn't isn't impacted, but this change does mean that Ubuntu 25.10 (and later) will not run on most existing RISC-V hardware (like the Orange Pi RV2) since they lack the extensions the RVA23 profile requires. Will that really be an issue long-term? Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is supported until 2029 at the earliest and will continue to work on existing hardware, so that's covered. RISC-V usage remains niche so the impact from Ubuntu 'raising the bar' on baseline profile requirements won't be huge. What could be huge is the benefit to Ubuntu going forward. Focusing future Ubuntu support to devices that have more capable RISC-V profile sets will further position the distro as the de-facto OS on the platform. As workload demands increase, and RISC-V hardware becomes more capable and affordable, the opportunities are obvious. Admittedly there is one big rub: the range of RISC-V devices with RVA23 support is, at the time or writing this, near non-existent. That will change in the coming year, and by the release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, the distro will be primed to take full advantage. 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