Supported architectures

Packages are typically built for each of several architectures. These are officially supported and maintained by the Ubuntu project. Canonical provides server resources to build, store and distribute packages and installation media for them, and the core development team is responsible for their upkeep.

Build failures on these architectures are considered serious bugs. Each official Ubuntu release and update includes appropriate support for these architectures.

Identifier	Alternative Architecture Names	Endianness	Architecture Type
amd64	x86-64, x86_64, x64, AMD64, Intel 64	Little-Endian	CISC
i386 [1]	Intel x86, 80x86	Little-Endian	CISC
arm64	ARM64, ARMv8, AArch64	Little-Endian	RISC
armhf	ARM32, ARMv7, AArch32, ARM Hard Float	Little-Endian	RISC
ppc64el	PowerPC64 Little-Endian	Little-Endian	RISC
powerpc	PowerPC (32-bit)	Big-Endian	RISC
s390x	IBM System z, S/390, S390X	Big-Endian	CISC
riscv64	RISC-V (64-bit)	Little-Endian	RISC

[1]

i386 is a partial-port of Ubuntu, which is supported as a multi-arch supplementary architecture. There is no kernel, no installers, and no bootloaders for i386, therefore it cannot be booted as a pure i386 installation. You have to crossbuild i386 or build in a i386 chroot on a amd64 host.

Other architectures

Ubuntu doesn’t currently support any other architectures. This doesn’t mean that Ubuntu won’t run on other architectures – in fact it is entirely possible for it to install without a problem, because Ubuntu is based on the Debian distribution, which has support for eight additional architectures (see Debian Supported Architectures).

However, if you run into problems, the Ubuntu community may not be able to help you.

Further reading

• Statement on 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS

• Ubuntu Downloads

• Endianness