System76 Thelio Astra Reviewed: High-End ARM64 Developer Desktop

[phoronix]

Phoronix: System76 Thelio Astra Reviewed: High-End ARM64 Developer Desktop

System76 is announcing one of their most innovative and interesting products going back to their Launch Configurable Keyboard and HP Dev One collaboration: the System76 Thelio Astra. The Thelio Astra is a high-end ARM64 desktop system geared for developers with a focus on AI / STEM / self-driving technologies and powered by Ampere Computing and NVIDIA.

https://www.phoronix.com/review/system76-thelio-astra

[Topolino]

Thelio Astra is shipping with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Ironically System76 is also learning the Unity lesson.

[Britoid]

The opportunity for ARM desktops has passed imho.

Linux and Windows has had a decade to get it done right, and instead we get multiple failed Windows attempts where Microsoft gets so close but gives up last minute or Linux products that loose support as soon as whoever random joe maintaining the port to that device gives up and it become e-waste.

only Apple has got this right, what a joke.

If you need a ARM developer instance, just rent a cloud one and save yourself the trouble.

[rmfx]

Arm is just the beginning…
The problem was not (entirely) from Windows nor Linux, the problem was from chip designers who couldn’t achieve powerful enough arm processors to compete with x86 at the time. Things have changed a lot but only until recently.

Same story for Risc-v, the transition to pc and servers is slow, not because the operating systems can’t, but because nobody wants a processor that is much slower but with a beautiful open assembly except a few nerds/engineers.

[Jonjolt]

The opportunity for ARM desktops has passed imho.

I declare it the year of the MIPS

[sophisticles]

Makes me wonder how Windows 11 ARM would run on this thing.

While the price seems reasonable for what you get, I would buy a Qualcomm or Apple for ARM, or just wait until next year when NVIDIA and AMD are supposed to release their own ARM processors.

[geerge]

Makes me wonder how Windows 11 ARM would run on this thing.

While the price seems reasonable for what you get, I would buy a Qualcomm or Apple for ARM, or just wait until next year when NVIDIA and AMD are supposed to release their own ARM processors.

Surely like crap, as is expected from windows on arm.

[alexenv]

The opportunity for ARM desktops has passed imho.

Linux and Windows has had a decade to get it done right, and instead we get multiple failed Windows attempts where Microsoft gets so close but gives up last minute or Linux products that loose support as soon as whoever random joe maintaining the port to that device gives up and it become e-waste.

only Apple has got this right, what a joke.

If you need a ARM developer instance, just rent a cloud one and save yourself the trouble.

Agree. It's comical at this point. Like, what the hell is so hard? Why hasn't Microsoft got the memo for so long that the Qualcomm path leads them nowhere? Underpowered, overcomplicated hardware and software, failure to deliver decent products over and over again...

The only chance for this platform to ever succeed is for other vendors, like NVIDIA, Ampere, etc. to join with faster and/or more affordable options, better standardization...

Either way, Intel/AMD are getting better at power efficiency, so Arm makes less and less sense, especially given that a lot of the software relies on taxing emulation, if it even runs properly...

Makes me wonder how Windows 11 ARM would run on this thing.

While the price seems reasonable for what you get, I would buy a Qualcomm or Apple for ARM, or just wait until next year when NVIDIA and AMD are supposed to release their own ARM processors.

Not great, not terrible. If your workloads are entirely CPU based then fine, but there are no GPU drivers for this thing. Yet another sore point of Windows on Arm, lack of drivers for pretty much anything non-Qualcomm...

You might as well run it in a Linux KVM instance and benefit from virtio drivers.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

The opportunity for ARM desktops has passed imho.

Linux and Windows has had a decade to get it done right, and instead we get multiple failed Windows attempts where Microsoft gets so close but gives up last minute or Linux products that loose support as soon as whoever random joe maintaining the port to that device gives up and it become e-waste.

only Apple has got this right, what a joke.

If you need a ARM developer instance, just rent a cloud one and save yourself the trouble.

I think it will be interesting to see estimates for Qualcomm + NUVIA laptop sales vs. x86 about a year from now to see what kind of market penetration they've managed. This is the first time that we have remotely competitive performance in consumer (laptop) devices outside of Apple. Snapdragon 8 Gen <= 3 has been fine for phones, but was just too slow for laptops / desktops. I'm also excited about those Oryon cores coming to phones in a few months with Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 devices.

[sophisticles]

Surely like crap, as is expected from windows on arm.

https://github.com/AmpereComputing/Windows-11-On-Ampere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydGdHjIncbk