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System76 built their first workstation-class Arm PC, the Thelio Astra, and it's marketed for streamlined autonomous vehicle development.

But I'm not an automotive developer, just someone who enjoys Linux, Arm, and computing. So I was excited to spend a few weeks (which turned into a few months) testing the latest Ampere-based computer to come to market.

I initially ran my gauntlet of tests under Ubuntu 24.04 (the OS this workstation ships with), but after discovering System76 dropped in ASRock Rack's TPM 2.0 module, I switched tracks and installed Windows 11—which went without a hitch!

Some broadcast engineering tasks are a bit too daunting for me to consider. Climbing the massive towers that power radio and TV stations is one of them!

Recently, local engineer Aaron Cox had the perfect set of conditions for a drone flight to capture some of that risk, as the weather and timing of an antenna inspection lined up perfectly with his schedule.

Video

I'll summarize a bit of what we talked about in today's Geerling Engineering video, but if you want to watch that directly, it's embedded below:

Currently there are precious few SystemReady Arm computers—computers like the System76 Thelio Astra I was sent recently to test.

The level or 'band' of SystemReady SR used by modern Ampere-based arm64 workstations and servers means you can install any out-of-the-box Linux distributions, as long as they provide an arm64-compatible installer.

Ubuntu has some of the most complete support for arm64, so I went to download a Live CD ISO I could flash to a USB stick, to install on my test Thelio Astra. For server installs (with no GUI), either 4k or 64k page sizes, there are easily-findable ISOs:

• Ubuntu Server for Arm

However, for desktop, you can only get it via daily build downloads:

As I briefly mentioned yesterday, someone mentioned in this blog's comments a successful M.2 socket installation on the empty header on the Pi 500 (something I attempted, rather poorly!). With a few added components, and 3.3V supplied to a pad on the bottom via a bench power supply, the M.2 slot works just fine, allowing the use of NVMe SSDs or other PCIe devices.

Indeed, this person emailed me further proof, along with notes for anyone wishing to follow in their footsteps.

First, solder on four minuscule capacitors (rating may be gleaned off the CM5 IO Board schematics, I think?) on the PCIe lines heading to the NVMe slot. These are incredibly small, so a good microscope and decent SMD soldering skills are pretty necessary.

I mentioned in my Pi 500 review Raspberry Pi is dogfooding their own microcontroller in the new Pi 500. An RP2040 sits next to the keyboard ribbon cable connector, and interfaces it through a USB port directly into the RP1 chip:

In good news for keyboarding enthusiasts, the RP2040 seems to be flashed with the open-source QMK ('Quantum Mechanical Keyboard') Firmware. Thanks to a reader, 'M', who figured that out!