Ubuntu introduces architecture variants

Michael Hudson-Doyle, a member of Ubuntu's Foundations team, has announcedthe introduction of an "architecture variant" for Ubuntu 25.10:

By making changes to dpkg, apt and Launchpad, we are able to buildmultiple versions of a package, each for a different level of thex86-64 architecture, meaning we can have packages that specificallytarget x86-64-v3, for example.

As a result, we're very excited to share that in Ubuntu 25.10, somepackages are available, on an opt-in basis, in their optimized formfor the more modern x86-64-v3 architecture level.

See the announcement for details on opting in to x86-64-v3packages.