Finestra Blog

Finestra is now available on ARM processors

Finestra 0.3.8 ships an arm64 build next to the x86 one. It runs on AWS Graviton and other ARM servers, it is tested on the same six distributions, and the one-line installer picks the right build by itself.

Carlos Bravo 2 min read
An ARM test chip on a green circuit board, its lid printed with the ARM logo and "ARMv8-A Platform, Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53".

Until now, Finestra only ran on x86 machines. Starting with 0.3.8, there is a second build for 64-bit ARM, released alongside the x86 one every time.

Why this matters

ARM is no longer the odd one out on servers. On AWS, Graviton instances usually cost less than their x86 equivalents, and plenty of teams have moved their fleets over. If your servers were ARM, Finestra simply wasn’t an option for them. Now it is.

The same goes for other ARM cloud machines, ARM boards, and the small ARM boxes people keep under a desk.

Same Finestra, same install

Nothing changes in how you use it. The terminal, the file manager, the editor, the system manager and native Linux apps all work the same way on ARM as they do on x86.

The install doesn’t change either:

curl -fsSL https://finestra.dev/get.sh | sudo bash

The installer checks what kind of machine it is on and downloads the matching build. As before, it verifies the download against its published checksum before running anything in it.

Tested, not just compiled

The ARM build isn’t a cross-compiled afterthought. It is built on a real Graviton machine and goes through the same release checks as the x86 build, on the same six distributions: Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 12, Rocky Linux 9 and 10, Amazon Linux 2023 and Fedora.

Two things to know

  • It is 64-bit only. 32-bit ARM systems aren’t supported. If you try, the installer tells you so clearly rather than failing halfway.
  • Native apps need their own ARM build. Finestra runs on ARM, but an app you launch inside it has to have an ARM version too. Most open-source apps do. Many closed-source ones don’t have a Linux ARM build at all.

And yes, it runs on a Raspberry Pi

Once something runs on 64-bit ARM, the next question is always the Raspberry Pi. It does, even on an old one, and that got a post of its own: Finestra on a Raspberry Pi.

Cover photo: ARM Juno board by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.