This is a very broad question, I'll try to answer it making groups.

1.- Big Iron, old architectures, you shouldn't care about them unless you're into them.

• sparc -> Sun Sparc, a cpu for big iron


• powerpc -> Power PC, you're only likely to find it in old macs.


• ia64 -> Itanium, again you are not going to find this in a PC.

2.- Not PC, but a very current and used architecture:

• arm -> Arm, you will find this CPUs everywhere, from phones and tablets to TVs and routers. But not in what is normally called a PC. The NVidia Tegra is an Arm CPU integrated with a couple of other chips, including a GPU.

3.- 32 bits PC architecture, the packages that you should use if you installed Ubuntu 32 bits, but that can also work on 64 bits. Older Atoms (series Z5xx, Z6xx, N2xx and 2xx) are 32 bits CPUs:

• i386 -> Intel 386 CPU or compatible, includes anything from the last 20 years.


• i686 -> Intel Pentium M, newer and compatible chips. Your usually AMD or Intel chip is going to be able to handle them.


• amd32 -> AMD 32, any processor that you can find today will be able to use that package.

4.- 64 bits PC architecture, you can only use this if you have a 64 bits CPU and a 64 bits Ubuntu installed. Most if the Atoms, all i5, i7 and all current AMD processors are here.

• x86_64 -> Any 64 bits CPU computer, you will need a 64bits cpu (most of the newer ones), and a 64 bit version of Ubuntu installed.


• amd64 -> It's just another name for x86_64.

5.- Everyody can use them:

• noarch -> This packages are usually scripts, files or programs in some interpreted language, they will be useful to any computer.