- It's a shame that this didn't end up going anywhere. When Qualcomm was doing their press stuff prior to the Snapdragon X launch, they said that they'd be putting equal effort into supporting both Windows and Linux. If anyone here is running Linux on a Snapdragon X laptop, I'd be curious to know what the experience is like today.
I will say that Intel has kind of made the original X Elite chips irrelevant with their Lunar Lake chips. They have similar performance/battery life, and run cool (so you can use the laptop on your lap or in bed without it overheating), but have full Linux support today and you don't have to deal with x86 emulation. If anyone needs a thin & light Linux laptop today, they're probably your best option. Personally, I get 10-14 hours of real usage (not manufacturer "offline video playback with the brightness turned all the way down" numbers) on my Vivobook S14 running Fedora KDE. In the future, it'll be interesting to see how Intel's upcoming Panther Lake chips compare to Snapdragon X2.
- I fully expected this. I really wanted to get the Snapdragon X Elite Ideacentre just because I wanted an ARM target to run stuff on and if I'm being honest the Mac Minis are way better price/performance with support. Apple Silicon is far faster than any other ARM processor (Ampere, Qualcomm, anything else) that's easily available with good Linux support.
I am so grateful to the Asahi Linux guys who made this whole thing work. What a tour de force! One day, we'll get the M4 Mac Mini on Asahi and that will be far superior to this Snapdragon X Elite anyway.
I remember working on a Qualcomm dev board over a decade ago and they had just the worst documentation. The hardware wouldn't even respond correctly to what you told it to do. I don't know if that's standard but without the large amount of desire there is to run Linux on Apple Silicon I didn't really anticipate support approaching what Asahi has on M1/M2.
- Qualcomm doesn't bother to upstream most of their SoCs. They maintain a fork of a specific Linux kernel version for a while and when they stop updating it or new version of Android requires newer kernel then updates for all devices based on that SoC end.
They have little experience producing code that is high enough quality it would be accepted into Linux kernel. They have even less experience maintaining it for an extended period of time.
by PhilippGille
1 subcomments
- Related from July:
"Linux on Snapdragon X Elite: Linaro and Tuxedo Pave the Way for ARM64 Laptops"
291 points, 217 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44699393
by andrewaylett
0 subcomment
- While I almost certainly wouldn't have done more than wished for one, it's a shame they're not getting any return for their effort.
by blacklion
5 subcomments
- Somewhat tangent: x86-based laptops of this brand (it is new to me, I never meet Tuxedo Computers before) looks attractive, but there is no information about their screens main property: are they glossy or matt?
My wife is very sensitive to glossy screens and we have big problems to find new laptop for her, as most good ones are glossy now.
by IshKebab
11 subcomments
- Does anyone know why Linux laptop battery life is so bad? Is it a case of devices needing to be turned off that aren't? Poor CPU scheduling?
by walterbell
0 subcomment
- > We will continue to monitor developments and evaluate the X2E at the appropriate time for its Linux suitability. If it meets expectations and we can reuse a significant portion of our work on the X1E, we may resume development. How much of our groundwork can be transferred to the X2E can only be assessed after a detailed evaluation of the chip.
Apparently the Windows exclusivity period has ended, so Google will support Android and ChromeOS on Qualcomm X2-based devices in 2026, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45368167
- I wonder what made it so hard? I thought that Snapdragon was already providing the Linux drivers? Anyone knows? Maybe those were not OpenSource?
My guess is that it's all the same as in Linux phones that they have large blobs of drivers given by the board producer but not being open, but then... Maybe we should invest time in microkernels? Maybe Linux is a dead end because of the monolithic architecture? Because I doubt big companies will change...
- Perhaps they should pursue building around Mediatek CPUs.
Google has already built Chromebooks (which are Linux based) on them, so presumably the necessary drivers exist.
Outside of laptops, NVidia sells its Jetson Devkits and DGX workstations which run Linux and are pretty fast and ARM based.
And System76 also sells a high powered (and $$$) Linux workstation based on an NVidia ARM chipset
So at least for some ARM SOCs, performance issues have largely been solved.
- How hard can it be to have an Android laptop? Basically most people just use a browser and the choice of applications is already extensive.
- This feels like BAU for PC vendors - you test out a product on a new combination of hardware, and it isn't mature/stable/ready for production, so you kick it down the road to develop later - this is especially true for Linux, where a LOT of the work would be done outside of your organisation.
- >usually one of the strong arguments for ARM devices—were not achieved under Linux
- I mean I feel like once one of the ARM chipmakers can lend a hand on the software side it should be a landslide.
Google and Samsung managed to make very successful Chromebooks together, but IIRC there was a bunch of back and forth to make the whole thing boot quickly and sip battery power.
by DeathArrow
1 subcomments
- Hardware companies generally start working on a laptop before a SOC is released, not after. They also need to secure manufacturer support, in this case Qualcomm to be able to deliver in time.
- Bios is an issue for most laptop under Linux not just arm.
- Was to be expected. Qualcomm sucks very much to support open platforms.
I was disappointed to see that no more good linux compatible XPS was available anymore because they are now based on the last snapdragon for bullshit windows "ai" reasons.
by StopDisinfo910
1 subcomments
- I wonder if Mediatek will try its hand as laptop oriented SoC now that their flagship mobile SoC are competitive again and Google is merging Android and Chrome OS.
Generally, they are far nicer than Qualcomm when it comes to supporting standard technology.
- I hate to say it but it looks like Apple is winning, folks.
- I'm disappointed, but not surprised.
- We can nerd it out about Linux this an S3 sleep that. How much money does the community need to raise all in, for that notebook to happen. Where's the GoFundMeAngelList platform that's a cult where I can pledge $10,000 to get this laptop of my dreams? Or are we all too busy shitposting?
- [dead]
- ARM was always a distraction, and a monopoly i.e. worse than x86's duopoly.
Only RISC-V is worth switching to.
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