I hope Qualcomm upstreams all the device tree kernel level stuff to Linux for every laptop model. One of the things I don't like about Arm Laptops is—for example—how even if a SoC is supported upstream, if the manufacturer does not upload a device tree for their device, then you're cooked.
I read that while these Snapdragon laptops do technically have UEFI + ACPI, the information they provide is not useful for Linux and is more coupled with Qualcomm's proprietary drivers on Windows. Therefore, device trees are needed on Linux (I could be wrong about the first part).
I think a lot of people don't realize the level of performance Qualcomm has reached with these. This is the closest competition to Apple's M series that we have, for the laptop form factor at least. They are better than Intel and AMD's best. I'd love to buy an X2 laptop with Linux preinstalled and supported.
I’m glad we’re finally getting more competitors to Intel/AMD.
Better for everyone. Apple gets lazy on top. And for those who don’t want a Mac, they should be able to have something great too. And since PC makers are far more willing to experiment with form factors, I’d like to see what they try.
If Apple was lazy, they wouldn’t have spent five years getting rid of Qualcomm modems, Qualcomm is also getting squeezed by the Chinese, Mediatek, Microsoft, Nvidia, Samsung and Apple worldwide.
It will be interesting. because Qualcomm doesn’t give away anything for free, so any of those Linux Distro’s who thinks it’s going to be a free lunch? Are gonna be in for a surprise.
> It will be interesting. because Qualcomm doesn’t give away anything for free, so any of those Linux Distro’s who thinks it’s going to be a free lunch? Are gonna be in for a surprise.
Care to postulate on what those nefarious reasons/surprises could be?
If Apple cared about quality, they wouldn't have gotten rid of Qualcomm modems, and forced people to use the inferior Intel modems. I always avoided by iPhone models with Intel modems starting around the 6S era.
They hate being under someone else’s thumb and Qualcomm had real control over that. They couldn’t stand it and wanted out. Which is just as well, because clearly Qualcomm could’ve been doing better. Apple cut the power usage of the chip and it’s reportedly better than the Qualcomm one.
This. The X1 Elite laptops came out 2+ years ago, but you still need to use a special Ubuntu remix to get everything* working, and support is very dependent on which laptop you bought. You could say it’s not Qualcomm’s job to make audio or the camera work on every Lenovo/Dell/HP, but someone needs to do it…
*: I’m sure there’s some features that still aren’t working right.
Is the M series that much better than a modern ADM/Intel? Or is it that they barely need cooling? I have an AMD laptop and Mac Mini, the Mac never makes any noise. Or is the M series just faster?
nothing wrong with it! looks fine! just: there should be other products with the nice core. i could really use a 10-14" tablet. i mean, after all, ROG Flow 13 with a Strix Halo was not even that late after launch! dense is doable!
20% slower than the M5 is still a great result. I'm still using an M1 macbook pro, and it's more than fast enough for editing film, browsing the internet and writing code.
Check this chart. Single core performance is where Apple has dominated the most. Qualcomm is above every non-Apple competitor including desktop chips, and only 5% behind the fastest M5 MacBook Air (this chip is going into Air-class laptops). Yes, M6 is coming, but X2 has been available for months already.
OpenBSD developer Tobias Heider (tobhe@) has already committed the first pieces of OpenBSD/arm64 support for these Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite laptops.
"This gets USB, keyboard and touchpad working in ACPI mode on the HP Elitebook X G2q."
Historically speaking, between average Android device and average Chromebook, latter is far easier to get mainline kernel + "normal" Linux distro running, e.g: 8 Chromebooks vs. only 1 Android device (and even that is a dev. board) in official Arch supported hardware list:
I think this is huge. I thought about getting one of these chips a long time ago, but linux support was just a breaker. I ended up sticking to my current laptop and getting a macbook some years after
The "original" X Elite was also supposed to get good linux support but it unfortunately never happened.
Every single one of the "X" series had this identical announcement.
It's not huge because Qualcomm has proven that they'll continue to half-ass support until the next product is announced and then they'll disappear into the ether.
I've had a Snapdragon X Elite laptop for 2 years, constantly trying to get Linux off the ground on it. Didn't happen (well, technically, toward the end of that period, there was an unsupported port of Ubuntu but it lacked half the drivers). And yes, when I bought it there was a very similar announcement from Qualcomm promising first-class Linux support. So I wouldn't gamble on it (especially considering that prices are crazy) until there indeed is a supported distro.
Yeah, I've really wanted an ARM Linux laptop. But I've known ARM is a crapshoot because of my dealing with other devices. So I held off on the initial X release. Then I saw the X1P (or whatever it was) and Qualcomm put out the exact same "someday Linux up streamed!" Promise.
A competent FTC would be fining them for these false and misleading statements. Until that happens, nobody should buy these thinking Linux will ever be supported.
But they support Android right? Won't that mean kernel support is public already? It would have to be merged into mainline. Or is this about something else?
It potentially can be a good thing, but anyone who is jumping up and down celebrating better wait and see, Qualcomm is more of a lawyer/finance company than a tech company in short a patent troll at heart, so it will be interesting to see what type of fee they want to have the privilege of being on their hardware. In the telecom area historically, they like double dipping.
I mean it technically can run linux. But I think non one actually got any desktop or graphics working. I hope it just happens but you are sadly correct here.
interesting. I mean day-to-day usage is a requirement if you want to buy some of these machines for real. But good to know that graphics works now. Last time I checked it wasn't and that was significantly after launch
> this work is focused on laptops with Snapdragon X2 Series. It does not currently cover desktop form factors, earlier Snapdragon X platforms, or other development boards. Readiness also varies by OEM design and Snapdragon X2 Series variant.
So same ARM BS as usual - AMD and Intel x64 are still the kings when it comes to out the door Linux support.
I'll buy a ARM PC when I can swap its motherboard CPU and GPU to a newer gen and my existing Linux install boots up without having to flash a new bootloader and custom vendor kernel with proprietary GPU blob.
"I'll buy a ARM PC when I can swap its motherboard CPU and GPU to a newer gen and my existing Linux install boots up without having to flash a new bootloader and custom vendor kernel with proprietary GPU blob."
add in swappable batteries like older laptops and phones, and I would as well. not now though.
Give me something that is 80% as efficient, 80% as good hw as the apple m-series but runs Debian (or Ubuntu) and I am happy to pay apple+ prices for pure linux experience. I say this as someone who just bought a new m5 machine. I have seen framework/sys76 but never pulled trigger.
I don't really care about raw performance, just want long battery life, decent screen, and a *nix environment to work in. 99% of workload is going to be on a remote machine anyways.
I have an HP AMD laptop with a Ryzen and have nothing to complain about, other than the loud cooling solution. It's a fast non-nonsense system. Also a no-frills physical design. Ubuntu works fully without any additional steps needed from me. I'm not sure what you're hoping the market will provide, apart from quieter cooling.
Qualcomm has been upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X for the past 2 years or so, but the community is still having issues with drivers and firmware on devices. I bought a surprisingly capable Lenovo mini PC with a Snapdragon X at a massive discount and it's stuck on Windows 11 for now.
> Qualcomm has been upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X for the past 2 years or so, but the community is still having issues with drivers and firmware on devices.
Is QCM slow to upstream or are they doing things in an incomplete manner or is there some other reason?
I'm trying to imagine a world where intel or amd releases a new platform/chip and it takes _two years_ to get linux booting on it
That's been my experience dealing with QCM based devices running linux in the past. Some OEM buys a batch of chips, gets a reference design and an old version of the linux kernel with a zillion out-of-tree hacks and patches that make updates impossible.
I generally advise clients to use rockchip as they have _very_ good mainline support and put any QCM modem at the end of a USB connection so it doesn't hold the product back.
If the upstream is properly done (that is a big if), this can be a go-to choice for the Linux laptop because it has much smaller config variations compared to Intel-based laptops: Everything from wifi (and even modem?), to audio, to camera ISP is included in the single SoC. If it works it works.
People have had a lot of issues with drivers and locked-down firmware on Snapdragon devices, so even with official Linux support for the chipset, the devices themselves could still be a nightmare to get working.
I don't think so. Every device has locked down firmware really these days, it's not an issue (most peoples BIOS/UEFI/etc is very much not open source).
If the drivers are upstreamed and good, it should work well.
Android phones don't need (and often don't have) upstreamed "drivers". They use qualcomm's closed-source code. Also, Android user land driver (HAL) isn't useful for non-Android Linux distros.
Finally, the dumb company woke up. On one hand, it’s good. On the other hand, bad Qualcomm is known as a patent troll. We shall see if they can mend their ways…
Part of this is probably motivated by the fact that Microsoft and Nvidia have teamed up.
Qualcomm hired some developers back from Linaria and they have been providing support for a bunch of X2 laptops these past two, three months directly via Linux ARM MSM mailing list. I'm surprised it took them this long to announce this publicly.
Hopefully this means Framework releases an X2 mainboard as it would be a match made in heaven.
How open will the boot stack be for this chip? Qualcomm has historically been pretty bad about this: mandatory closed-source bootloaders, mandatory closed-source hypervisors, mandatory closed-source TEEs, forked UEFI, etc.
An open Linux is hobbled without the rest of the stack.
This really is about business strategy than any technical effort these days. Porting code should be among the easiest things for the llms to do these days
Why only for these "desktop" socs? Why couldn't Qualcomm partner with Debian/Ubuntu to bring support to their mobile chipsets? Why can't Qualcomm partner with PostmarketOS to help recycle old devices and avoid e-waste?
Well, in case anyone else is wondering, I have the answer. That's because Google is maintaining a cartel, the "GMS" cartel in short. Due to intense lobbying and incredibly weak antitrust enforcement, this cartel still continues to operate globally, keeping soc makers like Qualcomm, Mediatek and Unisoc in chokehold. We won't see any real competition in the smartphone space unless it's destroyed, but market forces alone can't do that.
Google controls the Android ecosystem (restricts what OEMs can do) and employs various practices to ensure there's no alternative besides Apple (this duopoly suits both of them). Chipmakers essentially focus on ensuring they can sell access to BSPs which meet Google requirements, as there's no real alternative for smartphones. If you're not Apple, these chips are meant to be used with GMS Android, that's the expectation.
If there were alternatives (like on the desktop and for some parts of IoT) it would be more cost-efficient to upstream everything, but with the current situation it's fully up to Google.
When Google wanted them to move all their chip-specific code to modules (GKI), they had to do that. And if someone at Google randomly decided "hey, now you'll upstream this stuff", then guess what? They'd have to follow, it's how this monopoly works.
Funny how Qualcomm is juggling three OSes to sell these chips while Apple just stuck a phone chip in the Neo and called it a day. Controlling the chip, the OS, and the actual computer is a huge advantage. Apple is more than one study case on competitive analysis.
This is entirely Qualcomm's doing. If they supported Arm SBSA/UEFI+ACPI like some other Arm chip companies (e.g. Ampere) you could boot a generic Linux (or indeed BSD) Arm distro on their chips no problem. Controlling the entire platform is not necessary, just follow the standards.
Qualcomm expects to be paid. a toll/fee by each one of the Linux Distro’s for the privilege of being on the hardware with their chips in the device that is their history and one of the reasons why Apple spent five years kicking them out, they very definitely don’t act as a charity, so in the end, it will be interesting because someone is gonna pay their fee. the end user maybe?
All they have to do is support Windows and get their stuff upstreamed in the Linux kernel, no need for specific distro support. I'll never understand why SoC manufactures insist on bespoke kernel/distro pairings.
>I'll never understand why SoC manufactures insist on bespoke kernel/distro pairings
So that if you want to use the next distro release you will be forced to buy their next-gen chip because that's the only supported one on that distro. D'uh.
What advantage? I'm always a bit shocked to see people say this without qualifying it at all.
On the contrary, Apple has to do a lot of greenfield work by refusing standards like UEFI, Vulkan and normal filesystems. They end up reinventing the wheel just to support the same featureset that Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD and Intel all generally planned for.
Apple’s advantage is being the last vertical computer company from the 1980s speaks for itself. having control of the hardware and the operating system software with the ability to create new ecosystems is their advantage in comparison to hardware or software only companies, Note: the tech world would be a better place if Sun, SGI, Digital, Acorn, Motorola of Schaumburg, Illinois had been able to survive the Microsoft/Intel onslaught.
Apple didn't have to worry about that when they supported cross-industry standardization efforts. The only reason dGPUs are broken on macOS is because of Apple's software choices.
You sound very ridiculous. Why is Apple obligated? to follow Nvidia? or AMD? or Microsoft for that matter?
Intel said no to designing iPhone chips, IBM and Motorola couldn’t see a future of faster/better chips to meet the demands of future tech devices, Apple with that crazy CEO, Steve Jobs? Had to go it alone and the rest is history.
The Apple Silicon design group appears to be on a roll. What next? Bringing memory in house? I think they will. Because that will be the only way they can build the devices they want to build at a reasonable price going forward.
Before you yell no what is it about the last 28 years have you missed? They seem to be able to execute long-range projects when it comes to hardware and software in comparison to their tech peers, looking forward to the M7 ultra, in-house memory and the C3 modem.
I really hope it's like 2031 and we're swimming in way too many of these. Running great Linux. How sick would that be. (And X4 is running mainline great too).
While I am somewhat negative on ARM/RISCV systems due to there being like 50 different boot systems and ASIC setups, I am cautiously optimistic that something like the A16 will end up unintentionally becoming sort of a standard via a large amount being sold.
I suspect in the next 5 years something like this will come up.
I read that while these Snapdragon laptops do technically have UEFI + ACPI, the information they provide is not useful for Linux and is more coupled with Qualcomm's proprietary drivers on Windows. Therefore, device trees are needed on Linux (I could be wrong about the first part).
Better for everyone. Apple gets lazy on top. And for those who don’t want a Mac, they should be able to have something great too. And since PC makers are far more willing to experiment with form factors, I’d like to see what they try.
It will be interesting. because Qualcomm doesn’t give away anything for free, so any of those Linux Distro’s who thinks it’s going to be a free lunch? Are gonna be in for a surprise.
Care to postulate on what those nefarious reasons/surprises could be?
*: I’m sure there’s some features that still aren’t working right.
Not very close at all, not even to the two-year-old model, it appears
https://wccftech.com/snapdragon-x2-plus-loses-to-m4-in-4-out...
nothing wrong with it! looks fine! just: there should be other products with the nice core. i could really use a 10-14" tablet. i mean, after all, ROG Flow 13 with a Strix Halo was not even that late after launch! dense is doable!
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/19122559
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/14591329
yup... still laughably behind by nearly 20%. And that is behind the M5, not even the current M6
20% slower than the M5 is still a great result. I'm still using an M1 macbook pro, and it's more than fast enough for editing film, browsing the internet and writing code.
https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks
"This gets USB, keyboard and touchpad working in ACPI mode on the HP Elitebook X G2q."
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=178891082169317&w=2
Tobias (who also works for Canonical) recently demoed Ubuntu on mastodon and confirmed ARM EL2 works, meaning KVM support unlike previous generations.
bsd.network/@tobhe/117122761215052773
(I'd love to get my hands on one of these X2 Elite machines, hmu qcom.)
> We're upstreaming core drivers for Snapdragon X2 Series — including the Hexagon NPU and Adreno GPU — to open the door to developers and partners.
Glad this isn't going to be some semi-proprietary thing like support for chromebooks. Hopefully it continues.
https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms
Alas, new Chromebooks are no more. "Successor" Googlebooks are all Android.
The "original" X Elite was also supposed to get good linux support but it unfortunately never happened.
So hopefully the X2 will actually happen!
It's not huge because Qualcomm has proven that they'll continue to half-ass support until the next product is announced and then they'll disappear into the ether.
I've had a Snapdragon X Elite laptop for 2 years, constantly trying to get Linux off the ground on it. Didn't happen (well, technically, toward the end of that period, there was an unsupported port of Ubuntu but it lacked half the drivers). And yes, when I bought it there was a very similar announcement from Qualcomm promising first-class Linux support. So I wouldn't gamble on it (especially considering that prices are crazy) until there indeed is a supported distro.
A competent FTC would be fining them for these false and misleading statements. Until that happens, nobody should buy these thinking Linux will ever be supported.
But it can be annoying to use day-to-day since a lot of stuff is not upstreamed or not integrated into the major distros.
So same ARM BS as usual - AMD and Intel x64 are still the kings when it comes to out the door Linux support.
I'll buy a ARM PC when I can swap its motherboard CPU and GPU to a newer gen and my existing Linux install boots up without having to flash a new bootloader and custom vendor kernel with proprietary GPU blob.
add in swappable batteries like older laptops and phones, and I would as well. not now though.
I don't really care about raw performance, just want long battery life, decent screen, and a *nix environment to work in. 99% of workload is going to be on a remote machine anyways.
[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/snapdragon-x2-elite...
[2] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-14-inch-2026-...
Consider me cautiously optimistic.
Is QCM slow to upstream or are they doing things in an incomplete manner or is there some other reason?
I'm trying to imagine a world where intel or amd releases a new platform/chip and it takes _two years_ to get linux booting on it
That's been my experience dealing with QCM based devices running linux in the past. Some OEM buys a batch of chips, gets a reference design and an old version of the linux kernel with a zillion out-of-tree hacks and patches that make updates impossible.
I generally advise clients to use rockchip as they have _very_ good mainline support and put any QCM modem at the end of a USB connection so it doesn't hold the product back.
Consider me dangerously pessimistic
If the drivers are upstreamed and good, it should work well.
I want the stuff to work, I want Qualcomm to provide an easy process to grab a X2 Elite Windows Laptop and install Linux.
No magical binary blob extraction. I want everything tested.
With SteamFrame out we might even get decent gaming !
Part of this is probably motivated by the fact that Microsoft and Nvidia have teamed up.
Hopefully this means Framework releases an X2 mainboard as it would be a match made in heaven.
My friend showed me his brand new Framework the other day, but I couldn't hear his spiel about its features over the noise of its fan!
An open Linux is hobbled without the rest of the stack.
You hold them up to the Apple M series rollout and its just hilarious how far "the competition" is behind when it comes to laptop low power CPUs
A x2 based workstation will also be very cool.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49824189
Well, in case anyone else is wondering, I have the answer. That's because Google is maintaining a cartel, the "GMS" cartel in short. Due to intense lobbying and incredibly weak antitrust enforcement, this cartel still continues to operate globally, keeping soc makers like Qualcomm, Mediatek and Unisoc in chokehold. We won't see any real competition in the smartphone space unless it's destroyed, but market forces alone can't do that.
If there were alternatives (like on the desktop and for some parts of IoT) it would be more cost-efficient to upstream everything, but with the current situation it's fully up to Google.
When Google wanted them to move all their chip-specific code to modules (GKI), they had to do that. And if someone at Google randomly decided "hey, now you'll upstream this stuff", then guess what? They'd have to follow, it's how this monopoly works.
Because getting your stuff upstreamed in Linux is more work than releasing a custom kernel.
So that if you want to use the next distro release you will be forced to buy their next-gen chip because that's the only supported one on that distro. D'uh.
On the contrary, Apple has to do a lot of greenfield work by refusing standards like UEFI, Vulkan and normal filesystems. They end up reinventing the wheel just to support the same featureset that Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD and Intel all generally planned for.
Intel said no to designing iPhone chips, IBM and Motorola couldn’t see a future of faster/better chips to meet the demands of future tech devices, Apple with that crazy CEO, Steve Jobs? Had to go it alone and the rest is history.
The Apple Silicon design group appears to be on a roll. What next? Bringing memory in house? I think they will. Because that will be the only way they can build the devices they want to build at a reasonable price going forward.
Before you yell no what is it about the last 28 years have you missed? They seem to be able to execute long-range projects when it comes to hardware and software in comparison to their tech peers, looking forward to the M7 ultra, in-house memory and the C3 modem.
Please sell >1 model of computer with X2 EE (elite extreme) please please please. Not that #1 was bad at all but more please! https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-Zenbook-A16-Laptop-Review...
I really hope it's like 2031 and we're swimming in way too many of these. Running great Linux. How sick would that be. (And X4 is running mainline great too).
I suspect in the next 5 years something like this will come up.
[1] https://www.qualcomm.com/content/dam/qcomm-martech/dm-assets...