alt Hacker NewsLinux support is coming to Snapdragon X2 series
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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.
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."
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.)
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.
In case anyone else is wondering what they mean by linux support;
> 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.
> 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 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.
So hopefully the X2 will actually happen!
This is great news - the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-96-100 isn't too far off the Apple M5 Pro.
[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/snapdragon-x2-elite...
[2] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-14-inch-2026-...
Yeah, heard that 2 years ago for the Snapdragon X Elite
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.
Unless Qualcomm steps in and makes every laptop with their chip work flawlessly, I don't see a reason to step into their ecosystem. Right now it is basically flipping a coin when you buy an X1 or X2 product, as you are basically locked to the vendor's idea of 'support'. Qualcomm should coerce and collaborate with vendors to ensure their products are synonymous with great Linux support so that when I see their brand I know it is a good product.
Up voting based on the title alone, though I'm not expecting much.
If we could have a similar experience to Intel-based ThinkPad Carbon X1 or T series with performance, graphics, Wi-Fi, battery life, suspend/resume, external displays, etc, that would be awesome!
Apple hardware is awesome but I want to run Linux.
Didn't they say something similar about the first ones?
Consider me cautiously optimistic.
Sounds good, as long as a standard Linux distro can replace whatever operating system ships with these machines.
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.
It will take years for Linux users to trust Qualcomm again.
It has been so many attempts to run Linux on this chips without any collaboration from Qualcomm. Companies even drop support after years of development.
Qualcomm provided efficiency (battery life). But intel is catching up fast to make Qualcomm irrelevant.
Welcome, but too late.
They give 2 separate dates for debian and ubuntu which looks to me they will just release drivers but haven't decided to be good citizen and have their drivers in the mainline kernel source tree.
In other words: it might be a trap and you could get screwed in n years if they stop maintaining it and some kernel changes make the driver not compilable on newer versions.
When can I buy one ?
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 !
If they want their platform to be a first-class citizen of Linux, they should commit on a mandatory device-tree release for all products.
Not some flaky "one release sometime after launch", a fully integrated release-chain for all components needed to boot Linux on any X2 series device
Support is coming because of Googlebooks, not because Qualcomm out of the pureness of their hearts is embracing GNU/Linux.
Expect binary drivers for specific releases of Ubuntu and Debian.
Also here is an answer to other day's why people still use Ubuntu.
You mean, Snapdragon X2 series support is coming to Linux.
Unless they're enforcing signed boot from the factory, it's up to software to run on hardware.
> Snapdragon X2 Series is expanding to Linux, adding support alongside Windows and Googlebook
Is Googlebook a new name for chrome os? Or is it a typo?
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.
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.
Hmm... no news on whether there's X11 support or if we're stuck with just wayland.
I always imagined a world where the steam frame used an ARM chip as an ultimate f you for not only microsoft, but intel and amd.
The Snapdragon X chips are already wonderful with Windows 11 ARM64, so I'm pretty excited to see how much Linux will be able to squeeze out of those!
Getting linux on the Surface laptop series would be amazing. Good battery life on a small laptop running linux is my ideal device.
Omg, words can't describe how completely botched the Snapdragon X series chip launches have been.
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
yeah, heard that before...2 years ago.
Is it all upstream? Is there a newer part coming with upstream support on day 1 like every Intel laptop I’ve had for the last decade+?
I very much want this, but I also do not trust Qualcomm /at all/. Would love to see a performant alternative to current-gen M series which runs Linux. Can you imagine a true ultrabook style laptop w/ great battery life, minimal heat output, and excellent performance in a compact form fanless form factor running Linux? Would be amazing. But Qualcomm has a long track record of bait n switch w/ Linux community and relying on proprietary blobs, no documentation, and aggressively enforcing IP in ways which are detrimental.
i've been using a snapdragon x elite and loving it, albeit on Windows. 32GB ram
Looks like they're learning!
I'd buy one on its public release date if it is linux ready.
A x2 based workstation will also be very cool.
very good!
aarch64 driver situation is still an unsolved mess. How far behind is thunderbolt support?
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.
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.
Yay!
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).
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
Man I’m hoping this support extends to older Snapdragon X2 stuff as well as the current crop of chips. There’s a lot of VR/AR headsets out there otherwise running proprietary operating systems and left to rot that a generic Linux distro like Debian could rescue, though Qualcomm’s history makes me doubt those chips will ever see the same support their newer, AI-focused ones are with this announcement.
Still keeping my fingers crossed that in the near future we can throw Linux onto an HTC Vive Focus or a Meta Quest and re-take ownership of our data and devices, but it’s strictly hopium at this point.
Three cookie banners. I bet the announcement is slop that doesn't even answer relevant questions.
Now if only Linux were to conquer the desktop as well ...
[dead]
Linux evry where haha washing_machine to trafic light evry single sector
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).