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Snapdragon X1 Elite Linux laptop cancelled due to performance concerns — Linux PC maker says Qualcomm CPU is ‘less suitable for Linux than expected’ (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 91 points 11 months ago (10 children)

Can't say I'm surprised given how much Qualcomm has prioritized Windows over Linux support for years now.

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  • [–] 27 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    So it makes me wonder how much Valve is paying them for support since the upcoming Steam Frame uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 CPU and is also running Steam OS which is just a fork of Arch.

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    This is about Snapdragon X1 Elite, not Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. These two are completely different from each other on a support perspektiv, even if they share a lot of architecture.

    The 8 Elite Gen 5, I don't know the status on Linux, but Qualcomm has a few day old blog post talking about what they have upstreamed for day 1 support into the Linux kernel https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2025/10/same-day-snapdragon-8-elite-gen-5-upstream-linux-support

    Lastly, when it comes down to device by device, they can have vastly different glue logic (hardware), so I guess we will wait and see for device by device. But it would be cool seeing a raspberry like 8 elite gen 5 board, for hopefully cheap (it won't be cheap in this artificially inflated market, angry face)

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    So the way the statement about Qualcomm supporting Linux was phrased made it seem like a blanket statement rather than referring to specifically the X1 Elite. The fact that Qualcomm's Linux support seems to vary wildly based on the specific CPU is interesting and suggests it's less about the CPU or Linux and more about the visibility and importance of the companies using that CPU. The X1 Elite got first class Windows support (although it sounds like only some specific laptops did) because certain large manufacturers were using it. Likewise the 8 Elite Gen 5 is getting first class Linux support because Valve is using it in a high visibility project.

    If there's a silver lining to this it sounds like Valve is doing the right thing by the FOSS community and is paying to have a company contribute bug fixes and improvements to the Vulkan drivers and FEX project for ARM in general and for this specific CPU. That combined with Qualcomm themselves wanting to look good and provide support should mean at least this CPU should work very well in Linux, and maybe that will also make it a little easier to support other Qualcomm CPUs as well. It's just a shame that that level of Linux support by Qualcomm doesn't extend to all their products.

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  • [–] 23 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    As someone who used to have a Windows on Arm device. It was Hell. Basically anything that isn't Lenovo or from Microsoft will mean it'll eventually brick itself unless you steal drivers from other laptops. You also cannot reinstall the operating system because most of these nuggets have no device tree files in the firmware of the machine minus a few lenovo thinkpads. So that means when you try to reinstall windows there is a high likelihood your touchpad and keyboard and USB ports don't work. I literally snapped the motherboard on my poor Samsung Galaxy Book Go in half over it suddenly bricking itself. After a Windows update that I could not recover from.

    Anyway if you want a decent windows on arm laptop buy lenovo and replace the storage. They have replacable nvmes usually. Also don't get the 8 gigabytes of ram versions you literally will have programs just refuse or just force close themselves out of existence. You will literally have to debloat windows upto even removing Windows Defender and stopping most background services and disabling sysmain because it's broken. You'd also have to disable certain things in Windows defender like memory protection if you want things to work right.

    Also https://armrepo.ver.lt/ Is a god send for finding arm windows software.

    Keep in mind though most web browsers as well that aren't Microsoft Edge will have rendering issues on older snapdragon socs.

    You know if you really wanna rock the most powerful CPUs out thereonly to end up breaking it and using your 2017 spectre. Even if its like literally 10 times slower because atleast it just works.

    I legit have trauma over this.

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  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago

    Having worked with OpenGL ES on Android, it's laughable how awful the drivers are. When GPUs from the same manufacturer have completely different behaviour, it really calls into question if they even care.

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  • [–] 29 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    Their drivers are SHIT, for wifi there is CNSS, ICNSS, then QMI, all do the same thing, but differently, but NO, it's the same thing, but what does this do??? Is this really a different event or is this just rewritten in that event? Idk still, no one knows.

    Edit: I tried to port the not working kernel drivers for the wifi on the Redmi Note 9s to postmarketos (wifi is not working), didn't work and it's now on LineageOS

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    And when you see how bad their windows support is it’s a miracle anyone buys this garbage.

    It’s a neat concept. But at the moment only Apple has pulled it off well. And that’s only if you stick with Mac OS.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    RPis have been pulling off Linux on ARM pretty well in terms of software support for a while now, but they're also tinkering boards and not necessarily good for a daily driver.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Reasonable for a lightly-loaded home server, however. I've got Arch Linux ARM (btw) running as my home Forgejo / Transmission / DHCP / NAS, and it just sits and sips power while providing all those services 24/7 like a champ.

    Shout out to ALARM for having basically the entire Arch ecosystem (including 99% of AUR) all working and ready-to-go.

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