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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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:
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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'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.
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 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.
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.
Three cookie banners. I bet the announcement is slop that doesn't even answer relevant questions.
Weird, I only see one, even with ublock origin disabled.
Is your computer compromised? I see no banners.
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).
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.
Ironically that's being fixed by Microsoft forcing UEFI.
Unironically, the serious reason I don't want to embrace Snapdragon, is because: Qualcomm.
Lenovo has one (it's a Yoga, not a Thinkpad though).
https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2026/09/announcing-l...
Thanks. This link has more detail about Linux support. I submitted it separately for discussion.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49824189
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.
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.
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.
Because getting your stuff upstreamed in Linux is more work than releasing a custom kernel.
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.
AFAIk this has nothing to do with Qualcomm but with vendors and Microsoft.
I don't think that would help with GPU or NPU, which another comment states are the drivers that Qualcomm are upstreaming.
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.
Is it more work to support a completely proprietary boot path or three different "standard" boot paths?
Hint: you would know the answer if you are familiar with the Windows, Linux and OSX boot process.
Advantage of commitment and integration. Apple doesn't need to worry about critical vendors not cooperating because sticking with x86 is less risky.
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.
Looks like they're learning!
Sounds good, as long as a standard Linux distro can replace whatever operating system ships with these machines.
Didn't they say something similar about the first ones?
Consider me cautiously optimistic.
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.
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
Yeah there was a blog post about it but seems not much came from the effort
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
https://canonical.com/blog/ubuntu-coming-soon-to-qualcomm-sn...
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.
Aren't all the Android Snapdragon phones already mostly there?
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.
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.
I wonder how long someone can spend a pile of tokens and start shredding these firmwares down to their actual instructions/code.
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!
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.
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!
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.)
yeah, heard that before...2 years ago.
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.
Tell us more about how it's Google who is preventing Qualcomm and Mediatek from upstreaming all their drivers?
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.
Yeah, heard that 2 years ago for the Snapdragon X Elite
yeah everyone was hyped and it was said to be getting linux support. Some things were upstreamed into the kernel, but it never really got there
In case anyone else is wondering what they mean by linux support;
Glad this isn't going to be some semi-proprietary thing like support for chromebooks. Hopefully it continues.
Android is another famous example.
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:
https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms
Alas, new Chromebooks are no more. "Successor" Googlebooks are all Android.
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-...
Sure, not too far, but single core perf is still. And also still very much behind the new M6 in single core and multi core https://browser.geekbench.com/v7/cpu/389219
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
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'd buy one because I want a Lenovo Thinkpad with an onboard ethernet port and really good battery life for Linux.
Couldn't agree more. I would LOVE a linux based laptop with the performance of the M series.
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.
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.
Care to postulate on what those nefarious reasons/surprises could be?
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...
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.
https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks
that's x2 plus. look for benchmarks of the x2 elite extreme, which currently is selling with 48gb ram for $1370: https://www.bestbuy.com/product/asus-zenbook-a16-16-3k-oled-...
I want to believe. It's just that we've seen similar announcements in the past and then nothing come of them.
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 !
aarch64 driver situation is still an unsolved mess. How far behind is thunderbolt support?
No Thunderbolt support is mentioned for Snapdragon X2 [1].
[1] https://www.qualcomm.com/content/dam/qcomm-martech/dm-assets...
It's called USB4 now.
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!
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 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.
Nah, on many community-supported laptops, basically everything (including graphics) works fine with the exception of a few small issues and unoptimized power management. E.g. https://github.com/jglathe/linux_ms_dev_kit/discussions/36#d...
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.
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.
This!
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.
Getting linux on the Surface laptop series would be amazing. Good battery life on a small laptop running linux is my ideal device.
The build quality of Surface seems quite good, seems like unibody aluminum.
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
6 years since M series and arm PC still hasn't picked up
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+?
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.
KVM works this time. For the rest you need to calibrate your expectations against mainstream laptops not RMStops.
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.
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.
i've been using a snapdragon x elite and loving it, albeit on Windows. 32GB ram
I have a 64gb ram one, love it.