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Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

qualcomm.com

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Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#91

Post by tr45872267 »

surajrmal wrote: post #88
saidinesh5 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closed source firmware is one thing that actually runs outside the Linux system... but there's also the user space libraries that are needed to interact with the drivers (eg libgl etc... or the vendor partition in most Android phones)

I don't think anyone expects non specialized os images to run on this hardware. That would require a standardized userspace abstraction layer like the one Android has been building out. The kernel is just a tiny piece of what's necessary because drivers have effectively moved into userspace. Graphics is the only area that has embraced this properly in "desktop Linux"

>That would require a standardized userspace abstraction layer like the one Android has been building out Can you expound on this? And can desktop linux take advantage of it or do something similar?

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#93

Post by quotemstr »

jsheard wrote: post #45
hypercube33 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the 8 gen 3 and wsl and hyperv work fine just can't really use x86 binaries / containers / operating systems.

I think the performance of x86 VMs would be pretty poor anyway due to the high overhead of TSO emulation. Windows ARM doesn't have the benefit of hardware assistance like macOS does, and the tricks that Microsoft came up with to mitigate the impact rely on metadata that only MSVC emits, so anything compiled with GCC or LLVM would always hit their emulators slow path.

> Windows ARM doesn't have the benefit of hardware assistance like macOS does

I can understand Apple Silicon having an initial advantage due to its hardware TSO support, but I'd have expected some combination of efforts at ARM and Qualcomm to have caught up by now. Shouldn't ARMv9 have a standardized (if optional) TSO mode? I'm disappointed by the foot-dragging.

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#94

Post by CopperWing »

robotnikman wrote: post #67
HackingWizard wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driver update depends on your OEM. Both ARM and Qualcomm send driver updates for their premium and upper highend Socs. The support reaching your phone is on the OEM. Google has started to push direct GPU driver updates starting with Pixel 10. So, hopefully others may follow too.

Usually GPU vendors (Nvidia, Intel, AMD) provide a way to download and install drivers manually (on Windows), including specific versions or older versions. Qualcomm is an outlier in this case.

No more: https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2025/05/introducing-...

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#95

Post by modeless »

cherioo wrote: post #78
bsimpson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked: Frame is Gen 3 and the article is Gen 5.

I am really hoping Valve will release a Frame Pro with Elite Gen 5 later :(

I care a lot more about the screen resolution than the chip. The Steam Frame would make a really cool Linux workstation if the pixels per degree on the display matched typical monitors. Unfortunately, the resolution would have to be much higher than it is.

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#96

Post by h14h »

ninth_ant wrote: post #89
h14h wrote: post #87

I hope this is motivated by shrewd decision-making in response to market pressure, as opposed to being strictly a perception thing. While it would be great for Qualcomm to "do the right thing" in supporting FOSS, I feel much more confident in that support being sustained long-term when it aligns with some profit motive. IMO the best case is that Qualcomm sees dollar signs when they imagine their Oryon CPUs and Adreno…

> When you get new hardware and new features, you don’t want them sitting idle while you wait for patches to get upstreamed. Whether you develop for IoT, automotive, audio or mobile, when you get new features in a system-on-chip (SoC), you want to take advantage of them right now. Sure doesn’t sound like mainstream consumer pc desktop is the target at all. Yes, they do provide instructions for how to run this on desk…

Fully agree. When I said "consumer linux landscape" & "personal computing platform" I was thinking much more broadly than desktop PCs.

Admittedly a hypothetical Arm-based Steam Deck or Framework Laptop were at the forefront of my mind, but I think any consumer product running linux qualifies, be it "IoT, automotive, audio or mobile".

Whether people are buying EVs with a slick linux-based infotainment screens, gaming handhelds running SteamOS, or smart-devices with fancy local AI features, I think the effect is the same. If Qualcomm predicts significant growth in demand for efficient, high perf devices running customized Linux distros, I think it could be great for FOSS at large.

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#97

Post by E39M5S62 »

peppersghost93 wrote: post #66

I'm still mad about their lack of support for the 8cx gen 3. It's one of the first laptop SKUs they put out and support still isn't great.

The Lenovo x13s works pretty nicely these days, EL2 support aside. What problems have you faced?

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#98

Post by jsheard »

quotemstr wrote: post #93
jsheard wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the performance of x86 VMs would be pretty poor anyway due to the high overhead of TSO emulation. Windows ARM doesn't have the benefit of hardware assistance like macOS does, and the tricks that Microsoft came up with to mitigate the impact rely on metadata that only MSVC emits, so anything compiled with GCC or LLVM would always hit their emulators slow path.

> Windows ARM doesn't have the benefit of hardware assistance like macOS does I can understand Apple Silicon having an initial advantage due to its hardware TSO support, but I'd have expected some combination of efforts at ARM and Qualcomm to have caught up by now. Shouldn't ARMv9 have a standardized (if optional) TSO mode? I'm disappointed by the foot-dragging.

Yeah it does seem backwards that Apple was the most on the ball with this, when their MO is to force developers to migrate to their newest platform in short order, while Microsoft will be stuck dealing with x86 backwards compatibility for the next 25 years.

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#99

Post by [deleted] »

moondev wrote: post #86
arjie wrote: post #35

Woah, this is amazing. I’ve been looking for an ARM Linux machine for a while and ended up about to get M2 Pros in a rack running Asahi. It has been near impossible to get a Snapdragon Elite machine. The IdeaCentre or whatever is 2x the cost / performance and as far as I know is poorly supported. This changes the game. I’d rather use native Linux than Asahi (though the latter is amazing).

Get a DGX spark. Ships with aarch64 Ubuntu 24.04. Tons of cores and RAM. Very quiet and small UEFI bootloader - I installed Ubuntu 25.10 and ESXi arm edition just by booting the ISO usb-c power input (kinda cool) Insane connectx 200GbE RoCE networking 10GbE Ethernet Oh and an nvidia gpu with cuda and access to 128GB of unified memory It would be perfect if it had some kind of BMC or IPMI/redfish and an exposed PCIE s…

[deleted]

Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

#100

Post by imcritic »

doublerabbit wrote: post #43
imcritic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. Just imagine you would get handcuffed tomorrow. Collateral damage. Blame some guy. Or a gal.

/shrug. Try being from the UK, we don't even get imgur.

Well, that's not the same, that's well-deserved.
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