Of course, there would exist something like Qualcomm Linux,
Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
201–210 of 249 posts
Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
#202As someone who uses Mobile Linux, I am pretty excited to see this, but I can't help but wonder if this is only a "Business decision" and not necessarily Qualcomm turning over a new leaf for being FOSS friendly: - Their Snapdragon X laptop didn't do very well, and they likely realize an ARM Windows laptop will always be a second class citizen: https://www.techpowerup.com/329255/snapdragon-x-failed-qualc... . - Likewis…
> Their Snapdragon X laptop didn't do very well, and they likely realize an ARM Windows laptop will always be a second class citizen Why? So far ARM laptops provide either vastly better battery life for the same performance or vastly better performance for the same battery life. Even versus discrete GPUs. Within a couple years from now you're gonna look like an utter fool for buying x86 (and Nvidia / AMD / Intel GPU)…
Are you sure?
I've recently watched a video where presenter mentioned how Lunar Lake based laptops are better then any Snapdragon.
For example https://www.pcworld.com/article/2463714/tested-intels-lunar-...
Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
#203Earlier 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.
Note that those drivers usually only work well in desktops, on laptops the GPU might have gone through OEM adaptations on the motherboard integration, and a driver from GPU vendors might have issues.
A common example is overheating, because the way the OEM has done their device isn't a setup that the driver knows about.
Which is why on laptops, the drivers if available have to be from the OEM themselves.
Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Snapdragon does poorly I think because it's a bet if it works or not. Windows runs things seamlessly other than OpenGL (it can run that too but it's not anything strait forward - needs the gl to dx store app thing) but the other reason is cost. for the premium business laptop most buyers (business) won't budge off Intel even because of the "no one got fired for buying IBM" mentality at the big Enterprises Ive been at…
I've used basically every Windows on Arm machine - I actually quite like my X Elite ThinkPad T14s Gen6, compared the the X13s - feels like they got everything right, that the X13s got wrong
The very first they got wrong is how hard it is to buy Dell XPS with Linux on most European countries.
Naturally nowhere to be found on PC stores, and online I never found it on sale in the Dell store.
Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Many of those markets have no issues already, as they have NDAs and deals in place.
Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like to call them slow-AI. They are paperclip optimizing AIs. No single component wants the larger outcomes, yet they happen. These slow-AIs are terraforming our planet into a less habitable one in order to make GDP number go up, at any cost.
People changed environment even before these optimizations. I think now it's more a problem of fast enough "catch-up and converge", for example for CO2 : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?c... - if the rich countries would reduce a bit faster (using better technologies) then those technologies could be used by the others and impact would be reduced.
It would be great if we could engineer our way out of this situation, but we can't. For many years I strongly believed in our cleverness, after all I was clever and in the narrow domain I worked in - tech - cleverness was enough to overcome most issues. So why not human climate change?
In Tom Murphy's words:
> Energy transition aspirations are similar. The goal is powering modernity, not addressing the sixth mass extinction. Sure, it could mitigate the CO2 threat (to modernity), but why does the fox care when its decline ultimately traces primarily to things like deforestation, habitat fragmentation, agricultural runoff, pollution, pesticides, mining, manufacturing, or in short: modernity. Pursuit of a giant energy infrastructure replacement requires tremendous material extraction—directly driving many of these ills—only to then provide the energetic means to keep doing all these same things that abundant evidence warns is a prescription for termination of the community of life.
Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
#207What's the use case here? Mobile that can use Linux instead of Android? Is that possible?
Since OpenMoko, the thing is that the market doesn't care.
Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
#208Qualcomm did this in 2024. They pushed some patches to LKML, and issued a press release to brag about it. ( https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/upstreaming-... ) Yet 2 days ago, Tuxedo Computers announced they were abandoning Qualcomm due to crap support. ( https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/26/tuxedo_axes_arm_lapto... ). In particular, the long battery runtimes – usually one of the strong arguments for…
Isn't Tuxedo jus a white label reseller?
Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those that are implemented have been very reliable in my experience, I think that labeling them “alpha-quality by Linux standards” is a ridiculous claim
my dude no. https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m1/#tab... even in the m1 there are 4 WIP in the support table, 2 TBA and 10 non mainline boxes for the M1 pro
> Those that are implemented
Re: Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
The drivers, while impressively reverse-engineered, are basically alpha-quality by Linux standards. Even well-studied M1 machines will have spotty support in comparison to what an OEM can provide officially.
Those that are implemented have been very reliable in my experience, I think that labeling them “alpha-quality by Linux standards” is a ridiculous claim
+1. Been running Asahi Linux for half a year now. Everything that's advertized as working is working great.