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."
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.)
> 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.
The "original" X Elite was also supposed to get good linux support but it unfortunately never happened.
So hopefully the X2 will actually happen!
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.
[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/snapdragon-x2-elite...
[2] https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-14-inch-2026-...
Consider me cautiously optimistic.
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
Consider me dangerously pessimistic
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.
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!
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 !
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
If the drivers are upstreamed and good, it should work well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49824189
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.
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.
Because getting your stuff upstreamed in Linux is more work than releasing a custom kernel.
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.
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.
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).
I suspect in the next 5 years something like this will come up.