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Facts are Linux support has heavily accelerated from both Qualcomm and Linaro on their behalf. Anyone who watches Linux ARM mailing lists can attest that. Thin

by cromka 10mo ago

Facts are Linux support has heavily accelerated from both Qualcomm and Linaro on their behalf. Anyone who watches Linux ARM mailing lists can attest that. Things have definitely changed, a lot.

999900000999 10mo ago
Fantastic. Can you please let me know if there is an ISO to get any mainstream Linux distro working on this Snapdragon laptop ? ASUS - Vivobook 14 14" FHD+ Laptop - Copilot+ PC - Snapdragon X It's on sale for $350 at Best buy and if I can get Linux working on it it would definitely be an awesome gift for myself. Even if there's some progress being made, it's still nearly impossible to install a typical Linux distro on one of these. I've been watching this space since the snapdragon laptops were announced. Tuxedo giving up and canceling their Snapdragon Linux laptop doesn't instill much confidence
- cromka 10mo ago
  There's an Ubuntu release specifically targeting new Qualcomm Elite based laptops: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-concept-snapdragon-x-elite/48800 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-concept-snapdragon-x-e... This includes Vivobook S15, not sure about the 14.
  - 999900000999 10mo ago
    That covers the Elite, not the cheaper Snapdragon X laptops such as the ASUS Vivobook 14 (X1407QA). I've followed that thread for almost a year. It's a maze of hardware issues and poor compatibility. From your other response. >but vendors usually require a firmware binary to be signed with their keys, which are burned into the SoC. As a result you cannot use Qualcomm's vanilla firmware and need to extract the original firmware as provided by the vendor, otherwise it won't load. This makes the install process impossible without an existing Windows install. It's easier to say it doesn't work and move on. It's going to be significantly easier to buy run Linux in an X86 laptop. Not to mention no out of the box Linux Snapdragon Elite laptop exists. It's a shame because it would probably be an amazing product.
dman 10mo ago
Hardware has already been out for a year. Outside a custom spin by the ubuntu folks, even last years notebooks arent well supported out of the box on linux. I have a Yoga Slim 7x and I tried the Ubuntu spin out at some point - it required me to first extract the firmware from the Windows partition because Qualcomm had not upstreamed it into linux-firmware. Hard to take Qualcomm seriously when the situation is like this.
- cromka 10mo ago
  Qualcomm _does_ upstream all their firmware, but vendors usually require a firmware binary to be signed with their keys, which are burned into the SoC. As a result you cannot use Qualcomm's vanilla firmware and need to extract the original firmware as provided by the vendor, otherwise it won't load. This is an actual security feature, believe it or not. Besides, chances are it wasn't even Qualcomm's firmware, but rather Cirrus for sound or display firmware, etc. I get the hate on Qualcomm, but you're really one LLM question away from understanding why they do this. I should know, I was also getting frustrated before I read up on this.
  - dman 10mo ago
    I get where youre coming from but I think the job of a company pushing a platform is to make it "boring". ie it should work out of the box on debian/fedora/arch/ubuntu. The platform vendor (Qualcomm) is the only one with enough sway to push the different laptop manufacturers do the right thing. This is the reason why both Intel / Windows push compliance suites which have a long list of requirmements before anyone can put the Windows / Intel logo on their device. If Qualcomm is going to let Acer / Lenovo decide if things work out of the box on linux then its never going to happen.
renewiltord 10mo ago
This sounds a lot like how AMD’s approach had changed on Linux and still everyone I know who wants to use their GPU fully used Nvidia. For a decade or more I’ve heard how AMD has turned over a new leaf and their drivers are so much better. Even geohot was going to undercut nvidia by just selling tinygrad boxes on AMD. Then it turned out this was the usual. Nothing had changed. It was just that people online have this desire to express that “the underdog” is actually better. Not clear why because it’s never true. AMD is still hot garbage on Linux. Geohot primarily sells “green boxes”. And the MI300x didn’t replace H100s en masse.
- avhception 10mo ago
  Maybe it's just that you're mostly viewing this through the LLM lens? I remember having to fight with fglrx, AMDs proprietary Linux driver, for hours on end. Just to get hardware-acceleration for my desktop going! That driver was so unbearable I bought Nvidia just because I wanted their proprietary driver. Cut the fiddling time from many hours to maybe 1 or 2! Nowadays, I run AMD because their open-source amdgpu driver means I just plonk the card into the system, and that's it. I've had to fiddle with the driver exactly zero times. The last time I used Nvidia is the distant past for me. So - for me, their drivers are indeed "so much better". But my usecase is sysadmin work and occasional gaming through Steam / Proton. I ran LMStudio through ROCm, too, a few times. Worked fine, but I guess that's very much not representative for whatever people do with MI300 / H100.
  - nottorp 10mo ago
    > and occasional gaming through Steam / Proton And how does that work on AMD? I know the Steam Deck is AMD but Valve could have tweaked the driver or proton for that particular GPU.
    - avhception 10mo ago
      Works very well for me! YMMV maybe depending on the titles you play, but that would probably be more of a Proton issue than an AMD issue, I'd guess. I'm not a huge gamer, so take my experience with a grain of salt. But I've racked up almost 300 hours of Witcher3 with the HQ patch on a 4k TV display using my self-compiled Gentoo kernel, and it worked totally fine. A few other games, too. So there's that!

by cromka 10mo ago

Facts are Linux support has heavily accelerated from both Qualcomm and Linaro on their behalf. Anyone who watches Linux ARM mailing lists can attest that. Things have definitely changed, a lot.

999900000999 10mo ago

Fantastic. Can you please let me know if there is an ISO to get any mainstream Linux distro working on this Snapdragon laptop ? ASUS - Vivobook 14 14" FHD+ Laptop - Copilot+ PC - Snapdragon X It's on sale for $350 at Best buy and if I can get Linux working on it it would definitely be an awesome gift for myself. Even if there's some progress being made, it's still nearly impossible to install a typical Linux distro on one of these. I've been watching this space since the snapdragon laptops were announced. Tuxedo giving up and canceling their Snapdragon Linux laptop doesn't instill much confidence

cromka 10mo ago
There's an Ubuntu release specifically targeting new Qualcomm Elite based laptops: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-concept-snapdragon-x-elite/48800 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-concept-snapdragon-x-e... This includes Vivobook S15, not sure about the 14.
- 999900000999 10mo ago
  That covers the Elite, not the cheaper Snapdragon X laptops such as the ASUS Vivobook 14 (X1407QA). I've followed that thread for almost a year. It's a maze of hardware issues and poor compatibility. From your other response. >but vendors usually require a firmware binary to be signed with their keys, which are burned into the SoC. As a result you cannot use Qualcomm's vanilla firmware and need to extract the original firmware as provided by the vendor, otherwise it won't load. This makes the install process impossible without an existing Windows install. It's easier to say it doesn't work and move on. It's going to be significantly easier to buy run Linux in an X86 laptop. Not to mention no out of the box Linux Snapdragon Elite laptop exists. It's a shame because it would probably be an amazing product.

dman 10mo ago

Hardware has already been out for a year. Outside a custom spin by the ubuntu folks, even last years notebooks arent well supported out of the box on linux. I have a Yoga Slim 7x and I tried the Ubuntu spin out at some point - it required me to first extract the firmware from the Windows partition because Qualcomm had not upstreamed it into linux-firmware. Hard to take Qualcomm seriously when the situation is like this.

cromka 10mo ago
Qualcomm _does_ upstream all their firmware, but vendors usually require a firmware binary to be signed with their keys, which are burned into the SoC. As a result you cannot use Qualcomm's vanilla firmware and need to extract the original firmware as provided by the vendor, otherwise it won't load. This is an actual security feature, believe it or not. Besides, chances are it wasn't even Qualcomm's firmware, but rather Cirrus for sound or display firmware, etc. I get the hate on Qualcomm, but you're really one LLM question away from understanding why they do this. I should know, I was also getting frustrated before I read up on this.
- dman 10mo ago
  I get where youre coming from but I think the job of a company pushing a platform is to make it "boring". ie it should work out of the box on debian/fedora/arch/ubuntu. The platform vendor (Qualcomm) is the only one with enough sway to push the different laptop manufacturers do the right thing. This is the reason why both Intel / Windows push compliance suites which have a long list of requirmements before anyone can put the Windows / Intel logo on their device. If Qualcomm is going to let Acer / Lenovo decide if things work out of the box on linux then its never going to happen.

renewiltord 10mo ago

This sounds a lot like how AMD’s approach had changed on Linux and still everyone I know who wants to use their GPU fully used Nvidia. For a decade or more I’ve heard how AMD has turned over a new leaf and their drivers are so much better. Even geohot was going to undercut nvidia by just selling tinygrad boxes on AMD. Then it turned out this was the usual. Nothing had changed. It was just that people online have this desire to express that “the underdog” is actually better. Not clear why because it’s never true. AMD is still hot garbage on Linux. Geohot primarily sells “green boxes”. And the MI300x didn’t replace H100s en masse.

avhception 10mo ago
Maybe it's just that you're mostly viewing this through the LLM lens? I remember having to fight with fglrx, AMDs proprietary Linux driver, for hours on end. Just to get hardware-acceleration for my desktop going! That driver was so unbearable I bought Nvidia just because I wanted their proprietary driver. Cut the fiddling time from many hours to maybe 1 or 2! Nowadays, I run AMD because their open-source amdgpu driver means I just plonk the card into the system, and that's it. I've had to fiddle with the driver exactly zero times. The last time I used Nvidia is the distant past for me. So - for me, their drivers are indeed "so much better". But my usecase is sysadmin work and occasional gaming through Steam / Proton. I ran LMStudio through ROCm, too, a few times. Worked fine, but I guess that's very much not representative for whatever people do with MI300 / H100.
- nottorp 10mo ago
  > and occasional gaming through Steam / Proton And how does that work on AMD? I know the Steam Deck is AMD but Valve could have tweaked the driver or proton for that particular GPU.
  - avhception 10mo ago
    Works very well for me! YMMV maybe depending on the titles you play, but that would probably be more of a Proton issue than an AMD issue, I'd guess. I'm not a huge gamer, so take my experience with a grain of salt. But I've racked up almost 300 hours of Witcher3 with the HQ patch on a 4k TV display using my self-compiled Gentoo kernel, and it worked totally fine. A few other games, too. So there's that!