Can’t say I’m surprised given how much Qualcomm has prioritized Windows over Linux support for years now.
Their drivers are SHIT, for wifi there is CNSS, ICNSS, then QMI, all do the same thing, but differently, but NO, it’s the same thing, but what does this do??? Is this really a different event or is this just rewritten in that event? Idk still, no one knows.
Edit: I tried to port the not working kernel drivers for the wifi on the Redmi Note 9s to postmarketos (wifi is not working), didn’t work and it’s now on LineageOS
So it makes me wonder how much Valve is paying them for support since the upcoming Steam Frame uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 CPU and is also running Steam OS which is just a fork of Arch.
Valve is paying for FOSS support https://www.igalia.com/2025/11/helpingvalve.html
This is about Snapdragon X1 Elite, not Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. These two are completely different from each other on a support perspektiv, even if they share a lot of architecture.
The 8 Elite Gen 5, I don’t know the status on Linux, but Qualcomm has a few day old blog post talking about what they have upstreamed for day 1 support into the Linux kernel https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2025/10/same-day-snapdragon-8-elite-gen-5-upstream-linux-support
Lastly, when it comes down to device by device, they can have vastly different glue logic (hardware), so I guess we will wait and see for device by device. But it would be cool seeing a raspberry like 8 elite gen 5 board, for hopefully cheap (it won’t be cheap in this artificially inflated market, angry face)
So the way the statement about Qualcomm supporting Linux was phrased made it seem like a blanket statement rather than referring to specifically the X1 Elite. The fact that Qualcomm’s Linux support seems to vary wildly based on the specific CPU is interesting and suggests it’s less about the CPU or Linux and more about the visibility and importance of the companies using that CPU. The X1 Elite got first class Windows support (although it sounds like only some specific laptops did) because certain large manufacturers were using it. Likewise the 8 Elite Gen 5 is getting first class Linux support because Valve is using it in a high visibility project.
If there’s a silver lining to this it sounds like Valve is doing the right thing by the FOSS community and is paying to have a company contribute bug fixes and improvements to the Vulkan drivers and FEX project for ARM in general and for this specific CPU. That combined with Qualcomm themselves wanting to look good and provide support should mean at least this CPU should work very well in Linux, and maybe that will also make it a little easier to support other Qualcomm CPUs as well. It’s just a shame that that level of Linux support by Qualcomm doesn’t extend to all their products.
And when you see how bad their windows support is it’s a miracle anyone buys this garbage.
It’s a neat concept. But at the moment only Apple has pulled it off well. And that’s only if you stick with Mac OS.
RPis have been pulling off Linux on ARM pretty well in terms of software support for a while now, but they’re also tinkering boards and not necessarily good for a daily driver.
Reasonable for a lightly-loaded home server, however. I’ve got Arch Linux ARM (btw) running as my home Forgejo / Transmission / DHCP / NAS, and it just sits and sips power while providing all those services 24/7 like a champ.
Shout out to ALARM for having basically the entire Arch ecosystem (including 99% of AUR) all working and ready-to-go.
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As someone who owns several RISC-V devices the primary thing preventing usable (low end) RISC-V laptops is the GPUs. Most RISC-V silicon has Imagination GPUs, and the current state of the drivers there is “proprietary drivers stuck on an old LTS kernel.”
If someone makes an RVA23 compliant chip with open mainstreamable drivers and a BXS-4-64 GPU (or, better yet, somehow manages to license a GPU from Intel or AMD for it), that’ll be a cash cow.
And should make a chip. Risc V with their GPU.
Other than battery optimizations pretty much all of the issues don’t exist on something like a Raspberry Pi which is RISC architecture (Broadcom chips). Sounds like Qualcomm just doesn’t have their shit together.
I think they mean RISC-V, not RISC in general.
Maybe that’s what they though but it’s not what they said.
ARM = Acorn Risc Machine
Mainly a question of money.
isnt it inferior to qualcomm, the china doesnt exactly have access to the latest tech
The headline doesn’t quite reflect the situation, but it is difficult to capture in a headline.
Essentially add “for now”. Many of the issues are fixable but not necessarily by one laptop maker. As the article said by the time the issues were likely resolved the laptop would be obsolete as the version 2 of the chip would release.
Having said that, it’s not clear how fast the issues will resolve as without any devices there won’t be impetus to put fixes in to different parts of the ecosystem to get the full potential of the chipset.
The GPU sounds like the most serious problem and without manufacturer engagement may be the longest to get fixed.
Well the Steam Frame could improve the GPU part since Valve and their partners put quiet some work to create proper Vulkan support for the used chip.
“Less suitable […] than expected” is kinda terrifying given expectations must’ve been pretty low in the 1st place knowing their history with linux…
But I heard it was so fast!
Who the heck designs a laptop with an ARM core? Nothing against ARM, they are my bread and butter on the job. But whatever you do, choose the right tools for the right job.
I’m not an Apple fanboy, but arm based processors seem to be working out fairly well for them.
I own an Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, which was one of the OG snapdragon x laptops released a (two?) and a half year(s) ago. It took a while for folks to get Linux to run on them and there’s enough of a barrier to entry that it’s still not very common. Most of the initial hurdles were due to Qualcomm bootloader shenanigans.
People stopped needing more processing power in their laptops years ago. For the majority of users a computer has long been a thin client for Chrome.
Since a lot of arm design has been around efficiency and performance per watt they would be a natural choice for laptops.
The X1 elite is perfectly fine for most people performance wise and as much as I hate Qualcomm, we need the competition.
But yea, support for this is arriving to the market too late to matter.
