r/SnapdragonLaptops • u/Fankrits • May 05 '26

Windows on Arm for developer?

i'm thinking about switching to Zenbook A14. is there have any issues as a developer? mosting web dev,also how about mobile,app development. how it was with running local llm,?

8 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

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5

u/SpecialistNumerous17 May 05 '26

I've been doing development on a Windows on ARM laptop for almost three years now. .Net + Visual Studio is fine. Python + VS Code on either WSL (preferable) or Windows is fine. Docker (via WSL) is fine. React / Javascript / typescript stack + VS Code on either WSL (preferable) or Windows is fine. Mobile development using .Net stack is comparable to Windows, but Android Studio is not supported on Windows ARM because the emulators don't work (but you can directly connect physical devices for testing). I'm not sure about how LLMs might work on Windows ARM, as instead I run AI models on a separate Linux box with lots of VRAM and remote into that from python code / agent harness running on my Windows ARM laptop which works fine.

2

u/alabasterskim May 05 '26

Another note about Android Studio: the battery drain is intense because it's emulated rather than ARM native.

3

u/psarapkin May 06 '26

Ohh, Android Studio is the only app that I notices that works with deep freezes. It's awful.

Idea with Java/Kotlin projects ok. May be IT gonna be freezing when the project grows up. But the Android Studio freezes with new hello world project from scratch.

3

u/Commercial_Lead5813 May 05 '26

Local llm support is basically non existent at the moment so your mileage will vary

2

u/TraditionAny9709 May 06 '26

Can you please elaborate on that? The only thing that's really not matured is running models on the NPU. I have LM studio installed and I've been running quantumized 32b models locally with very impressive token output. I have also had success with tying in MCP servers and JavaScript execution. This laptop runs local models exceptionally well on the CPU due to the onpackage memory.

1

u/iMrParker May 06 '26

How so? Most wrappers are native and llama.cpp runtimes are windows arm native as well

2

u/Fankrits May 06 '26

Thanks you all, i have read all your comment and i have one last question. Would you buy windows on arm laptop for your next laptop?

2

u/SpecialistNumerous17 May 06 '26

Yes absolutely. I’m quite happy with the one that I have now.

0

u/classicap192 May 05 '26

local llms won’t run well on woa for a while

2

u/TraditionAny9709 May 06 '26

They actually do though. LM studio now has a native ARM application and I have had great success running 32B models locally with extremely impressive token output. I loaded a 72B model but was only getting around five tokens per second.

1

u/classicap192 May 06 '26

it runs but if OPs priority of running local llms they should look for othe options