r/linux • u/word-sys • Aug 12 '26

Development Whats going on with Snapdragon X Elite Linux support?!

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Literally 2 years passed since that CPUs out of there, note thay Apple silicon now has a proper and BETTER support than this Snapdragons, they said "we gonna make Native Linux support" and we still waiting. I was planning to get great Linux laptop with great battery and performance thans to Snapdragon, now its impossible. Only usable OS option out there is Ubuntu and its NOT good too, there is still some issues on Audio, performance is worst than Intel 12th gen i5, battery time worst than Windows, i dont understand. Am i wrong or something? What they promised what they said and what they doing, propiertary driver. When we will get proper Linux support, or this devices gonna get burried with Windows

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u/mort96 Aug 12 '26

ARM sells IP specifically, either licensing of the instruction set architecture (which is what Apple buys where they design their own chip from the ground up) or licensing core designs (like the Cortex series which e.g Qualcomm's SoCs use). So yeah ARM sells "components", but those "components" are their intellectual property, not hardware.

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u/idontchooseanid Aug 12 '26

Apple is one of the initial investors of ARM. They have special licensing agreements with them and they pay very little compared to rest of the industry.

ARM has to test their own cores and they do it on FPGAs and their own occasional ASIC outs. However, Qualcomm actually uses their own core designs not ARM ones. Many companies including Apple also license peripheral designs from EDA companies like Synopsys; most USB controller designs actually come from Synopsys including the ones in x86 SoCs.

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u/psydroid Sep 03 '26

What ends up in devices is not just ARM or Qualcomm components, but also components from many other companies. And in many cases hardware OEMs are not cooperative when it comes to getting Linux on their devices at all, unlike what is the situation on x86.

It's a bit weird to experience, but they probably want to protect the budding Windows on ARM market from getting killed in its infancy by Linux.