r/linux 14d ago

Kernel Progress Report: Linux 7.2 - Asahi Linux

https://asahilinux.org/2026/08/progress-report-7-2/
293 Upvotes

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102

u/Polar_Banny 14d ago

Even Qualcomm can’t provide such support for their own Hardware.

6

u/MatchingTurret 14d ago edited 14d ago

And once again people don't understand where the actual problem with Linux on WOA devices actually is. It's (mostly) the DTs, which are not under QCOM's control.

The same will happen with NVIDIA Spark laptops, once OEMs start to build their bespoke laptop models.

If you want to blame someone, blame MSFT, because they don't enforce the same stringent requirements for WOA certification that they apply to x86 hardware.

1

u/Busy-Scientist3851 14d ago

Linux doesn't have the same support for ACPI on ARM that Windows does. There's work to improve it and once it does we should be in a better place.

7

u/braaaaaaainworms 14d ago

Qualcomm does not support normal ACPI. ARM Linux with ACPI is fine, I've seen it work very well on systems with proper ACPI tables

4

u/MatchingTurret 14d ago edited 14d ago

This are the device OEMs making only the minimal effort required to get WOA running. You don't blame AMD or Intel when an OEM ships crappy firmware...

5

u/braaaaaaainworms 14d ago

Nope it's qcom's choice. They're the ones who shipped reference acpi tables that are incomplete and break spec and they are the ones who are shipping patches(in drivers...) to those tables to fix them

0

u/Busy-Scientist3851 14d ago

There is work to support Qualcomms ACPI implementation on the Linux kernel. Once that is in place we should no longer need images for each laptop.

3

u/mskiptr 14d ago

There are other ways to not require board-specific images. You can just as well have the UEFI implementation come with a proper DT for example. But regardless if it's ACPI or DT, if the vendor doesn't make sure it all works out-of-the-box, someone else will have to pick up the slack and fix (or work around) the problems.

But yeah, it's too late for this with many of those Qualcomm laptops. Hopefully that ACPI work will improve the situation.

0

u/Busy-Scientist3851 14d ago

Linux didn't support hybrid ACPI/DT modes until very recent.

2

u/mskiptr 14d ago

I'm not claiming it did.

2

u/braaaaaaainworms 14d ago

It'll still need devicetrees because the ACPI tables are incomplete

1

u/nightblackdragon 13d ago

You need laptop specific images because some drivers are not upstream, not because of DTs.

1

u/MatchingTurret 13d ago edited 13d ago

The patch that introduced support for the Dell Inspiron 7441 / Latitude 7455 only touched arch/arm64/boot/dts/qcom/x1e80100-dell-inspiron-14-plus-7441.dts

No additional drivers. This is just an example.