Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2025/10/same-day-snapdragon-8-elite-gen-5-upstream-linux-support

50•mfilion•1h ago

Comments

imcritic•48m ago

This is cancer.

Error 1009 Ray ID: 9a531bef5ba0e988 • 2025-11-27 16:47:44 UTC Access denied What happened? The owner of this website (www.qualcomm.com) has banned the country or region your IP address is in (RU) from accessing this website.

Please see https://developers.cloudflare.com/support/troubleshooting/ht... for more details.

micw•36m ago

I'd say collateral damage. Blame the guy who makes war.

ddtaylor•35m ago

Because other people do bad things these people aren't allowed to share ideas.

imcritic•29m ago

This makes no sense. Just imagine you would get handcuffed tomorrow. Collateral damage. Blame some guy. Or a gal.

cuu508•11m ago

This is the price of living in a country that starts wars of aggression.

ronsor•7m ago

Man, if only it were so easy to leave a country that starts wars. It's not as if the average citizen has little control over that or anything.

coffinbirth•26m ago

Trump? Biden? Obama? Bush? Clinton? Who do you mean?

sl-1•18m ago

Probably Vladimir Putin and his cronies.

mathfailure•14m ago

Or any american president and his cronies. Or Pyotr Poroschenko and his cronies. Or Vladimir Zelensky and his cronies.

mathfailure•15m ago

Does it even matter with such a logic?

fainpul•34m ago

Even when it's not blocked, the layout is broken...

ddtaylor•33m ago

I tried to get it on archive.is but it say in a loop forever.

ori_b•44m ago

I appreciate the gesture, but... just release the docs!

modeless•39m ago

Has Qualcomm seen the light after working with Valve on Steam Frame? The news that Steam Frame would be running an open source Adreno GPU driver really caught me by surprise.

RobotToaster•20m ago

It wouldn't surprise me if they're full of binary blobs

jsheard•14m ago

They are, but that's hardly unique to Qualcomm. Tons of hardware with "proper" upstream Linux drivers still requires closed-source firmware blobs, and in particular with anything wireless that's probably an unwinnable battle due to regulatory constraints.

bsimpson•18m ago

I just checked: Frame is Gen 3 and the article is Gen 5.

jeroenhd•16m ago

They've been working on better mainline Linux support for a while now, but their last generation is still catching up on the driver side of things.

I hope they succeed but the last generation has only recently become mostly usable for specific distros. General support may take a while.

daemonologist•8m ago

My impression from the emulation folks is that the proprietary drivers are chock full of problems. I suspect it was open source drivers or nothing (i.e., back to an AMD x86 solution like the Steam Deck).

(And I don't think Qualcomm has seen the light - my understanding is that the Turnip drivers are purely reverse engineered.)

freehorse•36m ago

I wish this signup box did not cover the text, or at least there was some way to close/remove it.

mg•35m ago

Does that mean that one will be able to purchase tablets with this chip and replace the OS with Linux?

That would be great. As far as I know, there currently are no options for lightweight tablets that support Linux.

Not sure how well WSL2 on tablets work. Does anybody here have experiences with WSL2 on tablets like the new Microsoft Surface Pro that uses the Snapdragon X Elite chip?

throwaway173738•31m ago

I really hope this is the case because I’d love to have an arm64 laptop for work. Then binaries in my laptop will work on my embedded systems, generally.

jsheard•28m ago

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/how-well-does-w...

Apparently WSL2 does work, it pulls a native ARM64 Linux distro and then proceeds as usual.

conradev•25m ago

The Linux support on the X1E today is lacking. I’m much more optimistic for the X2E.

The hardware is great, though, I love the 12” Surface with the X1E. WSL2 works great!

miyuru•28m ago

> Hardware-accelerated video playback of H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC) and VP9 video streams

> Hardware-accelerated video recording into H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC) formats

no mention of AV1? Surprised since most websites including YT uses it heavily.

jeroenhd•24m ago

The Qualcomm marketing spec sheet mentions AV1 decoding: https://www.qualcomm.com/content/dam/qcomm-martech/dm-assets...

Maybe that part of the driver isn't finished yet?

saagarjha•23m ago

Or licensed.

jsheard•22m ago

Isn't the whole point of AV1 that it's royalty free, as opposed to H264/265/etc?

saagarjha•9m ago

For the codec, sure. But there can always be more restrictions on the IP block, driver code, etc.

ZeroCool2u•7m ago

Yeah, and the main problem with HEVC/H265 is the patent encumbrance. Very odd, but hopefully it's just coming a bit later.

jeroenhd•14m ago

AV1 is designed to be license free, so unless they outsourced their driver development to another company I don't think there's anything to license.

kop316•25m ago

As someone who uses Mobile Linux, I am pretty excited to see this, but I can't help but wonder if this is only a "Business decision" and not necessarily Qualcomm turning over a new leaf for being FOSS friendly:

- Their Snapdragon X laptop didn't do very well, and they likely realize an ARM Windows laptop will always be a second class citizen: https://www.techpowerup.com/329255/snapdragon-x-failed-qualc... .

- Likewise, Mobile SoCs are completely dependent on Android without proper upstreaming (which they haven't done in the past).

- They are seeing Valve spending time and money on FOSS support paying off, especially with their new hardware releases.

On the other hand, proper upstreaming of the chips give them much more flexibility for different linux-based OSes.

alganet•16m ago

A businesss decision would be great. What would suck would be a marketing decision.

hypercube33•6m ago

Snapdragon does poorly I think because it's a bet if it works or not. Windows runs things seamlessly other than OpenGL (it can run that too but it's not anything strait forward - needs the gl to dx store app thing) but the other reason is cost. for the premium business laptop most buyers (business) won't budge off Intel even because of the "no one got fired for buying IBM" mentality at the big Enterprises Ive been at.

I will say with my 8 gen 3 snapdragon I'm impressed and also disappointed - stupid thing needs active cooling and I'm pretty sure it's bad enough that it's desoldered or damaged the core or something from heat but also you can't get driver updates for the GPU if you wanted because Qualcomm be the way it do.

tensegrist•15m ago

the year of linux on the arm desktop cannot come soon enough

also, not to beat a horse that is by now six feet under, but

> No delays, no hurry-up-and-wait, no registration. Just go get the new features.

i'm so tired

arjie•8m ago

Woah, this is amazing. I’ve been looking for an ARM Linux machine for a while and ended up about to get M2 Pros in a rack running Asahi. It has been near impossible to get a Snapdragon Elite machine. The IdeaCentre or whatever is 2x the cost / performance and as far as I know is poorly supported.

This changes the game. I’d rather use native Linux than Asahi (though the latter is amazing).

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