Last week Qualcomm finally fixed their PC lineup, or at least made a huge step in that direction. For years SemiAccurate has been asking Qualcomm to stop blocking Linux on their devices and they just removed the largest roadblock.
If you recall, SemiAccurate previously said Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite CPU was a solid piece of silicon which ended up in non-functional products. They were big phones, locked down for no reason, with crappy x86 emulation masked by point coded patches that will become unmaintainable. This software miss was both unnecessary and destroyed sales of the line, enthusiasts ran for the hills when they looked under the curtain.
A year later, Qualcomm has just made a big step towards fixing things, one that SemiAccurate thinks will not only show the true potential of the silicon and eventually make for a solid product line. If it carries support forward into the future, Qualcomm could have a winner here. What did they do to turn things around? Two things really starting with no longer actively blocking Linux support. The second bit may seem less important but long term it matters more, they documented things and stopped blocking driver development.
If you are not a Linux dev, what does this mean for you? The short answer is that later this year you will see versions of Debian Linux with actual support for Qualcomm X2 based devices. This is a huge step forward but not the final goal. In early 2027 it will be followed by an officially supported version of Ubuntu so certifications will be there for those that need it.
Better yet it will be officially supported by Asus, HP, Humain, and sort of technically speaking the Googlebook even though that last one is still on the X1 CPU line for now. In short the software support is officially there, the hardware support is officially there, and the excuses for not opening the platform are gone. If Qualcomm does not regress on it’s support, the platform has a real chance of being a fully functional PC, albeit with some warts.
Everything seems enabled
As you can see above, the Humain and HP laptops seem to be working well enough already, and are showing more capabilities than Linux running on the X1. In 2023. See below. Linux on the X1 is not supported, will not be supported, and doesn’t officially exist even though it was working better than Windows when shown three years ago. SIGH. We’ll take the progress but this is one big wart. The other is the use of device trees rather than ACPI, X2 kind of, sort of, has some ACPI features but the roots of a mobile CPU show through. Lets hope X3 banishes this silliness once and for all.
Worked perfectly in 2023
So where does that leave us? Over the next 3-6 months we will see officially supported X2 distros, hardware, and systems. This takes the Snapdragon X2 Elite off our list of unacceptable products and puts it into the realm of, “it may end up as a good thing”. What keeps us from recommending it completely is Qualcomm’s antagonism towards Linux and openness in general. If they stay the course and keep things open, the X Elite line will be a contender as a player in the PC space. Lets hope they do.S|A
Charlie Demerjian
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