When linux support on snapdragon laptops?

[kasdashd]

So many people are asking for linux support on the snapdragon laptops, so when's that coming?

[MC Morrado]

I'm surprised anybody even bought them at all. Windows on ARM by itself was a disaster.

[IkeaGnome]

26 minutes ago, MC.Morrado said:

I'm surprised anybody even bought them at all. Windows on ARM by itself was a disaster.

They're awesome. I've got an Asus one. 

I work rotation work. 2 weeks at a remote camp, 2 weeks at home. It's the perfect form factor to play some light games from time to time and not be tied to mobile games. I use it every night out here as a larger than normal tablet for YouTube and things like that.

When I travel to and from Norway I love the insane battery life. I've predownloaded videos, had it last in airplane mode from Anchorage to Seattle no problem. Charge it for half hour or so in SeaTac then I don't have to worry about it again until I'm home in Norway. 9 hour flight to Amsterdam, layover and then another 90 minute flight. In airplane mode and on battery saver it out lives my Sony headphones. 

 

I do wish it had better compatibility for games, but it's great for playing games you can pick up for 30 minutes here and there. 

 

I've said it to people before on here, just because you don't personally have a use for something doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad product.

[Donut417]

46 minutes ago, MC.Morrado said:

I'm surprised anybody even bought them at all. Windows on ARM by itself was a disaster.

Well, from the reviews as of late it sounds like support has gotten much better. The issue for Microsoft is Qualcomm doesn't have any skin in the game when it comes to desktop computing. But it sounds like the current lineup is a bit better, it's not like the Windows RT tablets from back in the day. 

 

In fact all the newer Surface Tablets are ARM based, I mean you can buy "Business" ones that still have Intel chips, but all the "consumer" ones from what I have seen are all ARM based. 

 

18 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

've said it to people before on here, just because you don't personally have a use for something doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad product.

All the newer reviews pretty much paint that picture. Microsoft must have put a fire under Qualcomms ass to get a better SOC for their products. Im kinda happy for ARM being an offering because the battery life on mobile devices alone would be nice. Im kinda looking forward when I upgrade my 2020 MacBook Pro to a newer MacBook Air at some point, might wait for the M5 versions to come out. 

[IkeaGnome]

1 minute ago, Donut417 said:

All the newer reviews pretty much paint that picture. Microsoft must have put a fire under Qualcomms ass to get a better SOC for their products. Im kinda happy for ARM being an offering because the battery life on mobile devices alone would be nice. Im kinda looking forward when I upgrade my 2020 MacBook Pro to a newer MacBook Air at some point, might wait for the M5 versions to come out. 

I think what people say about them is going to depend a lot on the mindset they go into the product with.

If you buy it thinking "small laptop with good battery life that will replace my gaming desktop or gaming laptop" you're going to be horribly disappointed.

I went into it with a "Tablet+ that can do some normal Windows tasks, not be locked into Android or Apple store for time killing games and maybe down the road there will be more games that work on it" and I've been very very impressed with it.

 

Sleep mode actually works. Very regularly I'll use it for 2 weeks at work, toss it in my backpack full charged on sleep mode then forget about it for a week+ and it still has a little bit of battery left.

[Donut417]

2 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

f you buy it thinking "small laptop with good battery life that will replace my gaming desktop or gaming laptop"

That can be said about any computer. If it's not designed for gaming then you will have a "Poor" experience. The fact is Apple showed what ARM could do. You can run a full desktop OS and do desktop style things with it. Not everything revolves around gaming and I think thats a big issue. The other issue is Windows has a lot of legacy support and I think that some times hinder stuff. Where Apple will drop support for certain hardware as time has gone on, not to mention they have switch platforms before, going from Power PC to Intel and now to ARM. 

[Eigenvektor]

5 hours ago, kasdashd said:

So many people are asking for linux support on the snapdragon laptops, so when's that coming?

Still in the works, https://www.phoronix.com/review/snapdragon-x1e-september

[MC Morrado]

11 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Well, from the reviews as of late it sounds like support has gotten much better. The issue for Microsoft is Qualcomm doesn't have any skin in the game when it comes to desktop computing. But it sounds like the current lineup is a bit better, it's not like the Windows RT tablets from back in the day. 

 

In fact all the newer Surface Tablets are ARM based, I mean you can buy "Business" ones that still have Intel chips, but all the "consumer" ones from what I have seen are all ARM based. 

 

All the newer reviews pretty much paint that picture. Microsoft must have put a fire under Qualcomms ass to get a better SOC for their products. Im kinda happy for ARM being an offering because the battery life on mobile devices alone would be nice. Im kinda looking forward when I upgrade my 2020 MacBook Pro to a newer MacBook Air at some point, might wait for the M5 versions to come out. 

I still use an M1 MacBook Air (8GB RAM) that I'm typing this on. I am thinking of getting the M5 model whenever that comes out. The battery is nearing 750 charge cycles and degradation is hitting like a freight train anyway.

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, MC.Morrado said:

The battery is nearing 750 charge cycles and degradation is hitting like a freight train anyway.

How long have you had it? I got the last gen Intel MacBook Pro and Im sitting at 190 Cycles on the battery. 

[MC Morrado]

22 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

How long have you had it? I got the last gen Intel MacBook Pro and Im sitting at 190 Cycles on the battery. 

since 2021. I only charge it when the battery is low. Battery health is at 86%

[Eviljuche]

I think there are some Snapdragon laptops with Linux support already (by that I mean that you can install some selected Linux distros by oneself in a non-user-friendly process), it's just that there's not that many of them. Bootloaders and stuff were always kinda problematic on consumer ARM devices.

 

If you don't want to use Windows on Snapdragons with no issues, BSD's have full Snapdragon support already

[Ha-Satan]

14 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Im kinda happy for ARM being an offering because the battery life on mobile devices alone would be nice.

I was under the impression that ARM actually has no real inherent battery life advantage over x86-64, it's just a matter of the priorities historically held by the developers of ARM vs. x86-64 CPUs.

 

Source - somewhere in this long-ass video about CPU design:

 

 

Lunar Lake seems to be a big step in the right direction when it comes to battery life on X86-64, or so I've heard (all of my hardware is old lmao)

[kasdashd]

On 10/23/2025 at 1:46 AM, MC.Morrado said:

I'm surprised anybody even bought them at all. Windows on ARM by itself was a disaster.

But laptop battery life is unmatched, even against macbooks

[Lurking]

What OS were they sold with? If Android, they are already running on Linux. 

 

I don't have one, but suspect a knowledgeable person could install a Linux ARM version on them. Same way people install Linux on the Apple M-chips. this likely isn't straight forward. but no one stops you from creating your own distro - it is Linux after all. Because adding distro #1501 for an unpopular hardware platform sure will bring the year of Linux. 

[kasdashd]

6 minutes ago, Lurking said:

What OS were they sold with? If Android, they are already running on Linux. 

 

I don't have one, but suspect a knowledgeable person could install a Linux ARM version on them. Same way people install Linux on the Apple M-chips. this likely isn't straight forward. but no one stops you from creating your own distro - it is Linux after all. Because adding distro #1501 for an unpopular hardware platform sure will bring the year of Linux. 

Windows 11 ARM64

[Lurking]

6 hours ago, kasdashd said:

Windows 11 ARM64

So did you try one of the ARM Linux distros at all? Very many x86 Linux distros also have an ARM version. And if ARM-windows ran, chances are those Linux also will work with some coercion. 

 

Windows on ARM is the worst choice ever. The one real advantages Windows x86 has are:

- real good professional desktop setup for professional work

- All x86 software compatibility anyone could wish for

 

Those advantages come at the price of dealing with MS BS. And both advantages aren't applicable on an ARM netbook at all. So you get the disadvantage of MS BS, and NO compatibility of professional desktop setup. 

[Nayr438]

Ubuntu non-lts has limited support for Snapdragon Laptops, I think they are the only ones really working on support.

The last update posted by them was for 25.04 which you can view here. Ubuntu 25.10 ARM images should have some ootb support.

Phoronix also has some articles on it.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.10-Stubble-Ready
https://www.phoronix.com/review/snapdragon-x1e-september

To sum it up, performance supposedly isn't great and some functionality may be missing such as audio, webcam, and power management. People are working on it however.

[kasdashd]

On 10/27/2025 at 7:01 PM, Lurking said:

So did you try one of the ARM Linux distros at all? Very many x86 Linux distros also have an ARM version. And if ARM-windows ran, chances are those Linux also will work with some coercion. 

 

Windows on ARM is the worst choice ever. The one real advantages Windows x86 has are:

- real good professional desktop setup for professional work

- All x86 software compatibility anyone could wish for

 

Those advantages come at the price of dealing with MS BS. And both advantages aren't applicable on an ARM netbook at all. So you get the disadvantage of MS BS, and NO compatibility of professional desktop setup. 

No, didn't try any Linux distros yet. Wanted to ask first and get a feel for current development and support

[kasdashd]

On 10/28/2025 at 12:09 AM, Nayr438 said:

Ubuntu non-lts has limited support for Snapdragon Laptops, I think they are the only ones really working on support.

The last update posted by them was for 25.04 which you can view here. Ubuntu 25.10 ARM images should have some ootb support.

Phoronix also has some articles on it.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.10-Stubble-Ready
https://www.phoronix.com/review/snapdragon-x1e-september

To sum it up, performance supposedly isn't great and some functionality may be missing such as audio, webcam, and power management. People are working on it however.

Thanks, progress is progress, nice to hear. Just seeing many comments on Snapdragon laptop Youtube videos asking for full and proper native Linux support on these devices, so clearly that's something many would love to use them for, at least alongside Windows.

[akira_cachyosbtw]

On 10/23/2025 at 12:16 AM, kasdashd said:

So many people are asking for linux support on the snapdragon laptops, so when's that coming?

we do have arm distros?