Not too long ago it seemed like Linux support for the new ARM laptops running the Snapdragon X Pro and Elite processors was going to be pretty good – Qualcomm seemed to really be stepping up its game, and detailed in a blog post exactly what they were doing to make Linux a first-tier operating system on their new, fancy laptop chips. Now that the devices are in people’s hand, though, it seems all is not so rosy in this new Qualcomm garden.
A recent Linux kernel DeviceTree patch outright disables the GPU on the Snapdragon X Elite, and the issue is, as usual, vendor nonsense, as it needs something called a ZAP shader to be useful.
The ZAP shader is needed as by default the GPU will power on in a specialized “secure” mode and needs to be zapped out of it. With OEM key signing of the GPU ZAP shader it sounds like the Snapdragon X laptop GPU support will be even messier than typically encountered for laptop graphics.
↫ Michael Larabel
This is exactly the kind of nonsense you don’t want to be dealing with, whether you’re a user, developer, or OEM, so I hope this gets sorted out sooner rather than later. Qualcomm’s commitments and blog posts about ensuring Linux is a first-tier platform are meaningless if the company can’t even get the GPU to work properly. These enablement problems should’ve been handled well before the devices entered circulation, so this is very disheartening to see.
So, for now, hold off on X Elite laptops if you’re a Linux user.
Thom Holwerda,
Recently I stated that I didn’t want to be an early adopter. These are the kinds of teething issues that I’d want resolved before spending my money. But I wouldn’t hold it against them if they fix it, only if it turns into a more chronic problem. We have to wait and see.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Freedreno-Snapdragon-X1-GPU
Already enabled.
It’s nice that the reverse engineered 3rd drivers work. I am curious about how the Freedreno Gallium3D driver compares to the official drivers performance wise?
Completely different hardware, but on my nvidia hardware, the open source Nouveau drivers work fairly well as long as I’m willing to give up tons of GPU performance (and cuda and RT cores).
https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/FeatureMatrix.html
Unfortunately it’s a mess, that is people that actually buy laptops with this hardware, casual Windows users, they get the usual treatment, things don’t work or work poorly, compared to something like WIntel, on where it just works. So in the end they will simply return it. Microsoft as expected did a poor job, like Copilot really makes any meaningful difference, on why somebody would chose ARM for this specific use case and ATM. GNU/Linux users are OK with that, they don’t use Windows in the first place, there vendors making this laptops don’t really care about Linux ATM, so it will take a while, before things settle and a GNU/Linux ARM enthusiasts to be happy with the offering! For Windows users here i just don’t see it. It’s not even remotely comparable on how Apple transitioned to ARM and it’s not like Microsoft is taking ARM even remotely serious.
And Qualcomm isn’t taking Linux seriously. A reverse-engineered driver is not even remotely comparable to an OSS, kernel-supported one. Just look at AMD and nVIDIA, even right now.
Qualcomm screwed this up, while in the meantime they were screwing penguinistas all along. And as Thom said, Win/ARM will never properly work because M$ simply isn’t interested, despite all the interesting devices they released.
Or maybe because they realized that most people were emulating Win32 apps anyway, same way that people running W11/amd64 will always prefer 1- a website or 2- a much faster and lighter Win32 app, not some crap downloaded from the Store.
Clean up Win64 and its GUI, make it a pure 64-bit OS and forget about all this new crap that nobody uses anyway…
AFAIK Thom was rather optimistic it will work this time and months/years back i said there is no chance for this to ever work. Microsoft just isn’t taking ARM seriously. As for hardware and chip companies taking Linux seriously. I feel they are, especially due to Android and server space. For this specific hardware, though, laptops, here indeed they still have an idea that it’s Microsoft, holding a key to their success. It’s clearly not true, newer was and likely never will be. The idea Microsoft can make them relevant and some addition of software, like products from Adobe, to make any meaningful difference. It won’t as all that plus everything else already works on Wintel. It’s basically the same underlying problem, on why most people aren’t seriously considering GNU/Linux. They just don’t care, until everything works for them on Wintel.
Meanwhile Apple M1 M2 runs Linux with has free GPU drivers …
ubu,
As pointed out by Adurbe above, the reverse engineered Freedreno Gallium3D driver already supports this GPU.
Just like with apple processors, it’s nice to have reverse engineered drivers when the alternative is not being able to use the hardware at all. But often reverse engineered drivers are limited and not good enough to push the hardware to it’s full potential.
First I really liked SPARC. Then I really liked PowerPC… then I really liked ARM. Now? I really like RISCV.
Why? Because the further you can move away from proprietary vendor crap, the happier you become.