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Comment by jsheard | Hacker News Reader

It's also notable that Qualcomm is officially upstreaming kernel support for the Snapdragon Elite platform that Microsoft is pushing, so those systems may actually not suck at running Linux.

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Yes, and Lenovo is releasing a new Qualcomm-powered ThinkPad, which are known to be a Linux-friendly laptops.

> The ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 is, of course, business-focused. It will have the same Snapdragon chip, storage capacity, and webcam but will support up to 64GB of memory and one of three 14-inch display options: an IPS with up to 400 nits of brightness; an IPS touch display; or an OLED that covers 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, also with 400 nits of brightness.

>Lenovo expects the Yoga Slim 7x 14 Gen 9 to start at $1,199 and the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 to start at $1,699. Both will be available in June.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/20/24160819/lenovo-qualcomm-...

They might be "known" (recent experience may vary. mine sure did) but if you can't get support for the pre-installed Linux, you're just asking for pain.

Hmm. The first thing I do when I buy any new machine is to format the hard drive so I can install my own OS on it. I don't really trust any manufacturer to get that right.

So, if it's so hard to get Linux running that you need to have it preinstalled for you, then it's not really a good Linux machine in my view.

It's not as much "How do I install Linux?" as it is "The manufacturer supports these Linux images but my hardware isn't working right with it so I can call them and they're supposed to have an answer as to making it actually work". Otherwise you're just as good to buy any random laptop and try to make sure everything is supported yourself (not a horrible option, just not the premise of these kinds of laptops).

I had decent luck with Dell (though it was an n=1 interaction so I'm not sure how it indicates overall) ~5 years back on this where there was some issue with the dual GPU nature of the 7730 where on this model you could actually completely bypass the iGPU (it wouldn't even show up as a PCIe device anymore) for the main screen but it was causing some sort of display desync after a few minutes on Linux but not Windows. Loaded up the official image, reproduced, opened a ticket, they sent a firmware patch, it worked.

That and that the manufacturer has worked to ensure that at least some version of Linux works on it well, i.e. has done the systems integration work. Otherwise it can be a death of a thousand paper cuts, where things kind of mostly work, sorta, occasionally.

I usually take it as, they installed Linux on it and support it. I will use my own install after formatting a drive (or carrying one over from the previous machine) but it’s more like a seal of approval that Linux works.

And if the company are good stewards, they will upstream any drivers/kernel modules for that hardware too.

Lenovo has been selling a Qualcomm laptop, the Thinkpad x13s, for several years already with questionable at best Linux support so I wouldn't expect the new ones to be much better.

But that's only one device. This is an entire generation of laptops all running the exact same chip.

It isn't so much about the chip but that there are almost no standards for how things should work when compared to a PC. Almost every PC boots the same. Almost no ARM device boots like another.

There has only ever been 1 or 2 ARM SoCs for Windows for the last 10 years. It didn't make Linux support on them easy.

> [Lenovo pricing]

Also available @ 75% off in 12mos on eBay because the used Lenovo market is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I just picked up an unused T15 Gen2 11thGen 16Gb/256Gb for $390. In Warr until late 2026.

Bought a thin client today w/ similar specs for $350.

In the past a few Snapdragon 8 Gen x chip dev kits have had Linux support if I recall correctly. I'd love to have built a device out of them but they seem quite expensive unfortunately for consumers ($800-1000, often from grey market sources). It's nonetheless good to see Linux support.

Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip laptops are only just getting there. Last time I tried to daily it maybe 6 months ago, they didn't even have hardware rendering on the GPU, everything was rendered on the CPU. Ubuntu and Armbian have custom images for the x13s, no idea about the Volterra but it's much worse than the windows on ARM experience for that laptop and that's saying something.

That's disappointing :(

I thought Microsoft requires UEFI + secure boot for Windows, and with no disabling option in the firmware setup, for Windows Arm PC? Or maybe it was "only" Microsoft Secure Boot and you can actually use a Linux distro? If this is the latter case, can you build and run the kernel you want or not?

You can use secure boot on select distros. Coincidentally, they're the better ones as well (Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, etc...)

You should also be able to enroll your own keys to boot any distro under secure boot

Yeah but then you need to resign every update, if the distro doesn't do it for you.

Secure boot can now be disabled on ARM.

Yeah, “ARM-based Linux laptop with 22h battery life” is much more interesting to me than “Windows 11 ARM-based AI PC”. If the TPU can eventually be utilized by open models under Linux that’s just a cherry on top.

Personally agree. But let's be honest: the big shift to ARM in desktop will only happen with Windows.

Acorn tried very hard, but without a critical mass of software ported to the platform it was nearly impossible - Apple was the only other platform that survived.

Now, with open source, it’s easier to open up a place for other architectures. Android and iOS took over a lot of space traditionally reserved to Windows and Microsoft is not oblivious to that fact.

Lenovo claimed 28h on their last arm laptop, real world was more like 10 for light tasks and 2 to 4 for heavier work like development

Laptop battery life estimates outside of Apple are downright criminal. I'm still bitter over the time I bought a fully loaded Sony Vaio which had an advertised battery life of 11 hours. When in actuality, I only got less than three hours of battery life and complained, they explained to me that they meant it gets 11 hours of standby mode with the lid closed. I only made the mistake of buying a non-Apple laptop one more time with a fully loaded XPS which could barely manage 4 hours of battery life. I honestly have no idea how anyone can put up with non-Apple laptops. It's pure garbage out there.

2-4 hours sounds wrong. Were you mining bitcoin in the background?

"Battery life on the ThinkPad X13s will depend on your workload ... and while you might not get close to the 28 hours that Lenovo touts in its own testing, our testing with PCMark 10 got us an amazing 15 and a half hours..."

I was working on a Rails project and had a YouTube video playing in the background, its a 49whr battery and the CPU can easily burst above 15w and usually sustains around 7w plus backlight and all the other components of a laptop, a sustained power draw of 15w while doing development work isn't unusual.

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