Experience with any Snapdragon Laptop

[Banana]

Does anybody have already experience with a Snapdragon X Laptop and Gentoo?

A search here for Snapdragon did not result in anything recent.
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[gentoo_ram]

Probably not quite yet. Kernel support for all the drivers isn't all in. Even when the drivers are all in, each machine is likely to need to a different Device tree configuration.

[Banana]

thx. Thought arm support was more common in the linux world. Or is this something new and special?

The main thing why I'm interested in those: Battery running time.
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[gentoo_ram]

There is ARM support in the Linux kernel. But it takes more than that. You need drivers for the actual devices that are on the machine. Stuff like power controllers, memory controllers, Wifi chips, Bluetooth chips, storage controllers, etc. And, in the ARM world, you need to specify how the various pieces of hardware are connected together and where in the memory map the registers are used to control them. That's what device trees are for.

The PC world is different. Different manufacturers try to make their low level interfaces conform to various standards so that the kernel can figure out how to talk to all of the them. In the ARM world each piece of hardware is configured differently. The kernel must be given a "device tree" which is a map to the hardware configuration.

Qualcomm is still working on adding drivers for much of the chip internals. Then we're going to need device tree configurations for the different models out there.

https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/upstreaming-linux-kernel-support-for-the-snapdragon-x-elite

In the mean time if you want to experiment with ARM hardware how about trying hardware that is well supported. Like a Raspberry Pi or something similar. I've converted my main server at home from an aging PC to a RPi 5. It's a snappy little machine that takes much less energy.

[Banana]

It's more like: Oh, maybe a new latop? Why not something new with very good battery life?

Thx for the informations so far, looks like I will wait
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[Spargeltarzan]

I am also considering to upgrade my notebook soon and was thinking about the Lenovo Yoga 7x. The combination of similar or maybe better performance and longer battery time was somehow charming to me.

What I have absolutely no idea on is once the kernel has full support for Snapdragon, what about the rest of the Portage tree? Wouldn't it be necessary to develop every package with proper ARM support?

Kernel 6.11. should have much better support:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.11-SoC-Platforms
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Regards

Spargeltarzan

Notebook: Lenovo YOGA 900-13ISK: Gentoo stable amd64, GNOME systemd, KVM/QEMU
Desktop-PC: Intel Core i7-4770K, 8GB Ram, AMD Radeon R9 280X, ZFS Storage, GNOME openrc, Dantrell, Xen

[gentoo_ram]

For the most part, the core system "just works" on ARM. Think of it this way, I'd say that most of the routers out there on the market are running some form of Linux. And a large percentage of them are some kind ARM chip. Linux ARM support has all been there for quite a while.

I have an ARM-based VM on my MacBook that runs an Ubuntu image. It includes the full desktop environment.

And, finally, I have a small Gentoo VM running on my M3 Max MacBook Pro. That is, by far, the fastest Gentoo environment I own. It absolutely flies. I'm looking forward to Snapdragon based hardware as well. Whether it happens with the current generation of chips or we have to wait another generation I predict they will be wonderful.

[DColt]

I have gotten it to boot and running KDE plasma on a new Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED

In my experience (using gentoo-kernel):

Working:
- Screen
- Keyboard
- Trackpad
- Wifi
- USB-C

Not Working:
- Audio
- Battery tracking
- USB-A

Not tested:
- HDMI
- MicroSD
- Camera
- Microphone

For whatever reason, wayland takes a ton of CPU power, X11 works smooth.

[Banana]

@DColt

I think you are off topic here. I was asking about the ARM processors and the mentioned Asus Vivobook does have not such one, right?
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[DColt]

[pietinger]

Dcolt,

first of all: Welcome to the Gentoo Forum !

And thank you for your contribution. Please don't be put off by the fact that there are sometimes misunderstandings. It just happens. But we are a friendly forum and welcome every new gentoo user.

Other users would certainly be very happy to hear about your experiences. You may also want to provide some technical information, such as the output of a "lsmod" or these:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Pietinger/Overview_of_System_Information

(only if you have the time and inclination, of course)
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https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Pietinger

[DColt]

Thank you pietinger
Happy to be here.

[DColt]

So for those interested in the system information, here's the blocks that was listed on https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Pietinger/Overview_of_System_Information
And please let me know if there's any additional information you'd like me to post.

[pietinger]

[DColt]

[pietinger]

If there are the same problems with ubuntu, I strongly suspect that you will have to wait for new kernel versions.

[DColt]

[pietinger]

[DColt]

For me to be able to use it as a daily driver, the only thing missing that's mandatory is the Audio!