Qualcomm Bringing Snapdragon X Series To Mini PCs For As Little As ~$600 USD

[geerge]

This is a chicken and egg situation.
ARM SBCs have proven for years to have a stronger Linux community than Windows. The demand would go up if there was proper support. Raspberry Pi is wildly successful despite being mediocre even by ARM standards, and it's not the best value option either. The only reason RPis are so successful is because it's very well supported. I wouldn't be surprised if Qualcomm could have seen better success trying to be a high-end competitor to RPi, rather than failing multiple times trying to get a desirable Windows ARM experience.

Well, for normies this is because Linux was largely the only option, windows and arm is oil and water. But now there's millions beyond just tech nerds that are used to Linux. Personally Linux is a requirement because it's so damn nice to be able to have the same OS everywhere and use it all in the same way with the same software. But that's a minority opinion I guess.

[lu_tze]

This.

Doubt it. Intel NUCs sold like hot cakes exactly to such audience, so Intel didn't bother with Windows license (only some kits came with it). Intel machines are not only cheaper, they are also already well-known quality-wise, while Qualcomm offering may be still hiding potential surprises.

[Britoid]

Having a cheapish decent ARM desktop is useful for compiling software/container images for the various ARM clouds.

Cross-compilation is super slow and sometimes it's just useful to be able to run the same images locally when debugging.

[Britoid]

This is a chicken and egg situation.
ARM SBCs have proven for years to have a stronger Linux community than Windows. The demand would go up if there was proper support. Raspberry Pi is wildly successful despite being mediocre even by ARM standards, and it's not the best value option either. The only reason RPis are so successful is because it's very well supported. I wouldn't be surprised if Qualcomm could have seen better success trying to be a high-end competitor to RPi, rather than failing multiple times trying to get a desirable Windows ARM experience.

Any ARM SBC outside the Raspberry Pi ends up being land fill after a few years because the manufacturer will stop providing updated custom images and trying to run anything mainline on these boards is a gamble of odd things not working, because after over a decade, Linux, OEMs and ARMs can't seem to solve the mess that x86_86 and even PowerPC sorted decades ago.

Yet Microsoft is able to push and achieve unified ARM images..

[highball]

This is it.

It's HEL88's other account. What else would you expect. Best to just ignore him.

[Sonadow]

600 USD can easily net an i7-grade (or its AMD equivalent) mini PC on Amazon or AliExpress that plays nice with both Windows and Linux.

At this price, might as well save up more and go straight for a new Mac Mini which will see at least 6 to 8 years of guaranteed macOS compatibility.

Hard pass. Qualcomm clearly has no real interest in the desktop / laptop PC market. They are really only interested with putting their ARM SoCs in mobiles and embedded appliances. Even Microsoft allegedly got royally PO-ed working with Qualcomm to get the Snapdragon SoCs playing nice with UEFI and ACPI on Windows.

[Anon'ym']

Qualcomm is a Platinum member of the Linux Foundation:

2) There is no significant demand in the market for Linux support on these devices.

I tend to favor the second possibility, the free market usually decides what gets adopted and what doesn't.

Market decides nothing.
They one who makes market.

[Eumaios]

Qualcomm is a Platinum member of the Linux Foundation . . . Platinum membership costs 500k a year and Qualcomm is a regular contributor to the Linux kernel.

. . .

2) There is no significant demand in the market for Linux support on these devices.

Very good points! To your possibility (2), could it be a vicious circle? Because these devices don't early support Linux, Linux users don't buy them, so there's no market demand for Linix support on those devices, etc. Personally, I'd love to own a Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition; I think it's a beautiful machine.

[Jabberwocky]

Michael you should put quota to As Little As

I came here for this. Since there's no more likes I'm commenting +1

[Shagga, Son of Dolf]

Qualcomm is a Platinum member of the Linux Foundation:

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members

Platinum membership costs 500k a year and Qualcomm is a regular contributor to the Linux kernel.

Who cares if they have a long history of keeping a lot of their drivers closed source, so that many Android phones using their chips become either e-waste or a security risk after a few years. That fact does not got away just because they insert some few coins in a box. I am looking forward to more ARM devices. But I certainly won't buy anything using Qualcomm.