Linux 5.20 To Support The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen3, ThinkPad X13s Arm Laptop

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 5.20 To Support The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen3, ThinkPad X13s Arm Laptop

Submitted early ahead of tomorrow's Linux 5.19 stable kernel release are the SoC changes destined for the Linux 5.20 merge window. There are more than one thousand SoC patches for Linux 5.20 cycle adding and updating many SoCs and board/platform coverage. One of several notable additions this cycle is introducing the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen3 support for high-end Arm laptops...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-5.20-SoCs-8cx-Gen3-Arm

[MorrisS.]

When will android adopt this kernel?

[Linuxxx]

Seeing all these different ARM chips from so many different vendors really makes me wish that there was an easy way to buy one, stick it onto an off-the-shelf mainboard & combine it with a dGPU, like nVidia has done a year ago for a RTX demo:

And I think it would be kinda cool if Valve explored the possibility of the Steam Deck 2 running an ARM SoC + Box86/64 or FEX-EMU for x86 compatability.
This way, atleast the battery life would be greatly improved...

[Linuxxx]

When will android adopt this kernel?

Android uses the LTS kernels which ends up being whichever version is released last by year's end.

The real question is for how long will they continue to stick to the Linux kernel; or rather, will they ever make proper use of their in-house developed OS called Fuchsia with its Zircon kernel?

[MastaG]

Regarding Android I always interpret these release notes as: 'getting only the basic CPU cores running'.
Which was probably part of a patchset for an older kernel used for devices with these chips. Everything else from audio DAC, video encoding/decoding engines and GPU drivers and probably even USB bus support is not available.

I really wish Google would demand SoC builders to have all of their drivers upstreamed in the kernel and mesa before they can make their BSP.

Imagine an Android device running 100% on upstream Linux and mesa.. lifetime software support lol.

[timofonic]

Very expensive, despite very long battery life.

[stormcrow]

Very expensive, despite very long battery life.

And the performance still isn't great for the price. Any other laptop at the price point will blow it away whether it's Apple or PC.

[Quackdoc]

very nice, way out of my budget, but It would be interesting to tinker on one of these.

Seeing all these different ARM chips from so many different vendors really makes me wish that there was an easy way to buy one, stick it onto an off-the-shelf mainboard & combine it with a dGPU, like nVidia has done a year ago for a RTX demo:

And I think it would be kinda cool if Valve explored the possibility of the Steam Deck 2 running an ARM SoC + Box86/64 or FEX-EMU for x86 compatability.
This way, atleast the battery life would be greatly improved...

Im hoping USB4 will help out with achieving this. I would love to have one of these, come home and plug it into an egpu dock.

[mdedetrich]

Very expensive, despite very long battery life.

Yeah honestly best hope for an ARM based laptop for now is ironically Apple ARM sillicon along with Asahi Linux. Microsoft really butchered the ecosystem with their Qualcomm exclusivity deal, if it wasn't for that we may have had more ARM laptops in the market to push the whole Linux on ARM laptop a bit more forward.

[timofonic]

Yeah honestly best hope for an ARM based laptop for now is ironically Apple ARM sillicon along with Asahi Linux. Microsoft really butchered the ecosystem with their Qualcomm exclusivity deal, if it wasn't for that we may have had more ARM laptops in the market to push the whole Linux on ARM laptop a bit more forward.

Well, Apple Silicon isn't a realistic nor pragmatic option outside Apple ecosystem. The lack of fully featured hardware drivers makes it just an extremely experimental setup.