Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Powered ASUS Vivobook S15 Laptop Seeing Linux Patches

For those interested in laptops powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite SoC, it's looking like the ASUS Vivobook S15 model could be one of the first devices with decent Linux support. There are patches undergoing review for upstreaming the ASUS Vivobook S 15 DeviceTree support so that much of the basic functionality is working under Linux but various features are known to be broken.

The ASUS Vivobook S15 (S5507) Laptop features the choice of the Snapdragon X Plus X1P 64 100 10-core processor or the Snapdragon X Elite X1E 78 100 12-core processor. The Vivbook, of course, makes use of the integrated Qualcomm Adreno graphics and sports a 15.6-inch 3K OLED display. The ASUS Vivobook S15 comes with either 16GB or 32GB of LPDDR5X memory and 512GB or 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD storage. Pricing on the Vivobook S15 starts out at $1099 for the model with the Snapdragon X Plus or $1299 USD for the model with the flagship Snapdragon X1 Elite SoC.

Linux kernel developer Xilin Wu has been working through the DeviceTree support for this Snapdragon X laptop so that it's working under Linux. Known to be working with the yet-to-be-merged Vivobook S15 DT is CPU frequency scaling, NVMe storage but currently at PCIe Gen4x2 speeds rather than Gen4x4, keyboard and touchpad, the WCN7850 WiFi, two USB Type-C ports, the internal eDP display, and other basic functionality. The Adreno GPU and Bluetooth can also be made to work with additional yet-to-be-upstreamed kernel driver patches.

But currently broken with this ASUS Vivobook Snapdragon X laptop on Linux is battery monitoring, display orientation switching, the USB Type-A ports, the front camera, the SD card slot, the HDMI connector, USB4, and any functionality relying on the laptop's embedded controller (EC). So it's still a long road ahead before the Snapdragon X Elite laptops are really usable on Linux... With relying on DeviceTree rather than ARM64 ACPI and the like also makes the Linux support experience for this new range of Qualcomm-powered laptops all the more frustrating and challenging. And with the pace of Linux kernel cycles, it basically means a number of months at least before there is the potential for nice out-of-the-box support for these Snapdragon X Elite laptops under Linux.

In any event for those really desiring a Qualcomm Snapdragon X powered laptop, given these patches coming about it's looking like the ASUS Vivobook S 15 will be one of the better early contenders. The patches are currently undergoing review on the Linux kernel mailing list for those interested.