Snapdragon-Powered Acer Aspire 1 Laptop Nearing Mainline Linux Support

While Lenovo's ThinkPad X13s has generated a fair amount of attention for being a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC powered Arm laptop that supports running on the mainline Linux kernel, another option on the way is the Acer Aspire 1 that also makes use of a Qualcomm Soc.

This Acer Aspire 1 model launched in 2021 and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c SoC with eight cores at 2.4GHz. The base model has just 4GB of LPDDR4X memory that is hardly adequate for many Linux users these days... There is also 64GB of eMMC storage and a 14-inch display. But on the plus side, it boasts a reported 16+ hour battery life and its retail price was sub-$400. Much lower pricing than the ThinkPad X13s!

For Arm Linux laptop enthusiasts, sadly the device has since been discontinued but some used listings for the Aspire 1 A114-61-S8JZ put it as low as $99 USD. It's also important not to get this Acer Aspire 1 model confused with other "Aspire One" models that come in an Intel Celeron version.

But should you happen to already own the Acer Aspire 1 A114-61 or find it in a used bargain bin, today the latest patches were posted for enabling Linux support for this Qualcomm-powered laptop. Still missing from the support is the sound support, embedded controller (EC) functionality is requiring a new experimental driver to be mainlined later, and PSCI OSI mode.