Ubuntu's Snapdragon X1 Elite Laptop Support Enables Experimental Hardware Video Decode

Written by Michael Larabel in Ubuntu on 29 January 2025 at 06:28 AM EST. 8 Comments
UBUNTU
Canonical has been maintaining experimental/testing ISOs of Ubuntu Linux for Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops. New ISOs for testing were recently published and allow enabling more features/functionality for these ARM laptops under Ubuntu.

While it's been a number of months already since Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops have been shipping with Windows, not all of the Linux support is upstreamed in the Linux kernel and there are various vendor/laptop-specific features still not yet tackled. With the Ubuntu concept images for these ARM laptops, various features have been missing and the images haven't worked universally across all these modern Snapdragon-powered laptops.

Some of the latest features now enabled for Ubuntu Linux on the Snapdragon X1 laptops include the embedded controller (EC) within the Yoga Slim models, the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s fingerprint reader, real-time clock (RTC) support, and experimental Iris hardware video decoding support. For the most part, rather basic support that most consumers would simply expect to work.

Ubuntu on Snapdragon X1


Discussions over hardware working or not with the Ubuntu Snapdragon X1 Elite images can be found via this Discourse thread.

Those that happen to have one of these Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops and wanting to try Ubuntu on it can find the very latest ISOs via this ubuntu-concept directory.

There are also preparations underway in working on Ubuntu 25.04 support for these Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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