Ubuntu and Tuxedo duke it out for Linux on Snapdragon X Elite laptops
In summer of last year, we saw several laptops with new Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite processors from Qualcomm released.
Many users were impressed by them, as Snapdragon laptops aren’t just fast but also power-efficient, offering much longer battery life and requiring virtually no fan. PCWorld’s Mark Hachman was personally impressed by his Snapdragon laptop while on a business trip. Plus, with the integrated NPU (neural processing unit), these laptops also have local AI capabilities with lots of future processing potential.
But for some, there’s been one big problem with these Snapdragon laptops: they could only run Windows 11. No Linux distribution was able to support them well due to numerous technical problems, and that was despite the existence of Arm editions of Linux. Qualcomm had even originally announced its intention to actively support Linux with them.
Tuxedo presented this prototype in the summer of 2024, but is still unable to show a finished operating system.IDG
That said, one of the first Linux providers to come out of the woodwork early on was the Augsburg-based company Tuxedo.
In June 2024, the manufacturer presented a prototype with a Snapdragon X Elite processor at Computex in Taiwan. Tuxedo announced its own Linux implementation as the operating system. In July 2024, however, a spokesperson for the company admitted that the hardware was already ready, but that there was “still a lot to do” on the software side. After that, the project went quiet.
A Snapdragon breakthrough at Canonical
Ubuntu is already a big step further. Canonical announced its breakthrough at the end of March 2025.
After initial trials with the ARM64 architecture, which started in 2023, and a concept image for developers published last year, the first standard distribution to support Snapdragon X Elite laptops “out of the box” was released in April with Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin).
The company has come a long way, from early ARM64 support for a single device (the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s), to the later concept image with support for more laptops, to the current release.
Canonical made a breakthrough with a concept image, which was able to run on numerous Snapdragon X laptops. But it was primarily aimed at developers.IDG
The first success came with the concept image for Snapdragon X Elite laptops. It’s based on Ubuntu 24.10 and, according to Canonical, is already running on a large number of Snapdragon X Elite laptops. The company named models including the Acer Swift 14 AI, Asus Vivobook S 15, Dell XPS 13 9345, HP OmniBook X 14, Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen6, Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, as well as Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 7.
Nevertheless, the concept image was initially only aimed at developers and brave end users who were keen to try out Linux on their Snapdragon X Elite computers. It was not yet intended for productive use.
According to Canonical, supporting the ARM64 ecosystem is a greater challenge than the more traditional x86 processors used by PCs. One reason for this is that it’s less standardized. According to Canonical, different devices use different levels of UEFI firmware support or utilize different device-specific drivers and custom power management features. The Ubuntu development team has therefore had to invest a lot of work to fix these problems and address the issues.
In future, Canonical wants to support ARM64 versions in the same way it supports x86 releases. Both versions should contain the same software and the same functions, but run equally well on their respective architectures. Canonincal also intends to release official updates and security patches at the same time.
In this way, Canonical wants to set itself apart from community images for the ARM64 platform and offshoots of other distributions, which may not be able to provide “security patches in good time.”
Tuxedo isn’t dead just yet
In spring, work also continued at Tuxedo. At the beginning of March, a developer reported on the current status of the Elite 14 Gen1 model on the Linux kernel mailing list LKML.
Some things such as the touchpad, keyboard, embedded display port, NVMe and USB Type-C port are now working. However, other parts—like the graphics card, USB Type-A port, energy saving mode, audio, camera, and fingerprint sensor—weren’t working.
Shortly afterwards, the company added in a blog post that development had been “somewhat slow” over the past few months. On the one hand, the developers were needed elsewhere. On the other hand, it was also due to the fact that the preparatory work on which they depended had not made much progress.
At the beginning of March, Tuxedo once again reported on the current development status of its Linux-on-Arm implementation at the LKML.IDG
However, Tuxedo now says it has a first version of the device tree ready. This tree structure is required by the kernel on ARM64 architectures in order to manage and access hardware. It also tells the CPU which devices are connected to which ports and how they are to be controlled.
According to Tuxedo, the main focus at the moment is on integrating further hardware components into the device tree. Testing drivers is also still in planning. Unfortunately, the fact that the intended collaboration with Qualcomm—the manufacturer of Snapdragon X Elite processors—hasn’t materialized has made things more difficult.
Instead, the company is now working with Linaro, a specialist for Linux-on-Arm. However, it’s not yet possible to say when the first Snapdragon X Elite laptop with Tuxedo OS on board will be ready for the market.
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is one of the handful of Snapdragon X Elite laptops on which Canonical has had initial success with its concept image.IDG
When asked, Tuxedo also stated that they see the biggest advantage of the Snapdragon X Elite laptops in the “longer runtimes with high performance and very low noise levels.” Initial benchmarks for performance and runtime have looked promising, but specific figures haven’t yet been published.
When asked about the integrated NPU, Tuxedo stated no current plans for it. “Too much is still missing for that at the moment,” says Tuxedo. In principle, however, the company sees “great potential” in Arm-based Linux laptops, “otherwise we wouldn’t have started working on it.”
How will this all develop? It’s hard to say just yet. But if Tuxedo has its way, this could well be the future standard. Only time will tell. 
© 2025 PC World 2:45am  
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