Linux vs Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs? TUXEDO Unveils Snapdragon X Elite ARM Notebook (betanews.com) 34
Slashdot reader BrianFagioli shares his report from BetaNews:
The PC community is abuzz with Qualcomm's recent announcement of its Snapdragon X Elite SoC, a powerhouse chipset that promises to revolutionize the performance and energy efficiency of laptops and tablets. While Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs are set to feature this advanced processor, Linux enthusiasts have reasons to celebrate as well. You see, TUXEDO Computers is bringing this cutting-edge technology to the Linux world with its upcoming ARM notebook, positioning it as a strong competitor to Windows 11 Copilot+ devices.
In a recent update, TUXEDO Computers revealed its ambitious project of developing an ARM notebook powered by the Snapdragon X Elite SoC from Qualcomm. This announcement has generated significant excitement, as it presents a viable alternative to traditional x86 notebooks, offering comparable performance with lower energy consumption, directly challenging the dominance of Windows 11 Copilot+... Benchmarks suggest that the Snapdragon X Elite can not only rival but potentially surpass Apple's M2 SoCs, boasting higher energy efficiency. TUXEDO's preliminary tests confirm these impressive claims, setting the stage for a fierce competition with Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs.
"We recently presented a prototype of the ARM notebook we are working on at the Computex computer trade fair in Taiwan," according to TUXEDO's announcement.
"On the software side, a port of TUXEDO OS with KDE Plasma to the ARM platform is our goal for this project running internally under the working title Drako...
"It is quite conceivable that an ARM notebook from TUXEDO will be under your Christmas tree in 2024... If you have subscribed to our newsletter, you will be the first to know."
In a recent update, TUXEDO Computers revealed its ambitious project of developing an ARM notebook powered by the Snapdragon X Elite SoC from Qualcomm. This announcement has generated significant excitement, as it presents a viable alternative to traditional x86 notebooks, offering comparable performance with lower energy consumption, directly challenging the dominance of Windows 11 Copilot+... Benchmarks suggest that the Snapdragon X Elite can not only rival but potentially surpass Apple's M2 SoCs, boasting higher energy efficiency. TUXEDO's preliminary tests confirm these impressive claims, setting the stage for a fierce competition with Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs.
"We recently presented a prototype of the ARM notebook we are working on at the Computex computer trade fair in Taiwan," according to TUXEDO's announcement.
"On the software side, a port of TUXEDO OS with KDE Plasma to the ARM platform is our goal for this project running internally under the working title Drako...
"It is quite conceivable that an ARM notebook from TUXEDO will be under your Christmas tree in 2024... If you have subscribed to our newsletter, you will be the first to know."
An alternative (Score:5, Insightful)
Any alternative is better than Windows 11.
Counterpoint. (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux is the Windows of Unix.
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No matter how many times I read that sentence it still makes zero sense to me.
Re: Counterpoint. (Score:3)
Clearly you are the Windows of reading comprehension.
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No matter how many times I read that sentence it still makes zero sense to me. Again.
conceivable? (Score:4, Informative)
""It is quite conceivable that an ARM notebook from TUXEDO will be under your Christmas tree in 2024..."
No, it's not.
"Benchmarks suggest that the Snapdragon X Elite can not only rival but potentially surpass Apple's M2 SoCs, boasting higher energy efficiency. "
So said Qualcomm. What benchmarks?
Imagine being a guy that keeps his job while producing work this poor.
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""It is quite conceivable that an ARM notebook from TUXEDO will be under your Christmas tree in 2024..."
No, it's not.
Same here. The only use-case I see at this time is if I was doing low-level coding on ARM. And even then I would probably just use a development-server on ARM. And "copilot+"? I could not care less. That is just another fad to make people buy new hardware.
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ARM is supposed to be more power efficient than even AMD, quite apart from the neural processor. And of course Linux delivers that efficiency, unlike Windows.
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Oh whoa, I see Microsoft employees are still evil and can't be trusted with mod points. Who woulda thunkit?
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There are a lot of "useful idiots" shilling for Microsoft. These people cannot understand that MS does not have good technology, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. You know, complete idiots in denial about reality. The only thing the human race consistently produces.
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"It is quite conceivable that an ARM notebook from TUXEDO will be under your Christmas tree in 2024..."
No, it's not.
Yes, it is ... as long as that word does not mean what you think it means.
A LOT depends on software (Score:5, Insightful)
New hardware requires software to make use of the new features. That's particularly true for battery life/power management, and now also for deciding what gets done on the CPU versus what gets sent to a co-processor.
I'm looking forward to see how the open source community can make use of stuff like this. But it'll take time to understand, develop and then debug stuff to make full use of these new processors/systems.
Beyond that, though, the TUXEDO announcement sure strikes me as more hype than content, particularly with the implications of Microsoft Copilot AI equivalent functions.
Quoting G. W. Bush... (Score:1)
More arm compatible programs for windows (Score:2)
Linux on ARM: the specification (Score:2)
“Benchmarks from Qualcomm suggest that the new Snapdragon can not only catch up with the competition, but also clearly outperform Apple’s M2 SoCs whilst showing higher energy efficiency. Our preliminary measurements confirm these values.”
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"Benchmarks from Qualcomm suggest...." Of course, vendors never lie or cheat on benchmarks, right? (And note the comparison is with Apple's M2, while Apple recently released the M4. Your Mileage May Vary, of course.)
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"Benchmarks from Qualcomm suggest...." Of course, vendors never lie or cheat on benchmarks, right? (And note the comparison is with Apple's M2, while Apple recently released the M4. Your Mileage May Vary, of course.)
Plus you will notice that they say nothing about the M2 Pro, Max or Ultra. . .
Qualcomm is a joke at everything but Radios.
Another Arm device that requires custom distro (Score:3)
Yet another ARM device that looks great on paper, but requires a custom distro, boot loader, and kernel with device tree.
I'll be very interested in this laptop when it supports stock, generic distros (install from USB stick) such as Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint or Arch, and not a custom distro fork that only runs on this hardware. In other words I want to see UEFI or the equivalent, not custom u-boot and hard-coded device trees. Boot on any device, support off-the-shelf nvme storage, ram sticks, etc.
Looking at the hardware in this thing, it is a step in the right direction.
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Yet another ARM device that looks great on paper, but requires a custom distro, boot loader, and kernel with device tree. I'll be very interested in this laptop when it supports stock, generic distros
We have to hope this is not the new normal. If we abandon the IBM PC/x86 architecture, we might be stuck with custom distros for the decades to come.
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You realize you're talking about different platforms, right? The PC platform is basically identical since the beginning - you can still boot 40 year old OSes on your latest and greatest PC you buy today. There's 640K of RAM at 0, BIOS/UEFI boots 16 bytes off the top of memory, etc. it's all the same platform.
In fact, the early days of x86 there were plenty of non-IBM PC based platforms. Often these were
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Correct, which is the whole reason ARM sucks so badly up til now for general-purpose computing and Linux support. The only way ARM will be successful against x86 for servers, desktops, and laptops, is if there is as standard platform adopted. Qualcomm may be taking the first steps toward this dream.
By the way, RISC V is no different than ARM. No single platform, and just because the ISA is open source, doesn't mean anything e
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requires a custom distro, boot loader, and kernel with device tree...
All open source. So?
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Only partially open source. The SoCs and custom distros use firmware blobs to get the GPU running often. Plus I have no desire to maintain my own kernel fork. I'm glad you have the skills and time to do so. My Orange Pi 5 is stuck on an old kernel provided by the Chinese vendor. Mainline kernel support has been in process for a couple of years. Maybe it will land in time for the vendor to abandon the Orange Pi 5 and move on to the next iteration where all this will repeat. Let's face it, ARM on Linux u
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The device tree was developed precisely to reduce kernel forks.
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We'll be stuck with device trees for the foreseeable future. IIRC, even the EDK2 implementations for Arm use a flattened device tree under the covers.
What is new here is the impetus from education. Schools were demanding Google support Chromebooks for a decade. Which lead to an ultimatum from Google to Qualcomm - that they were fed up with maintaining a series of out of tree patches or backporting security fixes to a vendor kernel on behalf of OEMs.
Hence Linaro has been assisting in modernization of Qualcom
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Qualcomm says these devices use UEFI and work with standard boot loaders such as grub. They have got Debian running and are in the process of upstreaming the kernel support. That's not to say that Linux support will end up being non-janky in all respects, but a number of your concerns seem to be misplaced.
Don't forget it's in the joint commercial interests of Qualcomm, MS and the OEMs to have a fairly uniform ARM platform so MS can support it relatively easily and make it a widely adopted success for Window
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Good news indeed. I hope you are right, and I hope this laptop is successful and all future ARM laptops, servers, and desktops go down this UEFI, common platform path.
X86 emulation layer? (Score:2)
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Does your phone have an x86 emulation layer?
Never Mind the Chip, Does Tux OS Use Snap (Score:2)