this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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When did Qualcomm start giving a shit about Linux? They've been on my "hardware and chipsets to avoid if possible" list for pretty much ever.
Since they started targeting the PC segment with these chips to take on Apple's insanely priced m-class chips, and Amazon and Google's custom ARM datacenter chips.
They partnered with Canonical to do the first run of development for kernel support in the past year, and now it sounds like they're moving to get the graphics driver developed and upstreamed.
Graphics driver for sc8280xp are already a thing. There are more issues in convenience daily driving linux, currently. From the top of my head:
I suspect that these issues are common between their ARM chips and will be addressed for both chips almost simultaneously. But I have no real idea on kernel development. And their documentation is only shared with linaro so one can only guess.
always? Android runs a linux kernel, and they support all kinds of embedded systems that run Linux.
Until recently, that "support" had been a barely supported forks of the linux kernel that were barely updated, and was so locked down that custom rom support was a pipedream on snapdragon processors. Which to be fair, is par for the course on most ARM chipsets (It's the reason you see a lot of custom roms for android have extremely old and outdated kernels)
I'm glad to see more ARM companies moving towards working with upstream projects, and not just making working on their stuff a PITA to protect "Trade Secrets" or some bullshit like that.
I'm sorry for leaving out the word "desktop". I'm well aware that Android runs the Linux kernel and that many embedded systems run Linux.
Possibly I conflated them with Broadcom, but I feel sure I recall Qualcomm's lack of openness being problematic in the past also.
Edit - yeah, folks jumping through hoops for their wifi at least as recently as Ubuntu 20.04. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1277359/my-qualcomm-atheros-qca9377-wireless-adopter-is-not-working-in-ubuntu-20-04-lts
ah yeah. maybe less well known, but i had a dev kit from Qualcomm that came with Ubuntu
You are very wrong here. They open-source a lot of things and they even used to have their own open-source modified version of Android for their phone chips.
OK, correction accepted. I probably did conflate them with Broadcom. Someone should let those ubuntu folks know though.. ;)
Oh it's ok. Broadcom is a very bad company in terms of open-source and Linux support. Their most known products are WiFi modules for laptops. Qualcomm on the other hand is probably one of the most open-source friendly commercial companies and it's known for very popular mobile processors such as the Snapdragon series.
I wouldn't call Qualcomm great for foss. It just better than absolutely terrible. Also Broadcom is a terrible company all around. They buy others and then wring them dry.
If the X Elite mainline kernel support pans out, Qualcomm may become top tier in terms of support. It would certainly make them the most important Linux ARM chip. We will see.
You mean like what they're doing to VMware and canning perpetual licenses the second they took over? I guess in some ways they are actually great for FOSS, because I've never seen more interest by Enterprise in Proxmox before they made that decision.
They are shit, but not as shit as Broadcom. The problem with Qcm is their monopolistic behavior and closing details on RF part of chips.