https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/qualcomm-promises-700-arm-powered-pcs-are-coming-sometime-in-2025/
The first wave of Snapdragon X Plus and Elite systems are mostly $1,000 and up.
Problem being, this puts more eggs in the TSMC basket. Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, AMD etc all go through TSMC.
As much as I hate the fact that Intel has been dragging their feet for years, they are one of the biggest competing foundries.
The pandemic showed us what happens with these single points of chip manufacturing failure.
Oh yes, absolutely. But the timing, with Intel chips failing and their official position Beiing "caveat emptor" there is no better moment to enter the market with this hardware.
And I don't think the Taiwanese mind the worlds' ability to get chips gets a bit more dependant on Taiwan's independence from China.
Linux works well on supported ARM platforms, but the problem is that a lot of ARM platforms aren't supported. I recently got a Xiaomi Pad 5 Pro (had to import it as it's a China-only model) and put postmarketOS on it. The experience is surprisingly good. Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard/touchpad, it is basically as functional as a normal light-duty Linux laptop except for the lack of x86 support, which mostly just means no gaming. I have been attempting to run Steam via box64 and FEX, but pmOS isn't a supported distro for that so I have been trying in a Docker container and in Distrobox. I managed to get it started but it crashes due to steamwebhelper, and I think it's a dependency or configuration issue. Otherwise, for browsing, coding, videos, terminal use, office, etc. it's great and the battery life is amazing compared to my laptop. This is on a Snapdragon 870. Open source games run and they can hit 120fps on the 120Hz screen. I hope to see ARM support continue to improve, but I am worried about bootloader locks on these new ARM Windows machines.
I certainly won't complain about cheaper, but I'm pretty happy with my Lenovo 7x Slim. It has a 14.5" 3k OLED display, so it's not the battery life champ, but it's built well and priced pretty well at $1,200 MSRP. You can upgrade the ram to 32 GB and the SSD to 1 TB for $110 combined. Typical Lenovo experience for shipping a custom build, but the laptop itself is great. Uninstall McAfee and away you go. I've only heard the fan kick on once, it doesn't heat up in any meaningful way, the screen and keyboard are great, windows hello is surprisingly nice with facial recognition, etc etc. No comparability issues so far, but I also didn't buy it to game on.
Growing the ARM share of the market will only make the experience better for everyone - for both windows and hopefully also for Linux.
Looking seriously at this one, especially because my main laptop has power/hinge problems. Waiting on verified linux support tho. Crazy that the thinkpad one is 1K more.
I haven't spent much time looking at Linux support due to having a busy personal life, so I'll live with Win 11 in the meantime.
That said, I don't think anyone has Linux booting on any Snapdragon X machines yet. I think there's a signing limitation (eg device OEM signing) and a graphics driver gap. It does seem like the first will be overcome eventually, otherwise no one will be able to build their own machine.
More people in the market means more people working on both of these things!
Had some very similar questions, TY. Hoping to get another 2ish years out of my Lenovo P70, and then I’ll be on the hunt for something smaller and lighter, preferably Linux native.
I liked the form factor of the older ThinkPads, but not much with current hardware that’s Linux friendly.
Future-proof your arms capacity for a few years with a coat of arms. No more worring about not having available arms.
Give it some time. In 2-3 years the PC market is going to be where Apple is with their ARM machines.
There will be multiple generations of chips on the shelf, and the chips from the last year or two will have great performance, but will be more affordable.
I love the direction of low-power for higher performance I see in Snapdragon X, the potential for lunar lake, and the new zen5 mobile apus. Things are going to get very interesting, especially when we see DDR6 real world potential.
A galaxy book 360 with arm processor is my dream machine. A Windows convertible with S Pen running Photoshop and all-day battery life? Yes, please!