Tuxedo Discontinues Linux Notebook with Snapdragon X
The Linux notebook with Snapdragon X Elite, announced by Tuxedo a year and a half ago, will no longer be released.
Tuxedo's prototype of a Linux notebook with Snapdragon X Elite.
(Image: Florian MĂĽssig / heise medien)
The German provider Tuxedo, which specializes in laptops with Linux, wanted to jump on the bandwagon of the then brand-new notebooks with Snapdragon X Elite in mid-2024 and launch one with Tuxedo OS instead of Windows 11. However, it became increasingly quiet around the project, and now the final cancellation has come: In its blog, Tuxedo announces that it has stopped working on it after about a year and a half.
The list of hurdles that Tuxedo could not overcome is long. For example, the system could not achieve the long battery life that Snapdragon X notebooks achieve under Windows. There is no BIOS update process under Linux that the company wants to impose on users. USB4 transfer rates fell short of expectations. Furthermore, according to Tuxedo, there is no sensible fan control and no virtualization via KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine). Videos could not be played with hardware acceleration in most applications. And finally, Qualcomm has now introduced the successor Snapdragon X2 Elite with all technical details.
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Considering this, the project has now been discontinued: Tuxedo did not want to invest further months of development time only to eventually sell a product with an outdated processor. Tuxedo intends to examine at a later date how much of the work done so far can be transferred to future systems with Snapdragon X2. Tuxedo is making all previous developments, including the so-called Device Tree for booting, available to kernel developers so that users of compatible hardware can benefit from it beforehand. The Barebone that Tuxedo had chosen for its project has been available in this country for a long time: it is the Sprchrgd 14 S1 Elite, which Medion has been selling with Windows 11 since summer 2024.
(Image:Â Florian MĂĽssig / heise medien)
It is unclear whether the Snapdragon X2 Elite will be better suited for Linux. At all previous press events for the new chip, Qualcomm has not mentioned Linux at all, neither on the slides nor in the accompanying presentations. Instead, the company emphasized its close partnership with Microsoft. This already led in 2024 to Snapdragon X notebooks having the then-latest Windows 11 version 24H2, including Copilot+, exclusively for several months. According to rumors, this will be repeated in 2026: Windows 11 26H1 could debut on Snapdragon X2 notebooks, while x86 systems with processors from AMD and Intel will once again have to wait.
(mue)
