“For many years developers have asked us for one thing, Linux on Snapdragon. We heard you,” says Kedar Kondap, SVP and general manager of compute and gaming at Qualcomm. Speaking at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit, Kondap says Linux support with Debian will be available “at the end of this year” for Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon X2 series of chips. Qualcomm is upstreaming core drivers, including for its Hexagon NPU and Adreno GPU. Ubuntu support is also coming in the first half of 2027.
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Linux didn’t support the chips because Qualcomm hadn’t released what was needed to do so. They didn’t make the necessary drivers, nor released what was needed for someone in the community to make it for them. Same issue Nvidia cards have had with Linux.
It’s not anything about Linux that makes it incompatible, but the companies are unwilling by to provide support and unwilling to let anyone else do it for them due to being protective of their proprietary firmware.
I thought it was in issue with Linux not supporting Qualcomm chips, not the other way around
Linux didn’t support the chips because Qualcomm hadn’t released what was needed to do so. They didn’t make the necessary drivers, nor released what was needed for someone in the community to make it for them. Same issue Nvidia cards have had with Linux.
It’s not anything about Linux that makes it incompatible, but the companies are unwilling by to provide support and unwilling to let anyone else do it for them due to being protective of their proprietary firmware.