Linux patches for RAS support on Qualcomm platforms

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The Qualcomm ARM hardware ecosystem and the Linux kernel are at a pivotal moment for Linux system management . On one hand, the company is pushing hard to ensure its next-generation SoCs, such as the Snapdragon X Elite and other ARM64 chips, have top-tier support in the mainstream kernel. On the other hand, the Linux community and some manufacturers are encountering significant limitations regarding firmware, BIOS, virtualization, and long-term support.

In this context, Linux patches for RAS support and other features on Qualcomm platforms have become a strategic piece: they not only enable basic things like NVMe storage or audio, but also lay the foundation for critical features such as reliability, security, virtualization, or long-term support for laptops and other ARM-based devices.

Qualcomm, ARM, and the race to conquer the desktop with Linux

AMD and Intel 's traditional dominance in the PC world is increasingly challenged by the ARM offensive. Qualcomm and Apple have demonstrated that incredibly powerful and efficient SoCs can be designed for laptops and desktops, and the next logical step is to ensure these chips perform equally well on Linux as they do on Windows.

In the specific case of Qualcomm, the company has begun releasing a significant volume of Linux kernel patches to power its new generation of processors, especially the Snapdragon X Elite family (identified in many commits as X1E80100). These patches are not merely cosmetic: they enable everything from NVMe storage over PCIe to audio, power management, pins, buses, and the system cache itself.

Qualcomm's commitment to Linux is evident in the fact that many of these improvements are already included in Linux versions 6.8 and 6.9 . This demonstrates that the company is not just focusing on "Linux compatible" marketing, but is pushing for real support in the main kernel tree, something essential for distributions to offer functional images without resorting to endless external patches.

At the same time, the situation is contradictory: while kernel support is maturing, some manufacturers like TUXEDO have decided to pause their Snapdragon X1E laptop projects aimed at Linux due to firmware, BIOS, and other structural issues. In other words, the kernel is progressing, but the complete platform is not yet up to the standards required by a factory-installed Linux hardware provider.

Key Qualcomm patches already integrated into the Linux kernel

Qualcomm has been releasing a series of very specific patches to the main kernel for Snapdragon X Elite and other ARM64 platforms, without which the system would simply be unusable. Among the most relevant support blocks already integrated into Linux 6.8 and 6.9 are:

First, NVMe over PCIe support is essential for high-performance SSDs connected to the PCI Express bus to function correctly in these systems. Without these platform-specific drivers, storage performance or even drive detection could be poor or nonexistent.

Also included is a set of drivers for the Snapdragon audio system , with support for the audio codec and the various input and output paths. This is crucial for something as basic as the functionality of speakers, microphones, and headphone jacks on laptops.

Another important component is support for the PMC8380 PMIC , the power management chip used in some Qualcomm platforms. This component handles voltage regulation, battery charging, and other essential aspects of system power, so having a robust upstream driver is a prerequisite for making laptops truly usable with Linux on a daily basis.

In addition, Qualcomm has worked on the Pinctrl subsystem (TLMM) , which manages the configuration of the SoC's pins, as well as on the Phy blocks for PCIe, eDP, and USB. These patches ensure that the various physical ports (USB, video outputs, PCI Express links) are correctly initialized and configured for use by the rest of the system's controllers.

Finally, descriptors and support have been added for the CRD and QCP reference boards , as well as for the system cache. These boards serve as a foundation for both Qualcomm and manufacturers to test and validate Linux even before commercial laptops are available, and the core kernel's understanding of these boards is crucial for the early maturation of support.

Features coming to future kernels: battery, GPU, cameras, and more

Beyond what's already included in Linux 6.8 and 6.9, Qualcomm has a new wave of patches planned for kernels 6.10 and 6.11 . These changes aim to address particularly sensitive gaps in a modern desktop or laptop environment.

Among the areas being worked on, comprehensive battery support and power management stand out . It's not enough for the system to simply detect a battery; it's essential that the indicators are accurate, that charging and discharging are optimized, and that reliable low-power, sleep, and resume states are enabled.

Another important front is USB host support , both for traditional USB ports and for high-speed variants and even USB4, where many users and manufacturers have still detected limitations in effective speed and stability in devices with Snapdragon X1E.

In the graphics arena, Qualcomm is boosting support for its integrated Adreno GPU , including both 3D rendering and external video output via DisplayPort (DP). The Snapdragon X Elite's GPU is capable of reaching 4.6 TFLOPS, so robust Linux support opens the door to gaming, 3D applications, and high-level graphics acceleration workloads.

But that's not all: there's also work being done in areas like video, camera, and advanced audio (speakers, microphones, headphones, and combinations thereof). This includes the use of hardware-based multimedia encoding and decoding engines, key to saving battery power and reducing CPU load when playing or editing high-resolution videos.

Finally, there's a strong focus on sleep and resume . On ARM laptops, poor sleep mode behavior can ruin the experience, causing runaway power consumption or system failures when waking up. The patches Qualcomm is releasing aim to make the sleep/resume cycle as reliable as on a well-supported x86 laptop.

Snapdragon X Elite: Raw power and AI capabilities

At the heart of these efforts is the Snapdragon X Elite , an ARM CPU designed to directly challenge high-end processors from AMD, Intel, and, in the ARM ecosystem, Apple Silicon. This chip boasts 12 cores capable of reaching frequencies of up to 4,3 GHz, a figure that clearly places it in the league of high-performance desktop and laptop processors.

The Snapdragon X Elite is a System on a Chip (SoC) that integrates an Adreno GPU with up to 4.6 TFLOPS of processing power . This makes it a perfectly viable option for both gaming and GPU-intensive tasks such as rendering, visual effects, or complex 3D engines, provided the Linux driver stack is up to the task.

One particularly relevant point is the on-chip AI capability . Qualcomm announces up to 45 TOPS (tera operations per second) dedicated to artificial intelligence workloads. In the context of Linux, this can be leveraged in optimized inference frameworks, speech recognition applications, computer vision, or any task that makes intensive use of machine learning models.

All of this is coupled with a strong emphasis on energy efficiency . A SoC with this power density and features must maintain low power consumption to be attractive in ultrathin laptops and always-connected devices. Power patches and optimizations in Linux will be key to ensuring a comparable experience to Windows or macOS in terms of battery life and sustained performance.

These capabilities place the Snapdragon X Elite in a very competitive position within the PC market. The big challenge is ensuring that all this potential is seamlessly delivered to Linux users , without the need for hacks, firmware extraction from Windows, or juggling custom kernels.

Roadmap: Open firmware, browsers, and distributions

Qualcomm has shared a roughly six-month roadmap specifically focused on improving the Linux experience. One of the central pillars of this plan is end-to-end video decoding in browsers like Firefox and Chrome, leveraging the SoC's video engines instead of relying solely on the CPU.

In addition, Linux-specific CPU and GPU optimizations are planned , so that both the kernel scheduler and user-space libraries can fully utilize Qualcomm's ARM hardware. These improvements should result in faster response times, lower power consumption, and smarter use of the Adreno GPU to accelerate interfaces and applications.

Another key aspect of the roadmap is the goal of openly publishing the firmware through the linux-firmware repository . Making the firmware available in this standard location allows distributions to package everything they need without forcing users to extract it from a Windows installation or download it from opaque sources.

Qualcomm has also mentioned its intention to offer simple installers for Ubuntu and Debian , which involves system images and installation processes specifically designed for their ARM platforms, with all the necessary kernel patches, modules, and firmware to ensure the system boots and runs smoothly.

To foster collaboration, the company has released an experimental disk image for a Debian installer and encourages the community to follow developments and patches on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) by searching for the string “X1E80100”. With this approach, they aim to receive early feedback on what's missing, what's broken, and what should be prioritized in subsequent development cycles.

The other side of the coin: closed firmware and community frustration

Despite these positive developments, a significant portion of the Linux community that has tested the Snapdragon X1E in practice is expressing considerable frustration. A clear point of contention is the actual availability of the firmware necessary for all the hardware components to function correctly under Linux.

Many users wonder why there isn't an official, clear, and redistributable way to install the firmware needed by critical components of X1E systems. Currently, in too many cases, the only option is to boot into a Windows installation, extract the firmware blobs from it, and manually transfer them to Linux, with all the legal and practical problems that entails.

To make matters worse, in many cases firmware redistribution is not permitted through standard channels such as the linux-firmware repository itself. This creates a fragile ecosystem where each user has to fend for themselves, and where Linux distributors cannot simply package everything necessary and provide official platform support.

This situation is perceived as a structural problem rather than a simple technical hiccup. Without redistributable firmware, fully upstream drivers, and a stable hardware base , it's very difficult for Linux-oriented laptop manufacturers to be motivated to launch commercial products with Snapdragon X1E and offer several years of updates.

As a result, advanced users and developers have asked Qualcomm very direct questions: what is really blocking this Linux-friendly firmware distribution model, is there a public plan to make these systems sustainable in the long term, and what would have to change to move away from dependence on Windows-based workflows.

The TUXEDO case: project paused due to lack of maturity

One of the most visible reality checks has been the decision by TUXEDO Computers , a well-known manufacturer of laptops with Linux pre-installed, to pause or even discontinue its initiative to launch a notebook with Snapdragon X1E as its flagship platform for Linux.

On November 21, 2025, TUXEDO released a statement explaining that the platform was less well-suited to Linux than they had anticipated . Although they had developed functional prototypes that some people were able to see in person, the accumulated problems made it impossible to continue as things stood.

Among the reasons cited by TUXEDO were the lack of a viable BIOS update method , inadequate fan control, unpredictable behavior in KVM virtualization, and the inability to achieve high and stable USB4 speeds. All of these are critical elements for a Linux laptop vendor in terms of user experience and subsequent technical support.

They also mentioned that, while hardware video decoding was possible , support in real-world applications was poor, reducing the practical value of this functionality for end users. It's not enough for the hardware to be capable: browsers, players, and other software must also use it reliably.

Even so, TUXEDO left the door open to re-evaluating future Snapdragon generations and contributing upstream with some of the work they've done, for example, on the specific Device Trees for their prototypes. The message is clear: there's interest, but the platform lacks maturity for serious out-of-the-box Linux support.

The Linux 6.3 kernel leap: ARM cleanup, drivers, and security

While all this is happening on the Qualcomm front, the Linux kernel continues to evolve at a very good pace. One example is Linux 6.3, released by Linus Torvalds after two months of work, which incorporated 15.637 changes submitted by 2.055 developers, with a 76 MB patch that affected almost 14.300 files and added more than a million lines of code.

Statistically, around 39% of the changes in Linux 6.3 focused on drivers , 15% on architecture-specific code, 10% on the network stack, 5% on file systems, and 3% on internal kernel subsystems. These figures reflect the importance of drivers and support for new platforms (including many ARM and ARM64 systems) in current kernel development.

Among the most notable changes is the extensive cleanup of older and obsolete ARM platforms . More than 40 platforms were removed from the code tree, resulting in a reduction of approximately 150.000 lines. This pruning helps keep the kernel manageable and reduces the maintenance burden on hardware that is no longer practically relevant.

Linux 6.3 also made significant progress in integrating the Rust language into the kernel. Although support is not yet enabled by default, nor does it make Rust a mandatory dependency, types such as Arc, ScopeGuard, and ForeignOwnable were added, and the "borrow" module was removed from the alloc package. This integration is now considered close to the point where the kernel will natively accept the first Rust modules.

Another interesting utility introduced is hwnoise , a tool for tracking hardware-caused delays by measuring jitter during operation execution, even with interrupts disabled. Alongside this, a kernel module was added with a reference implementation of the Dhrystone benchmark, useful for evaluating the performance of new CPUs and SoCs during the early stages of portability.

Memory services, BPF optimizations, and support for new architectures

Within the area of ​​memory and system services, Linux 6.3 introduced the option to disable memory accounting for BPF programs using the command-line parameter "cgroup.memory=nobpf". This can be useful on systems heavily laden with containers, where the overhead of BPF accounting incurs an unnecessary cost.

A red-black tree structure implementation was also added for BPF using kfunc + kptr (bpf_rbtree_add, bpf_rbtree_remove, bpf_rbtree_first), eliminating the need to introduce a new, specific map type. This lays the foundation for more complex and efficient BPF programs in network and observability scenarios.

The restartable sequences (rseq) mechanism incorporated the ability to pass concurrency identifiers associated with the CPU number, an important tool for performing atomic operations quickly and reliably in multithreaded environments, restarting the operation when it is interrupted by another thread.

At the architecture level, support for SME 2 (Scalable Matrix Extension) instructions was added to ARM processors, the “BPF trampoline” was implemented in s390x and RISC-V RV64 to minimize the overhead of calls between kernel and BPF, and the use of ZBB instructions was enabled in RISC-V to speed up string operations.

The relatively new LoongArch architecture also benefited from Linux 6.3, gaining support for KASLR, kernel relocation, hardware breakpoints, and kprobe mechanisms. Furthermore, the minimal Nolibc library expanded its coverage to include s390 and Arm Thumb1, joining ARM, AArch64, i386, x86_64, RISC-V, and MIPS.

Improvements to file systems, I/O, and storage

In the area of ​​storage, Linux 6.3 incorporated notable improvements to Btrfs, ext4, f2fs, EROFS, and the BFQ I/O scheduler . These modifications have a direct impact on the performance and reliability of both desktop and server systems.

In Btrfs, to reduce fragmentation, extents were divided by size when allocating blocks: small (up to 128 KB), medium (up to 8 MB), and large. The RAID 56 implementation was also refactored, the checksum verification code was redesigned, and send operations were accelerated up to 10 times through utime caching for directories and deferred command execution.

Ext4 improved performance by allowing multiple processes to perform direct I/O on pre-allocated blocks using shared inode locks, instead of exclusive locks that blocked parallelism. f2fs addressed serious atomic write issues and the new extension cache, while also improving code readability.

EROFS, designed for read-only partitions, added the ability to bind the decompression of compressed files to the CPU to reduce latency when accessing data. In parallel, the BFQ scheduler introduced support for advanced spinning disk drives with multiple independently controlled actuators (Multi Actuator).

In the networking area, AES-SHA2 encryption support was added to NFS , both on the client and the server, and the FUSE subsystem introduced the query extension that allows attaching additional information (such as groups) to requests, which is useful for correctly applying permissions when creating objects in FUSE-based file systems.

Virtualization, security and networking: BIG TCP, Spectre and Hyper-V

Linux 6.3 came loaded with virtualization and security improvements . The KVM hypervisor for x86 added support for extended Hyper-V hypercalls and their forwarding to controllers on the user-space host, making it possible to run Hyper-V in a nested manner.

Access to PMU events was also restricted for guests , preventing virtual machines from reading performance counters that could leak sensitive information. In parallel, the memfd mechanism gained the ability to irrevocably create non-executable memory areas (non-executable memfd), strengthening hardening techniques.

The PR_SET_MDWE operation was introduced in prctl, which blocks attempts to assign memory permissions that allow simultaneous write and execute, strengthening defenses against exploits. Additionally, a new protection against Spectre-type attacks was enabled by default, based on the AMD Zen 4 IBRS automatic mode, which adjusts instruction speculation during interrupts, syscalls, and context switches with less overhead than Retpoline.

A vulnerability related to Spectre v2 in the presence of SMT/Hyper-Threading, caused by disabling the STIBP mechanism when using IBRS, was also fixed. Regarding architectures, ARM64 received a new "virtconfig" build target that activates only the components necessary to boot in virtualization environments, and m68k gained syscall filtering with seccomp.

In the network stack, a netlink interface was added for configuring PLCA (IEEE 802.3cg-2019), the netlink API was documented in more detail, and the ynl-gen-c tool was implemented to generate C code from YAML specifications. The IP_LOCAL_PORT_RANGE option was also incorporated into sockets to facilitate shared NAT configurations without resorting to complex SNAT.

Hardware drivers: Older GPUs out, enhanced Qualcomm Adreno support

The Devices subsystem in Linux 6.3 saw a massive cleanup of old graphics drivers and the introduction of new drivers for modern platforms, including several based on Qualcomm and ARM64.

All DRI1-based drivers (i810, mga, r128, savage, sis, tdfx, and via), considered obsolete since 2016 and unsupported by Mesa since 2012, were removed. Old fbdev drivers such as omap1, s3c2410, tmiofb, and w100fb were also retired, thus reducing the maintenance burden of code no longer used on current hardware.

Among the additions, a DRM controller for the Intel Meteor Lake VPU stands out , integrated into the "accel" subsystem for compute accelerators. The i915 controller expanded support for Intel Arc discrete GPUs, added preliminary compatibility with Meteor Lake GPUs, and support for Intel Xe HP 4tile.

On the AMD side, the amdgpu driver introduced support for AdaptiveSync, Secure Display with multiple displays, and improvements to DCN 3.2, SR-IOV RAS, VCN RAS, SMU 13.x, and DP 2.1. Meanwhile, the Nouveau driver removed legacy ioctl calls, and the etnaviv driver added experimental support for the VeriSilicon NPU.

The pata_parport driver for IDE drives over the parallel port made it possible to remove the old PARIDE subsystem from the kernel, with the limitation of not being able to connect a printer and a disk simultaneously through the same port. In the wireless arena, ath12k was added, which provides support for Wi-Fi 7 cards based on Qualcomm chips, and support for devices with the Realtek RTL8188EU chipset.

New ARM64 platforms and Linux-libre 6.3-gnu kernel

Linux 6.3 also added support for 46 new ARM64 boards , including devices as varied as Samsung Galaxy Tab A (2015), Galaxy S5, BananaPi R3, Debix Model A, several EmbedFire LubanCat boards, Facebook Greatlakes, Orange Pi R1 Plus, the Tesla FSD platform and numerous devices based on Rockchip SoCs (RK3128, RK3588, RK3568, RK3566, RK3328) or TI K3.

This list includes new references based on Qualcomm SoCs, such as the MSM8953 (Snapdragon 610), SM8550 (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2), SDM450, and SDM632 . Their inclusion in the main kernel tree highlights the ongoing attention that Qualcomm platforms receive within the Linux ARM64 ecosystem.

In parallel, the Latin American Free Software Foundation released Linux-libre 6.3-gnu , a completely free variant of the 6.3 kernel, without firmware blobs or sections of non-free code tied to manufacturer restrictions. This version purged blobs in new drivers such as ath12k, aw88395, and peb2466, as well as in the Device Tree files for AArch64-based qcom devices.

The blob cleaning code was updated in drivers and subsystems such as amdgpu, xhci-rcar, qcom-q6v5-pas, sp8870, and av7110, as well as in drivers for DVB cards with software decoding and in precompiled BPF. Manual purging of drivers such as mga, r128, tm6000, cpia2, and r8188eu was discontinued after their removal from the main kernel, and blob cleaning was strengthened in the i915 driver.

All this context shows that, while Qualcomm and other manufacturers are pushing to better integrate their SoCs into Linux, a part of the community continues to opt for 100% free kernels without proprietary firmware , which adds another layer of complexity to the debate about support, performance, and user freedom.

With all these developments, the overall picture is one of a rapidly evolving ecosystem : Qualcomm is accelerating the release of patches for RAS support and critical features on its ARM platforms, the Linux kernel is introducing profound changes in drivers, security, and architectures, and at the same time, the community and hardware manufacturers are pushing for a truly sustainable firmware and BIOS model for Linux, without relying on Windows or half-baked solutions. The key in the coming years will be whether these efforts converge enough for laptops and desktops with Snapdragon and other ARM SoCs to compete head-to-head with x86 in the open-source software arena as well.