So, I went out with my daughter to look at laptops for back-to-school and the store was dominated by Windows machines with Snapdragon X Elite chips at very reasonable prices. The energy efficiency, battery life, and quietness of these laptops is amazing. Also, I notice they all have these new NPU chips for AI, which I’m ambivalent about.

I’m a Linux-on-Thinkpad man, so I checked online and was happy to see that Lenovo is offering Snapdragon-based Thinkpads now. With these new developments, maybe it is finally time to upgrade my old T540p.

Has anyone here had experience yet running Linux on a Snapdragon-based laptop?

    • sailingbythelee@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      That’s what I have, but she likes the slim new hotness, and really prioritizes battery life. She isn’t worried about Linux performance, though, because she doesn’t use it, lol.

      • Findmysec@infosec.pubEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Take her to therapy to get rid of her love of slick.

        Then give her chonky thinkpad with external replaceable batteries.

        Part of this was sarcasm, the other was not :)

  • Clusterfck@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    As of right now, there’s not much available for the X Elite processors.

    I did actually buy the Yoga laptop with the X Elite from Lenovo about a month ago. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a better experience with Windows. I can leave the thing in standby mode for days and see maybe 4 or 5 percent battery drain. If I’m using ARM native apps, I can use it for 8 hours without charging easily and get through a work day with about 20 to 30 percent battery to spare. With x86 apps, it does use a bit more power, but battery life is still pretty good. I’d estimate 8-9 hours before totally dead.

    Hopefully development picks up more on the Linux side because I can’t wait to see how much better the battery life would be.