Qualcomm announces Debian and Ubuntu support for the Snapdragon X2
The selection of hardware for Linux is growing. The Snapdragon X2 is expected to support the first Linux distribution later this year.
At the Snapdragon Summit 2026, Qualcomm announced that the Snapdragon X2 will soon support Linux. A developer preview is available immediately, and Debian is expected to run on laptops with the ARM chip by the end of 2026. Ubuntu will follow in 2027, and the first notebook manufacturers have already promised suitable hardware.
Debian and Ubuntu are the first supported distributions
Qualcomm has been offering Snapdragon chips for PCs for three years. Until now, these have only worked with Windows – and since this week, also with Googlebook OS. All attempts to get Linux running on them had failed. Qualcomm is now changing this itself. For the past year, its own Linux team has been working on making the Snapdragon X2 series usable for the open-source operating system. A developer preview is available now. However, there will be no retroactive support for the first generation of Snapdragon.
Initially, Debian will run on the Snapdragon X2 Plus, X2 Elite, and X2 Elite Extreme. Linux support is expected to be available to all users by the end of the year. After Debian, Qualcomm will turn its attention to Ubuntu. In collaboration with Canonical, Snapdragon support is scheduled to be ready in the first half of 2027.
The drivers and hardware descriptions necessary for Linux operation will become part of the kernel. In the long term, there should be no dependency on external patches. Furthermore, the manufacturer intends to make the NPU of the Snapdragon X2 usable for AI under Linux. For the time being, however, Linux will only run on Snapdragon notebooks. Support for desktop PCs is not planned.
With Asus, HP, and the newcomer Humain, three notebook manufacturers have already announced that they will adapt their laptops for Linux support or offer suitable models starting in 2027.
As a primary school pupil, I used to sit in a friend's living room with many of my classmates to play the Super NES. Now I get my hands on the latest technology and test it for you. In recent years at Curved, Computer Bild and Netzwelt, now at Digitec and Galaxus.
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