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Back in December 2017, Microsoft and Qualcomm announced a partnership to pair Windows 10 and Snapdragon Arm processors for ultra-thin LTE-connected netbooks with a 20+ hour battery life. This Windows-on-Arm initiative has faced several stumbling blocks, with the the first-generation HP Envy x2 and Asus NovaGo criticized for poor performance and app compatibility in Windows 10, due in large part to an inline x86 emulator for apps written for Windows on Intel or AMD processors.
Now, a group of programmers and device hackers are working to bring proper support for Ubuntu to Arm-powered Windows laptops, starting with first-generation Snapdragon 835 systems, like the HP Envy x2 and Asus NovaGo. The aarch64-laptops project on GitHub provides prebuilt images for the aforementioned notebook PCs, as well as the Lenovo Miix 630.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Tuesday February 12 2019, @12:36PM
The work looks elaborate, someone put in good effort into setting that up. But s/he/they hide behind the "AArch64 Laptops" name, even in their kernel sign-off line.
It strikes me as particulary weird that the individual(s) behind it focus on two very specific laptops from different vendors that have an already obsoleted CPU that wasn't even the most powerful of its generation.
I'd rather see work being put into open-bootloader-to-open-graphics-driver images for the dirt cheap RK3399, but I'm admittedly a bit of a fanboy of that little chip. In absolute terms, the power of the Snapdragons involved is nothing to frown at. But there must be some part of the story that is untold. When two young suburban 'merkins pick up one of those laptops at a fire sale each and just want them to run properly, the footprint on github looks different.
Is someone sitting on a warehouse of these machines and has figured out the only way to get out of that situation is to flog the stuff off to Linux nerds? Does Qualcomm want to squeeze (more?) money out of Microsoft ("Pretty platform you have there, but remember the eee-PC.")?