Snapdragon X Elite Laptop Performance On Linux Ends 2025 Disappointing
The performance regressions on this latest Ubuntu 25.10 + Linux 6.18 X1E software stack were unfortunate in erasing many of the improvements seen earlier in the year. The occasional shutting down of the laptop for power/thermal reasons was also frustrating after some improvements earlier in the year had improved that situation too.
Those interested in more comparison benchmarks can find them via this result file but long story short the active regressions caused the Snapdragon X1 Elite on the Acer Swift 14 AI to be even less competitive than it was over the summer. In current form the Acer Swift 14 AI on Ubuntu 25.10 + Linux 6.18 X1E was performing similar to the aging AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U or even older Core i7 1185G7 Tiger Lake in a Dell XPS laptop.
Hopefully the Snapdragon X Elite situation improves for Linux users in 2026. There is some reason to be optimistic too with Hans de Goede joining Qualcomm and Snapdragon improvements for Fedora Linux planned among other upstream enhancements. Here's to hoping the X2 Elite will also be a more compelling story for Linux enthusiasts.
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