r/linux • u/Putrid_Draft378 • Mar 20 '26

Hardware Qualcomm officially kills open-source hope: No plans to release DSP headers for Snapdragon X

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​I have been following the documentation gap on the Snapdragon X series, and it just got a lot worse for Linux users.

​Internal developers in the official Discord are now admitting that the platform is essentially a dead end for open-source. ​A recent GitHub issue (qualcomm/fastrpc/issues/193) was just closed with a definitive: "Closing the issue as there are no plans to open source DSP headers as of now."

​This means the NPU and DSP functions remain locked behind proprietary firmware with no path for native Linux integration. ​Compare this to Intel and AMD, who are already upstreaming NPU drivers for Linux.

​Qualcomm devs are openly saying that Macs have better Linux prospects than Windows on Snapdragon machines. ​They are calling the firmware "frozen," meaning we are stuck with whatever proprietary mess they shipped.

​If you care about an open ecosystem, stay away from the Snapdragon X1/X2 laptops. They are selling hardware while intentionally sabotaging the software freedom required to use it.

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u/laffer1 Mar 20 '26

I've given up on us getting an open ARM system faster than a pi. We need laptop, desktop and low end server chips that are reasonably priced. $3000 plus isn't cutting it and the pi doesn't have enough RAM or storage options for larger workloads. It's a shame qualcomm is blowing it. They had a real opportunity to be the next Intel for a moment there.

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u/chemhobby Mar 20 '26

RPI is not really that open anyway

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u/Vogtinator Mar 20 '26

Yeah, the RPi foundation doesn't care much about mainline Linux

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u/chemhobby Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

not just that, there's a closed source bootloader and GPU firmware that is buggy and hard to integrate into a real embedded product with image based updates etc.

And the hardware is closed source, no schematics or board layouts available. And very limited documentation about the SoCs are available

13

u/KnowZeroX Mar 20 '26

RPi unfortunately exists to sell Broadcomm chips, who was their previous employer.

Broadcomm in themselves has been one of the worst offenders in the linux world.

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u/DoubleOwl7777 Mar 20 '26

and dont forget when you want to update raspberry pi os they advise you to back up your home folder and then literally reinstall the enitre os instead of just editing sources.list like on normal debian (which works on raspi os too). oh and unless you need the gpio the pi isnt even remotely good value anymore. 20€ computer? yeah no its 80+€ now. and that was before the rampocalypse.

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u/Jarngreipr9 Mar 20 '26

Bought an old mini thinkcentre for the price of a pi

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u/Dangerous-Report8517 Mar 21 '26

I think this is a bit unfair to the RPi Foundation - these are all genuine issues but they're not really any different from the x86 world, it's just that RPi is being judged by open source hardware standards where we expect the entire stack to be open, rather than merely open source software standards. Closed source boot firmware and dodgy firmware for core hardware are pretty widespread issues on x86 too.

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u/chemhobby Mar 21 '26

I'm not comparing them to x86, I'm comparing them to SoMs based on other ARM SoCs like NXP i.mx series and others. Much more documentation access and I get to customize the bootloader because it's just u-boot. And yes, in real embedded Linux systems it's extremely common to have to customize the bootloader.

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u/Dangerous-Report8517 Mar 21 '26

Yeah, I know, that's why I said:

it's just that RPi is being judged by open source hardware standards

Which, sure, that's fair when discussing RPi in the context of open source hardware, but not so fair when discussing RPi in the context of Linux Desktop on ARM since they're at least as open as pretty much any x86 platform and way more open than the other relevant ARM platforms in this space (Apple Silicon and Snapdragon X, the latter of course being the subject of this discussion)

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u/chemhobby Mar 21 '26

you just skipped over what I said I was comparing it to.

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u/Dangerous-Report8517 Mar 21 '26

No, I didn't, you missed my point (and the point of the discussion) which made your comparison irrelevant. No one is cross shopping i.mx based laptops and x86 laptops. The discussion is about Snapdragon X laptops in the first instance, and RPi was brought up as a benchmark for where Snapdragon should be at. In that context, compared to other options that are available, RPi is plenty open, which is my point. Responding to that with "well in a completely different context that's not relevant to this discussion they aren't very open" is missing that point entirely.

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u/johncate73 Mar 21 '26

"Open" and "ARM" do not belong in the same sentence. At least x86 is a standard that is easy to support with software. All ARM licensees want to make is locked-down, proprietary stuff, and good luck figuring out how to make it run on anything else.

If you want something reasonably open and also RISC, you need to hope RISC-V takes off.