As part of my various end-of-year benchmarking comparison articles for looking at the performance evolution of Linux is a fresh look at the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptop experience when using Ubuntu 25.10 with the latest X1E Concept packages, which includes taking the X1 Elite optimized kernel to the latest Linux 6.18 stable series. Unfortunately, there are significant performance regressions observed compared to a few months ago that just make AMD Ryzen AI and Intel Core Ultra laptops a better choice for Linux laptop users.

Beyond TUXEDO Computers dropping their X1 Elite Linux laptop plans as announced in late November, the overall X1 Elite laptop state on Linux isn’t too compelling at this point. The best Linux experience continues to be on Ubuntu Linux for the X Elite laptops though even there your mileage may vary depending upon the model. Qualcomm engineers have been upstreaming X2 Elite support to the Linux kernel, Mesa, and related components. Hopefully in 2026 we’ll see X2 Elite support morph into a more formidable contender for Linux use but as it stands now the Linux support and performance is better off with AMD Ryzen AI and Intel Core Ultra laptop options. At least though the X Elite Linux support and Qualcomm’s level of support is moving along faster than the Asahi Linux / Apple Silicon Linux support that is still primarily about M1 / M2 Mac support with the newer hardware still being reverse-engineered and enabled.

Earlier in the year I bought an Acer Swift 14 AI laptop SF14-11T-X3RZ for Linux testing. Ubuntu’s "X1E Concept" ISOs made for an easy setup experience but with succeeding releases it was prone to regressions/breakage. My most recent Snapdragon X Elite benchmarks were back in September following an X1E Concept ISO getting the Swift 14 AI support back in order. The performance with that plus firmware updates for the Acer device improved the Snapdragon X Elite performance compared to my earlier tests but was still coming in short of the AMD Ryzen and Intel Core competition.

For this year-end benchmarking was my first trial of Snapdragon X Elite since the Ubuntu 25.10 release in October with ARM64 desktop ISO improvements. Indeed there I was able to run the Ubuntu 25.10 ARM64 desktop ISO and install to the Acer Swift 14 AI and successfully boot to that installation – something that had been a problem with the former generic ARM64 desktop ISOs.

Ubuntu 25.10 ARM64 on this Snapdragon X Elite was working out although you still need to manually install and run the qcom-firmware-extract tool to extract the necessary firmware blobs from the Windows 11 on ARM partition so the Linux drivers can make use of it. Most Snapdragon X Elite laptops for Linux use still require fetching the firmware blobs from the Windows partition with only the Lenovo ThinkPad freely distributing theirs via linux-firmware.git to avoid this nuisance. Without the firmware support you lose out on Adreno GPU acceleration and other functionality.

When installing Ubuntu 25.10 ARM64 you can also manually enable the ubuntu/x1e PPA for all of the very latest Snapdragon Elite laptop improvements. With the X1E PPA as of testing shifted from Ubuntu 25.10 using the Linux 6.17 kernel to instead being a Linux 6.18 derived kernel. The X1E PPA also provides the latest ubuntu-x1e-settings.

For this testing the Acer Swift 14 AI testing with Snapdragon X1 Elite was using the Ubuntu 25.10 with the Linux 6.18 kernel, GNOME Shell 43 desktop on Wayland, Mesa 25.2.3 graphics drivers, and GCC 15.2 compiler. While it was a pleasant experience getting going off the Ubuntu 25.10 ARM64 desktop ISO, the performance was showing regressions compared to my prior rounds of testing. More frequently than the September testing, the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop was turning off due to power/thermal thresholds. Much more frequently than in prior rounds and about as problematic as when I originally began the X Elite testing earlier in the year.