Yesterday TUXEDO Computers cancelled their Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop plans. In their announcement discontinuing work on this X1E Linux laptop, they said they would still upstream the Device Tree support to the mainline Linux kernel. Indeed they posted a new revision of their DT patches on Friday for the Linux kernel, but there is diminishing outlook that they will be accepted upstream for this cancelled product.

Their justification for still going ahead with working to upstream the Device Tree to the mainline Linux kernel is that it could potentially help other compatible devices, such as the Medion SUPRCHRGD that the TUXEDO prototype was based on. But a little dust-up on the Linux kernel mailing list is making it look like such DTs for “cancelled” products may not be upstreamed after the fact.

Krzysztof Kozlowski who is one of the co-maintainers of the ARM and ARM64 SoC sub-architectures, maintainer for various ARM SoCs, and all-around significant upstream contributor to the ARM Linux kernel has objected to TUXEDO’s handling of the Device Tree work for this now-cancelled product.

Following TUXEDO’s announcement yesterday, he posted to the kernel mailing list:

“I guess all our reviews are irrelevant now and this should be abandoned.”

Additionally, after noting in the updated DT patch series it was noted further in the cover letter around the state of the TUXEDO product, Kozlowski added:

“This should be FIRST part of cover letter, so we won’t waste time on reviewing it, instead of burying it deep. Additionally, you should have named the series RFC. ... For me this is unmergeable, because we do not take stuff which no one uses (no one can even use), and I am sad I put effort in reviewing AFTER this was known to be cancelled.”

To which Stephan Gerhold of Linaro responded that some DTs exist for limited products such as the Snapdragon X Elite DevKit and some ChromeOS devices that ultimately never shipped to anyone. Plus there being the Medion SPRCHRGD that uses the same hardware design as the TUXEDO prototype.

Kozlowski clarified his position on the upstreaming outlook for rare/cancelled products:

“They are still “maintained” and “offered”, even if only for handful (like 3000 EACH variant) people. That’s the amount of board of each variant, e.g. MTP8750, and all of them run some sort of Linux, even if downstream. So sorry, but 3000 (or whatever number it is) is not handful. ... I won’t be maintaining it, so not my effort in that, but since you speak about that - maintenance is an effort, thus I decide not to spend it on cancelled products.“

So at this stage it’s looking like the TUXEDO X1E laptop Device Tree won’t be accepted into the upstream kernel given its cancelled state prior to actually shipping. Yet another headache in dealing with Device Tree files for systems.