> But still a work-in-progress is audio support, DP Alt-Mode, enabling the DSPs, USB-C power delivery, and GPU acceleration
No GPU acceleration? And somehow this is seen as good support?! The reverse engineered Asahi Linux driver has better support than whatever this is.
Qualcomm historically wrote awful OSS code that couldn't be upstreamed because it barely worked on a subset of their own SoCs, and broke basic function for everything else. Typically featuring incredibly invasive architectural changes that patched far too many layers of the OS with unmaintainable code.
QC then converted bad code into a business model, nickel and diming OEMs who needed bugs fixed to ship their products.
The idea that QC SoCs now have good upstream support is bizarre to me. At best, it means a few high volume SoCs can boot to console on reference designs. Forget about peripheral support for things anyone would take for granted, like audio and GPU.
A great start would be to make the user space Adreno GLES libraries talk to the freedreno DRM backend. So one could use the QC proprietary GLES libs with a mainline kernel without rebuilding with KGSL.
There's a similar story here for every subsystem driver, where they insist on a brittle proprietary solutions (one branch for every chip!) that can't be upstreamed.
It should be if they're really serious about software support.
QC is not a low level employee lacking agency over their job description. They're a business that is free to set their strategy in response to risk and competition.
The less that QC upstreams, the more risk they incur, especially with tightening security scrutiny (e.g. 2021 Cyber EO requirements).
QC can also get disrupted by Mediatek doing a better job with Linux.