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Comment by 015a | Hacker News Reader

12 cores, possibly all of them P-cores (they've said that SXE comes in bins up to 12 p-cores), and some early benchmarks are putting SXE cores as ~15% slower than M3? That indicates this is a $900 machine comparable to the entry-tier $2000 Mac Studio (12c/32gb), which is still on M2 and only has 8 p-cores. Its TDP is also pretty comparable to the M2 Max, at 80 watts.

This is quite an incredible achievement from Qualcomm. I'm very excited to get one of these and install Linux on it. And, stoked to see if future iterations of the Steam Deck eventually make the jump to ARM.

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The new Qualcomm chips are the only thing I find exciting about all these recent Windows Copilot announcements. I'd love to get one of these new chips in a mini PC like the ones from GMKtek, e.g. https://www.gmktec.com/products/nucbox-g3-most-cost-effectiv...

I'm not sure if you've checked the link out, but that's what this article is announcing; a $900 Mac Mini-style devkit you can pre-order today.

Yeah, I saw that. The GMKtek boxes I linked to can fit in the palm of your hand, have great power efficiencies, and cost less than $150. I have a couple of the Intel N100 models but would love to get one with an ARM processor instead.

GMKtek? These boxes are inexpensive, but also are known sources of malware from China, no?

Ah - interesting, I hadn't seen that news. Appears that the Windows version they bundle with some PCs can be dodgy. I've never used Windows on these - I put in a new SSD and install Linux.

Firmware is also a vector. Particularly with Intel’s CPU remote management layers.

Maybe this wouldn’t affect ARM that much, that CPU is more obscure and with low volumes is a less of a target of interest (in the context of PC systems). But with more obscurity you wouldn’t even know where basic and most likely exploits can be based.

> I'm very excited to get one of these and install Linux on it.

If there ever was a time for Linux to really compete with Windows, that time would be now when Windows will break software compatibility to a large degree.

That really was Windows' big killer feature.

What compatibility is going to be broken?

I'm aware that there is a compatibility layer in place that will runs most apps, and that some of the most common production apps will have native builds.

But from what I can read, the compatibility layer is not perfect, and for instance games cannot be expected to just run or run well enough to be playable.

If you are at the point where Windows apps cannot be expected to just work, then why not use wine (and proton for games) instead, on an ad-free system?

> If you are at the point where Windows apps cannot be expected to just work, then why not use wine (and proton for games) instead, on an ad-free system?

Because they don't have to learn a new OS. I love Linux but inertia is a powerful force. I don't think swapping one compatibility layer for another is enough to entice the average person.

The ads, maybe, but I don't think most people care that much. Linux is a hard sell to people that don't want to care about compatibility layers, don't mind advertising that much, and grew up on Windows.

> I'm very excited to get one of these and install Linux on it.

Exactly everyone's immediate thought on this, lol. That the thing runs Windows is mostly a distraction.

Not my thought.

In general, Linux runs worse on laptops than Windows does. Many laptops have HiDPI displays, which Linux's graphics stack simply can't deal with properly. Track pads, fingerprint sensors, hybrid GPU set-ups, even external monitor arrangements are amongst the many issues Linux struggles with to this day. Linux has issues with pinning CPUs to a higher frequency than idle, and hence exhausting laptop batteries real quick.

I am loathe to see what having an entirely new hardware stack vis à vis Qualcomm will do to Linux installs on these.

I read a few articles about these, but I didn't see one that talked about the bootloader situation

It's UEFI and Debian works.

yeah i finally saw that and was pretty excited. We'll just have to see how they get locked down by the other OEMs

They use UEFI (like previous Snapdragons did) and EL2 is apparently unlocked on the SXE series (unlike previous Snapdragons.) It's mostly a matter of getting the device trees in place, I guess (I don't think these use ACPI natively, but might be wrong.)

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