• Admiral Patrick
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      5 months ago

      Literally what I was wondering, lol. My first thought was “how well does it run Debian?”

      OTOH, I really don’t want to contribute to a sale that may make MS or the hardware manufacturers think people want this AI crap. I just want a beefy ARM laptop that runs Linux lol.

      • @[email protected]
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        285 months ago

        They’re apparently working on it. Tuxedo already got a prototype and Qualcomm has been apparently contributing code to the mainline Linux kernel to guarantee support

      • Blaster M
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        5 months ago

        Well, actually, what if I want AI “crap” capability with my Linux ARM laptop?

        The TOPS on those systems are no joke. Consider that it’s 1/2 the performance of an RTX 2060 in a slim laptop form factor.

        Edit: The performance variance is still the same. 2060 can do almost 13 TFLOPS fp16 or about 102 TOPS measured (this figure is on other sites too, this is what I can find atm). SD Elite X can do 45 TOPS. Not bad, considering existing x86_64 CPUs with an NPU do 10-16 TOPS.

      • @[email protected]
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        35 months ago

        So the way MS is using it is incredibly dumb, but hardware wise, it’s just a NN-optimized tile on the CPU. That is going to be a great thing for democratizing access to serious machine learning hardware. In that respect, it’s actually pretty awesome, despite the fact that It’s annoying that the initiative is tied so closely to MS.

    • @[email protected]
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      5 months ago

      I wanted an Arm based Linux netbook or laptop for many years ever since the multi-core Smartphones came out around 2008.
      Already back then the Intel based Netbooks were laughably bad compared to Arm, and couldn’t even play video properly, while you could do that with ease even on early smartphones with Arm at 1080p.

      But for some reason Arm has given Linux very little love with their GPU drivers, and AFAIK they still don’t support it well, so now I say go fuck yourself.
      Arm is NOT a good company for Linux. How they missed that opportunity for a strong market entry for over a decade I simply cannot fathom.

      If AMD made an Arm CPU with Radeon graphics, that would be cool. Because AMD has good open source drivers on Linux, and has generally good Linux support.

      • Aniki 🌱🌿
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        155 months ago

        You’re right. We shouldn’t use proprietary bullshit and hope the corporations do the right thing.

        RISC-v is the way.

        • @[email protected]
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          125 months ago

          Framework just announced a RISC-V motherboard you can get which is pretty awesome. Obviously designed for developers etc, but its a good step.

        • @[email protected]
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          5 months ago

          Even the RPi, which has major Linux support has a blob for its graphics driver (at least the last time I checked). And I wouldn’t exactly say Broadcom is falling over themselves to support Linux. Qualcomm, less so.

        • @[email protected]
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          45 months ago

          In theory yes, in practice I’m not so sure. Risc-V is BSD, so whatever company chooses to make it, can change it as they like and completely ruin compatibility.
          I don’t think it will work, because the BSD license doesn’t protect it from whatever abuse any maker feels like.
          I do follow it as a potential alternative, and alternatives are always nice.

    • @[email protected]
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      155 months ago

      BIOS locked to Windows keys. Tuxedo is promising a Linux version of the same SOC soon, though.

      • @[email protected]
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        5 months ago

        Can we please make vendor-locked bootloaders illegal, for repairability and consumer choice and all that? There’s literally no reason for it, except to lock in customers.

        • @[email protected]
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          65 months ago

          If history is any indication then more lock-in will be the future trend. And they will sugarcoat it with reasons such as “this is more secure”.

      • @[email protected]
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        35 months ago

        Surely they’re not going to give the game away on the first generation ?

        To end the PC and turn it into a phone. Surely they would let people run linux for gen 1 & gen 2 and only then lock the bootloader. And maybe keep a triple priced version with an unlockable bootloader until the alternative OS community dies of attrition.

  • NutWrench
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    285 months ago

    I’m not interested in anything that’s “Co-Pilot enabled.”

    • @[email protected]
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      15 months ago

      They have something akin to Apple’s Rosetta 2 that’s pretty much the same hit performance-wise.

      • Jesus
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        15 months ago

        Yeah, I’m curious to see how this plays out Rosetta 2 was scary good.

        • ferret
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          15 months ago

          Rosetta 2 was so good because M1 had hardware to help with x86 emulation. Presumably qualcomm can do the same thing.

  • @[email protected]
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    25 months ago

    Man, that’s a bummer. I’ve been really unimpressed with Intel’s laptops the past few years.

  • Gianni R
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    5 months ago

    I think the wave of hype sort of overshadowed a couple of key points about these chips:

    • Performance & efficiency aren’t leaps & bounds ahead of the Intel & AMD crowd
    • ARM Windows laptops are still Windows laptops

    Battery life is hardware and software.