Ubuntu on Snapdragon Laptops?

[Sergei Grichine]

There are a lot of ARM-based laptops, normally shipping with Windows 11 for ARM64 preinstalled. They can run older apps via Windows' Prism emulator.

A little research shows that while installing Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is possible, support for peripherals and the GPU is sketchy at best. Ubuntu 25.04 and later will likely support these devices much better.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5723773/linux-on-snapdragon-arm-processor

It looks like we'll be moving to nice ARM laptops for our robotics needs (ROS2) pretty soon. But I'd rather wait until those laptops start shipping with Ubuntu preinstalled.

Any thoughts?

Best Regards, 
-- Sergei
   

[David Murphy]

Agree that the real issue is driver support.

You might get the arm cpu to boot, but until drivers are available, you will not have most of the peripheral devices. Qualcomm, like nvidia, holds things close to the vest. So unless they decide to support Linux on their reference platform, one will not get much use out of their systems.

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[Chris Albertson]

You can buy an Apple ARM notebook for $599 now.  ($100 less if you claim you are a college student. Enroll in any online class, and you can even do it honestly.)    

As I’m typing this I’m putting a Linux development system on my Mac.   It is very easy with Docker to have a Linux system on the same desktop monitor as MacOS.   Docker is free.       The install instructions were easy enough (1) Download disk image, (2) drag Docker app from image to /Applications. (3) That’s it.

The Linux container is very fast as Ununtu 25.04 runs natively on Apple Silicon.   

$499 gets you The Mac Neo notebook, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD.    Apple is going to sell a lot of these at that price.

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[Sergei Grichine]

Chris — the problem with Apple is, well, Apple. We had many conversations about it a month ago.

Rafael — thank you for your kind words. The point you brought up about NUCs is really interesting. I expect ARM NUCs to follow ARM laptops fairly soon, which means better onboard machines for us.

When it comes to going cheap, the best bargain is any Intel or AMD surplus machine that isn't Windows 11 compatible. They are being cannibalized for their RAM right now, but some may still be available.

For a new machine, Ubuntu/ROS2 on ARM needs to reach the LTS stage, and laptops/NUCs need to drop the $100 'Windows tax' and ship with a real OS preinstalled. I’d guess mid-2027.

Best Regards, 
-- Sergei
   

On Wed, Apr 1, 2026, 12:19 AM Rafael Skodlar <kc6...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sergei,
I bought a laptop from system76 because I have never bought crap with
windows installed since 1994.
Their laptop has worked great for years now: https://system76.com/about/

Another option is https://frame.work which you can modify significantly.

I returned two NUC boxes to Amazon because they absolutely refuse to
let me install Linux. The BIOS was messed up. It wanted to be
connected to the network and started to pull OS from the MS website.

Your robotics stuff is impressive, especially robots that work outside.

Enjoy,
Rafael

On Tue, Mar 31, 2026 at 9:16 PM Sergei Grichine <vital...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

[Chris Albertson]

If you looked at Apple notebooks a month ago, look again as everything has changed. The new Apple laptop is $500.

I would not suggest using an Apple notebook computer in a robot. or even a Mac Mini inside of one. But the title of the email is “laptop”. Apple really did just upset the ARM-laptop market with their new $500 arm-powered laptop. Apple is now one of the lower price points for ARM notebooks.

What makes it developer-friendly is that macOS is in fact BSD UNIX. UNIX stuff “just works”. Stuff expecting a specialized Linux environment doesn’t so for thatg you need a container with Ubuntu or whatever. But these containers are very stable.

I do development work on the Mac, then move it to a Raspberry Pi. Or really don’t move it. The code is stored on a NAS and is mounted to both the Pi and the Mac. I’m working in Python and have the usual built-in unit tests and I can get that far on a Mac. Usually, these find regressions from carelessness.

The latest project runs on a special pupose embedded Linux system