If you are thinking about getting a Tuxedo, I suggest to get something else. I got one because they promised fwupd support, upstreamed drivers and maybe coreboot support. None of that is working even years afterwards. People from the kernel got so fed up with them, they considered blacklisting them [1]. That seemed like a wakeup call as they now at least started with upstreaming drivers.
If you want to change some settings oft the device, you need to use their terrible Electron application. It's so bad, volunteers created an alternative. Even they are getting tired of Tuxedo though [2]
The device is also not repairable at all. I had an issue with my screen and they gave me a quote of ~200€+ to repair it. I'm sure I could fix it myself for a lot less, but no parts are available and no instructions.
I hope they improve, but for now I'm disillusioned and would not buy it again.
The entire software stack of TUXEDO is tightly integrated, instead of working on a generic solution.
That sounds like the same situation with smartphones, which are nearly all ARM but every SoC or variation of one is different enough that the software is customised for each one.
If you want to change some settings oft the device, you need to use their terrible Electron application.
WTF. I thought Android being Java was already going too far, but they seem to have gone to a whole new level of insanity.
I'm a happy user of my second Tuxedo laptop after using the first for over 7 years, repairing several parts. I found their support very responsive and spare parts affordable. Your points are valid though. If you don't like their custom stuff, the device also works fine with a stock Linux install (Ubuntu in my case).
They're also the only OEM that replied to me when I was trying to reverse engineer a similar laptop to theirs. I think that alone should put them into a league of their own. Only two companies have ever properly replied to me when I asked about source code or hardware documentation: one is a chinese company, the other is Tuxedo.
Frankly it's bizarre that a Linux focused vendor thinks it's better to keep their device drivers outside of the kernel. Why would I buy a rebadged Clevo laptop from Tuxedo where I'm stuck either running their special Tuxedo distro or fiddling around with compiling kernel modules on other distros, when I could buy a much better laptop for the same price from a vendor who doesn't even advertise Linux support and get full out of the box hardware support on any distro I choose?
I bought a Tuxedo machine. While the situation is not perfect (I had to install driver packages on Fedora), everything works perfectly - including standby.
My last machine was a Thinkpad, and I never got it to work nearly as well. Standby mostly didn't work and when docking it, external screens would be arranged incorrectly unless I rebooted. USB ports also did not activate when docked, so I had a script for resetting the USB devices. Sometimes a new kernel version would come along and cause it to start freezing.
I did check out other laptops before buying the tuxedo (t14s g6 amd, zenbook s14), but according to the information available at the time, those machines had lots of issues. They were also more expensive.
Therefore I'm very curious about which laptop that you think is both better and cheaper than tuxedo, and has full hardware support out of the box?
I think it was Tuxedo that accidentally ended up with GPLv3 drivers and no ability to relicense them.
Which means they can't be upstreamed because GPLv3 is not compatible with GPLv2 (for the same reason CDDLv1.0 is considered incompatible).
They either need to track every copyright from the contractors (who AFAIK didn't sign over licensing to Tuxedo) to relicense the code, or write drivers again from scratch.
Having to use their specific drivers is a bit annoying, but I honestly prefer that over drivers that dont work or dont exist at all.
I really hope they can bring their stuff upstream at one point, but I can't deny that using their laptops hasn't been good experiences.
> If you want to change some settings oft the device, you need to use their terrible Electron application.
> It's so bad, volunteers created an alternative.
Years ago I wrote my own Linux user space driver for the keyboard on my Clevo based laptop. The Clevo application was so terrible I reverse engineered it and made my own Linux free software replacement.
"The patches check for the gxtp7380, ite_8291, ite_8291_lb, ite_8297, ite_829x, stk8321, tuxedo_compatibility_check, tuxedo_io, tuxedo_nb02_nvidia_power_ctrl, tuxedo_nb04_keyboard, tuxedo_nb04_wmi_ab, tuxedo_nb04_wmi_bs, tuxedo_nb04_sensors, tuxedo_nb04_power_profiles, tuxedo_nb04_kbd_backlight, tuxedo_nb05_keyboard, tuxedo_nb05_kbd_backlight, tuxedo_nb05_power_profiles, tuxedo_nb05_ec, tuxedo_nb05_sensors, tuxedo_nb05_fan_control, tuxi_acpi, tuxedo_tuxi_fan_control, clevo_wmi, tuxedo_keyboard, clevo_acpi, and uniwill_wmi kernel modules and will taint if they are present."
That's not what I would describe as "resolving a license compatibility issue"
Basically the same things happened to my tuxedo also. With the addition of having to change batteries once a year, because it would drop to half it's factory charge, which wasn't really sufficient. I also gave up on them when they wanted so much money for a screen change (which died after about 3-4 years).
I've replaced it with the new framework 13 inch, which so far works well, but I've only had it for 4-5 months. ( well, but not perfect, because the new AMD AI CPU has issues with suspend on linux)
Slimbook (Spanish OEM) basically sells the same ODM designs as Tuxedo and is an option. They have a few cobranded (KDE etc) versions that contribute to the development teams.
Otherwise at this point I believe the Framework laptops have pretty solid Linux support and is a good option if you're ok w/ so-so battery life.
Unfortunately I don't know about a good alternative from Europe. I'd probably get a Framework if my device stops working. They seem to work hard at upstreaming things and use Linux standards. They also connected with the GNOME foundation, so there might be some collaboration in the future
https://entroware.com from the UK gets mentioned here and there, but I think they don't do any software development at all, and only repackage OEM laptops.
I am running a tuxedo since 6 years and I am still happy with it. Had to use their support once to replace the cooling assembly because one of the fan bearings started to ger noisy after 5 years of 24/7 use, the replacement was 100 Euros for the whole copper+heatpipe+two fan assembly. The machine is still outperforming many other machines that exist today and the sceeen is one of the best I have seen (OLED).
You are right that tuxedo has some issues. But also take into account price of their notebooks. Even lenovo, hp, dell etc. are not without issues in the similar price category. I take it as cheap HW for advanced users.
But you are right that not having drivers upstream is really strange decision.
There are parts in the industry that are not meant for end users.
I service copiers and printers.
The fixing unit is not meant to be installed by a handyman, thats why you dont get to buy it.
You can cook yourself, it works with 230V....
Toner and drum unit are sold to customers.
Respectfully, nothing about that applies to a laptop. This has been well proven over the years, that with good forethought and making parts available laptops can be highly repairable.
230VAC mains electrical fittings are openly sold in DIY shops in every country in the European Union without mass-cookings occurring as a result. This reeks of utterly unearned elitism.
Two of the reasons I eventually gave up on Desktop Linux, were virtualization getting good enough for just keep using Windows instead, back in the day with VMware Workstation and Virtual Box, nowadays with WSL (macOS is anyway UNIX enough for me to care otherwise).
And exactly the same experience with OEM vendors that were supposed to be Linux friendly, on my case the whole netbooks effort, where graphics, video decoding and wlan never worked as well on Windows, even though they were supposed to.
Dell XPS also had their issues for something that was supposed to be Canonical certified as running GNU/Linux properly.
It seems Android, ChromeOS and WebOS are the only ones where OEMs actually care to make it work properly, naturally the cloud and IoT vendors with their custom distros as well.
I've been running Linux on my laptop and on my workstation since the 90's. Still using it as my main driver. Fedora Kinoite is my distro of choice, and Lenovo AMD Thinkpad T14s the laptop. Everything works flawless, and it's still pretty fast even though it's two years old already.
And I do not miss at all the Microsoft bullsh*t on tracking and advertising. Or the general sluggishness of Windows.
Before the Tuxedo, I used an old Lenovo. I didn't check before if it works well with Linux, but it worked flawlessly. I am so used to devices working well and not having to think much about drivers. That's probably why I am disappointed by Tuxedo. They market themselves to Linux users but until recently they did not emphasize upstreaming and embracing standards.
I ran a Dell XPS (not even the Canonical certified version) for a few years at a past job, and everything worked pretty well under Ubuntu. But it's always a matter of which exact hardware combination has mainstream support, and if the version you get doesn't e.g. have a shitty WiFi chip with bad support.
Funny to read replies to your comment. One can be sure that on HN for every single critical comment about Linux viability one gets multiple responses claiming that Linux is perfect and without issues.
Inb4: I have used Linux exclusively from 2019 to 2024. It wasn't that bad but it wasn't flawless. At least once per month I met some issue that took few hours to solve. Currently on Win11, zero problems (yes, I am using pirated LTSC IoT version, how did you know?)
The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 machines have no touchpad or touchscreen support. Listing them as "supported" requires a creative interpretation of the term.
I'm still waiting for the apple laptop killer (a 12h+ laptop with plain Ubuntu) but it's still brittle as fuck. I'm so frustrated by the current state of the mobile computing space. I have to have an Apple locked down device, which I hate, just because I want proper battery life.
A aarch64 Ubuntu vm inside MacOS runs faster and lasts more time than a booted up Ubuntu on arm in these devices. This is how far behind these things are.
and what bums me the most is that it's all about software. The hardware is great, but software on Snapdragon is taking a lot of time to catch up and it screams M$ lobby to me
Pretty sure there are plenty of traditional x86 Linux laptops that have north of 12h battery life. System76 comes to mind (mandatory "System76 is just a Clevo wrapper" comment).
My AMD Framework 13 running Fedora (an officially supported option: https://frame.work/linux ) also gets around that amount of battery life. And can run games surprisingly well.
Clevo is their ODM. They work with Clevo to put together a laptop, and Clevo gets the right to sell a Windows variant. Their version differs, particularly in firmware but also possibly in chips.
Microsoft has definitely put a lot of work into the arm surface laptops. I'm having a good time using a surface 15 inch. I picked the lowest spec model, only 16 GM ram and 256 GB drive. But I use it like a terminal: I run vscode server on either my desktop or a VM, and the vscode client on the laptop. So the actual compiling and I think also the LSP is running remotely, but I still have a responsive editor on the client. The result is phenomenal battery life, 16 hours if not more. It also has the side effect that any build artifacts are produced directly on the server, no more uploading multi-gigabyte containers over my home Internet to the cloud. But of course, it assumes 24/7 internet connection.
I would appreciate a native Linux arm laptop, but this setup works for me in the meantime.
> I'm still waiting for the apple laptop killer (a 12h+ laptop with plain Ubuntu) but it's still brittle as fuck.
Try Intel's Lunar Lake. My Zenbook 14S (S is important here!) does 12h+ on VS Code, browser & meetings (but compilation is remote). The screen is better than on Macbooks (it's high-res OLED), overall build is good. You probably won't be able to run Ubuntu LTS without installing latest kernel, but regular version should do just fine.
If you don't like ASUS, you can also try Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13. It's a bit on the smaller side and costs twice as much, but it's a pretty neat device.
In an alternate universe my hope was AMD builds a killer mobile/embedded Arm APU instead of the failed Opteron A series. Of course this would never happen because what software would run on it? Apple on the other hand steers the entire ship so they had the ability to produce the entire stack. Even MS could not build an Arm ecosystem.
> I have to have an Apple locked down device, which I hate, just because I want proper battery life.
Chicken and egg. The Linux vendors don't have the power to drive ODMs nearly as much as Apple because everyone keeps buying Windows and slapping Linux on it (then complaining online when they have to be the systems integrator themselves, fixing the inevitable razor cuts)
We learned one simple lesson, the past 10 years: if you want good ARM support, it has to come from the vendor. Nobody else can reverse-engineer devicetrees or GPU drivers with a remotely comparable release cadence. Linux has supported new x86 chipsets on day-1 since forever now; compare that to Broadcom or Apple Silicon's "best effort" community support that often takes years to boot into a graphical environment. Forget about stability or regression testing, it's a tinkertoy.
This is a shame because all the ARM licensees worth buying hardware from always have higher margins on smartphones or services. They have no commitment to supporting the PC or server market, let alone the software they use or featureset they depend on. It's no wonder that ARM adoption is stalling on the runway while Power11 gets upstream kernel support and RISC-V displaces integrated ARM ICs. Their only stakeholder is making their money off iPhone apps, not professional software.
Get a recent AMD or Intel laptop, add Linux, and install TLP. Idk if you'll get 12hr or not, but my Asus PX13 survived a 9hr+ intercontinental flight while working on a C++ codebase including compilation in Sublime Text with clangd LSP plugin (and no, I can't fall asleep on planes lol)
> but software on Snapdragon is taking a lot of time to catch up and it screams M$ lobby to me
On Linux?
The hard reality is that Apple invests in SoftBank, the owner of ARM's IP, and nobody in the Linux (or Windows) world does the same. They really just don't care. There aren't entrenched hardware manufacturers that want to reprise the featureset of UEFI on ARM. You will be waiting forever if you demand an ARM laptop that works like an x86 one with Linux.
ARM has been like this forever, and it's unlikely it will change due to Asahi or Apple Silicon. ARM lives or dies based on Apple's treatment of it, no other corporate stakeholder has comparable control over the ISA.
I'd suggest that top non-Apple businesspeople try using a MacBook for a few weeks, hopefully it sparks some fresh thinking and decisions. Like it or not, Apple's advantage in battery life (and processor efficiency) is remarkable. If I recall correctly, Samsung made a real dent in the iPhone's lead with the Galaxy S2 around 2011, four years after the iPhone launched in 2007. But with the M1 chips released in 2020, Apple's lead this time around seems poised to last even longer.
Well, there's your leading qualifier. Covid taught us that businesspeople can do their work on an iPad with Google Docs if they had to. It's not much of a surprise to anyone that they can do their work on a Mac with a souped-up iPhone processor.
My shock with Apple Silicon is how it collapses with non-browser-oriented tasks. The moment I stop watching YouTube it's like I'm back on Linux in 2008 again, trying to run everything through a Windows VM. My old Pro Tools plugins? Gotta use a VM, Rosetta won't work. A modern OpenGL program? Gotta wrestle depreciation flags to compile it. Even my old Homebrew casks had to get rewritten because Apple Silicon had to switch stuff around again.
By the time people insisted "try the M2 for a few weeks!" I was already dailying NixOS. MacOS is continuing the frying-pan-to-fire arc it started ever since 10.14.
I'm waiting for this. I like low powered laptops as more of a terminal. I dont want the apple ecosystem, but I'm getting really tired of windows, high end chromebooks kinda disappeared, I have Linux servers at home. Do I have to wait much longer?
An alternative that is available right now is to get an M1/M2 MacBook Air and run Asahi Linux on it. The older models are pretty cheap, but still quite fast. There are some missing features, but it runs really well. I've been using it as my home driver for over a year and it's really solid.
I have a think pad I use this way. Super light, battery lasts forever but it’s super low powered. However, I use Tailscale to connect to my beefy desktop at home with ssh/tmux and Zed remote editing. It’s perfect.
> the current Linux Kernel 6.15 already supports many commercial laptops:
Lenovo Yoga 7x,
Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6,
Dell XPS 13,
Asus Vivobook S15,
HP Omnibook x14,
Microsoft Surface 13/15
Has anybody had any first-hand experience with Linux on such laptops?
I run Linux on a Thinkpad T13s, with the previous generation of Snapdragon CPUs. It runs great - quick, excellent battery life and very stable. Installation is a bit obnoxious, but nothing a modestly seasoned Linux veteran can't handle.
Completely agree with this. Ubuntu installs from the standard ARM installer on the X13s and openSuse Tumbleweed needs a litte help at the start but then runs great.
It looks like the Snapdragon X gets quite a lot of support now and end of the year or earlier next year it should be quite useable for most.
When the Snapdragon X laptops came out they where all over 1000$ and I completely understand that the number of Linux kernel enthusiasts to set things up would initially be limited.
Used prices come down now and that will also help.
I have one of those too. Found a nice 32gb spec one on eBay for a good price. Last I tried Ubuntu the main issues were the speakers were very quiet and usb-c display out didn't work.
I was down-voted by saying back then (snapdragon x elite release date) that Qualcomm has no priority in making Linux a first class platform. Qualcomm does what Qualcomm does. I won't purchase a laptop which has no known Linux support.
I have an XPS 13. It does run linux, but so does every other laptop with an x86 chipset. It's horrible in pretty much every other way though. The battery, GPU fan, and left USB-C port failed successively shortly after the warranty was up.
In my case the biggest drawback is not being able to use an external screen via HDMI and the sound support (although you can workaround that with BT).
Let's not talk about widevine, I managed to eventually get it to work but it was very painful.
If we get full audio support and solve some of the widevine issues, this can easily become a daily driver for when I'm traveling or giving presentations.
Last I checked power management didn't work so they would run hot and burn through your battery. So unless there is full software support for hardware that makes laptops a portable computer, it's just not a practical solution for me.
Tho, I really want this to happen. As far as I've tested on Volterra (ms dev kit 2023), linux has a lot going right for it. there is a ton of ARM64 packages, and drivers just work (e.g. I had to wait so long for Wacom to release WoA drivers while it worked out the box with ARM64 linux builds). the potential is there and it's great.
On a last note, not being able to ship necessary firmware and relying on a WoA boot drive still sucks.
Poor power management has always been the last bastion keeping me from using Linux in certain machines. My desktop won’t sleep or wake up at all (or it will wake but show a grey screen and glitch out) on any distro I’ve tried. Every time I use it on a laptop the battery life is terrible. Makes me sad.
Power mgmt has worked very well on our old Dell precision that came with Linux, and two newer Frameworks (1 Intel, 1 AMD).
Basically perfect for over a decade.
It's not precisely a laptop, but I have an augmented reality cyberdeck using XReal AR glasses running into a battery powered Raspberry Pi 5 that I built, which runs pretty well. I feel like the Pis have long been a canary in the coalmine for Linux and ARM (first ARMHF and now ARM64) support.
I'm waiting for Android Virtualization Framework to run a full Linux distro on my smartphone with portable monitor (glasses). Already using Termux but AVF is hopefully much more performant. Maybe the Samsung S26 Ultra will have full support. I might ditch my miniPC if this works out.
I've been playing with it[0] - it still has a few rough edges. It's rather slow to start up compared to firing up a VM in virt-manager, and when you shut it down you must wait for it to finish shutting down before trying to restart it.
Woe to you if Debian pushes a systemd update. It took repeated incantations with apt to get that update to take, because updating systemd would crash the VM Every. Damn. Time.
I'm waiting for one of the headset vendors to support IMU-based HID mouse cursor control in hardware, with the same end goal in mind. In the meantime I'm stuck on amd64 with my little libinput driver[0].
If it's not fully supported and has major roadbumps, which it has, it is not supported. I don't know why companies take linux users as fools that'll accept anything thrown at them. Until lenovo can get their shit together and make a respectable laptop with 12h+ battery life, good build quality and a decent enough screen even on the worst configs, im not getting it
A little more context : in june 2024 at Computex, Tuxedo announced a possible christmas 2024 release [1]. A Qualcomm/Tuxedo collaboration was expected but did not materialize [2].
I'd really like to replace my old Thinkpad with a long-running, lightweight Linux laptop that can also do some gaming on the side (think Witcher 3 on good settings) but Snapdragon has not lived up to the hype AFAIK.
But big thumbs up to all the Linux devs that are working on improving the situation!
It's not just for games. FEX-EMU is used here alongside Wine/Proton to run games but it'll also run the x64 version of other things. There's other layers like Box64 that do the same thing. For Linux, a lot of the software traditionally found in repos already has an ARM version and it's not as necessary. On Windows on ARM sometimes the only way to get an ARM native version is to run the Linux version under WSL.
Windows on ARM has allowed running x86 code from launch with Windows 10 and x64 code since Windows 11.
There's lots of responses but they miss the point. Rosetta let you run x86/64 apps without even knowing they were x86/64. Back when I ran Asahi, I searched far and wide, but Linux doesn't support that level of transparent integration. You always had to fuddle with the launch params.
Pedantic point, but Linux (the kernel) absolutely does. You can register an executable handler for amd64 binaries, and have Linux call that whenever one is invoked.
There is absolutely no user land infrastructure for using this in the way that Rosetta does on macOS, though. Feel free to contribute it!
Yes, with Asahi (Now a Fedora was Arch initially). Think the fingerprint reader still didn't work but not really tried. Also only one external monitor (or DisplayLink) but the screen, sound, battery life, performace all best any x86 I have used.
Does Linux arm64 run Windows x86 applications in Wine? I mean, I'd be surprised if it did, but I need that. Otherwise an arm64 Linux laptop is super tempting.
But tons of them also don't. And for those that don't, there are usually alternatives available, but they are just that tiny bit different. So while Docker works, there is extra effort needed to use it.
I am fed up with the linux world. I run Ubuntu on a randomly selected Thinkpad, everything works, outta the box.
Why should i buy a new laptop because it holds another cpu doing the exact workload?
I cant code faster, cant talk faster with people and being productive 8hrs strait is just a lie.
Since almost 10years i read about pre-installed devices, but i dont see them anywhere.
Most companies dont have business linux apps and they wont be available, an armada of developers is busy bringing the light of the webcam functioning.
Why not specialize in something else like software the entire world runs on like SAP or whatever?
Its nice to spend a rainy day to compile your kernel...but the outcome?
Nobody is telling you to buy a new laptop. Same goes for software. If it's not for you then don't use it. It's all about choice. And the entire Linux ecosystem is not a single entity to "specialize on SAP or whatever". I suspect a large portion of SAP systems already run Linux anyway.
You don't "have to" do anything, you can stay with the setup you're using right now just fine, I don't get the point of this post, you're fighting ghosts.
Why not switch to Windows then? You'll of course have to chuck that perfectly finely working laptop when Windows 12 declares it obsolete, but such is life there.
If you are thinking about getting a Tuxedo, I suggest to get something else. I got one because they promised fwupd support, upstreamed drivers and maybe coreboot support. None of that is working even years afterwards. People from the kernel got so fed up with them, they considered blacklisting them [1]. That seemed like a wakeup call as they now at least started with upstreaming drivers.
If you want to change some settings oft the device, you need to use their terrible Electron application. It's so bad, volunteers created an alternative. Even they are getting tired of Tuxedo though [2]
The device is also not repairable at all. I had an issue with my screen and they gave me a quote of ~200€+ to repair it. I'm sure I could fix it myself for a lot less, but no parts are available and no instructions.
I hope they improve, but for now I'm disillusioned and would not buy it again.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/TUXEDO-Drivers-Taint-Patches
[2] https://aaronerhardt.github.io/blog/posts/tuxedo_rs_update/
From your 2nd link:
The entire software stack of TUXEDO is tightly integrated, instead of working on a generic solution.
That sounds like the same situation with smartphones, which are nearly all ARM but every SoC or variation of one is different enough that the software is customised for each one.
If you want to change some settings oft the device, you need to use their terrible Electron application.
WTF. I thought Android being Java was already going too far, but they seem to have gone to a whole new level of insanity.
Android is not Java
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I'm a happy user of my second Tuxedo laptop after using the first for over 7 years, repairing several parts. I found their support very responsive and spare parts affordable. Your points are valid though. If you don't like their custom stuff, the device also works fine with a stock Linux install (Ubuntu in my case).
They're also the only OEM that replied to me when I was trying to reverse engineer a similar laptop to theirs. I think that alone should put them into a league of their own. Only two companies have ever properly replied to me when I asked about source code or hardware documentation: one is a chinese company, the other is Tuxedo.
Frankly it's bizarre that a Linux focused vendor thinks it's better to keep their device drivers outside of the kernel. Why would I buy a rebadged Clevo laptop from Tuxedo where I'm stuck either running their special Tuxedo distro or fiddling around with compiling kernel modules on other distros, when I could buy a much better laptop for the same price from a vendor who doesn't even advertise Linux support and get full out of the box hardware support on any distro I choose?
I bought a Tuxedo machine. While the situation is not perfect (I had to install driver packages on Fedora), everything works perfectly - including standby.
My last machine was a Thinkpad, and I never got it to work nearly as well. Standby mostly didn't work and when docking it, external screens would be arranged incorrectly unless I rebooted. USB ports also did not activate when docked, so I had a script for resetting the USB devices. Sometimes a new kernel version would come along and cause it to start freezing.
I did check out other laptops before buying the tuxedo (t14s g6 amd, zenbook s14), but according to the information available at the time, those machines had lots of issues. They were also more expensive.
Therefore I'm very curious about which laptop that you think is both better and cheaper than tuxedo, and has full hardware support out of the box?
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I think it was Tuxedo that accidentally ended up with GPLv3 drivers and no ability to relicense them.
Which means they can't be upstreamed because GPLv3 is not compatible with GPLv2 (for the same reason CDDLv1.0 is considered incompatible).
They either need to track every copyright from the contractors (who AFAIK didn't sign over licensing to Tuxedo) to relicense the code, or write drivers again from scratch.
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> If you want to change some settings oft the device, you need to use their terrible Electron application.
That is unfortunate. I hoped they were more like System76.
Having to use their specific drivers is a bit annoying, but I honestly prefer that over drivers that dont work or dont exist at all. I really hope they can bring their stuff upstream at one point, but I can't deny that using their laptops hasn't been good experiences.
So Qualcomm continues its Qualcomm behavior.
I think it's great that a company tries to support ARM Linux and brings what looks to me like a Linux first ARM Laptop.
> If you want to change some settings oft the device, you need to use their terrible Electron application.
> It's so bad, volunteers created an alternative.
Years ago I wrote my own Linux user space driver for the keyboard on my Clevo based laptop. The Clevo application was so terrible I reverse engineered it and made my own Linux free software replacement.
https://github.com/matheusmoreira/ite-829x
It seems some Tuxedo laptops have the same keyboard. Maybe Tuxedo users will find it useful.
The first link does not mention blacklisting, just resolving a license compatibility issue.
"The patches check for the gxtp7380, ite_8291, ite_8291_lb, ite_8297, ite_829x, stk8321, tuxedo_compatibility_check, tuxedo_io, tuxedo_nb02_nvidia_power_ctrl, tuxedo_nb04_keyboard, tuxedo_nb04_wmi_ab, tuxedo_nb04_wmi_bs, tuxedo_nb04_sensors, tuxedo_nb04_power_profiles, tuxedo_nb04_kbd_backlight, tuxedo_nb05_keyboard, tuxedo_nb05_kbd_backlight, tuxedo_nb05_power_profiles, tuxedo_nb05_ec, tuxedo_nb05_sensors, tuxedo_nb05_fan_control, tuxi_acpi, tuxedo_tuxi_fan_control, clevo_wmi, tuxedo_keyboard, clevo_acpi, and uniwill_wmi kernel modules and will taint if they are present."
That's not what I would describe as "resolving a license compatibility issue"
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Very informative, thank you. I was about to buy one of their products but this made me pause.
What you think would be the alternative in Europe ?
Basically the same things happened to my tuxedo also. With the addition of having to change batteries once a year, because it would drop to half it's factory charge, which wasn't really sufficient. I also gave up on them when they wanted so much money for a screen change (which died after about 3-4 years).
I've replaced it with the new framework 13 inch, which so far works well, but I've only had it for 4-5 months. ( well, but not perfect, because the new AMD AI CPU has issues with suspend on linux)
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Slimbook (Spanish OEM) basically sells the same ODM designs as Tuxedo and is an option. They have a few cobranded (KDE etc) versions that contribute to the development teams.
Otherwise at this point I believe the Framework laptops have pretty solid Linux support and is a good option if you're ok w/ so-so battery life.
There is StarLab https://starlabs.systems although they don’t make ARM laptops if that’s what you are asking for.
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Unfortunately I don't know about a good alternative from Europe. I'd probably get a Framework if my device stops working. They seem to work hard at upstreaming things and use Linux standards. They also connected with the GNOME foundation, so there might be some collaboration in the future
https://entroware.com from the UK gets mentioned here and there, but I think they don't do any software development at all, and only repackage OEM laptops.
I am running a tuxedo since 6 years and I am still happy with it. Had to use their support once to replace the cooling assembly because one of the fan bearings started to ger noisy after 5 years of 24/7 use, the replacement was 100 Euros for the whole copper+heatpipe+two fan assembly. The machine is still outperforming many other machines that exist today and the sceeen is one of the best I have seen (OLED).
Software side was smooth sailing as well.
NovaCustom had a discussion on here recently and uses dasharo coreboot.
You are right that tuxedo has some issues. But also take into account price of their notebooks. Even lenovo, hp, dell etc. are not without issues in the similar price category. I take it as cheap HW for advanced users.
But you are right that not having drivers upstream is really strange decision.
Seconded. Stay away from Tuxedo. You get better hardware support with many other vendors.
Which ones? System76 presumably, but do you get better support from any of the mainstream vendors?
There are parts in the industry that are not meant for end users. I service copiers and printers. The fixing unit is not meant to be installed by a handyman, thats why you dont get to buy it. You can cook yourself, it works with 230V.... Toner and drum unit are sold to customers.
Respectfully, nothing about that applies to a laptop. This has been well proven over the years, that with good forethought and making parts available laptops can be highly repairable.
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230VAC mains electrical fittings are openly sold in DIY shops in every country in the European Union without mass-cookings occurring as a result. This reeks of utterly unearned elitism.
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Screw in a light bulb and you work with 230V and we still allow people to screw in their own light bulbs
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"230VAC is dangerous, therefore it makes sense you cannot purchase a 12VDC laptop screen to install yourself"
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Two of the reasons I eventually gave up on Desktop Linux, were virtualization getting good enough for just keep using Windows instead, back in the day with VMware Workstation and Virtual Box, nowadays with WSL (macOS is anyway UNIX enough for me to care otherwise).
And exactly the same experience with OEM vendors that were supposed to be Linux friendly, on my case the whole netbooks effort, where graphics, video decoding and wlan never worked as well on Windows, even though they were supposed to.
Dell XPS also had their issues for something that was supposed to be Canonical certified as running GNU/Linux properly.
It seems Android, ChromeOS and WebOS are the only ones where OEMs actually care to make it work properly, naturally the cloud and IoT vendors with their custom distros as well.
I've been running Linux on my laptop and on my workstation since the 90's. Still using it as my main driver. Fedora Kinoite is my distro of choice, and Lenovo AMD Thinkpad T14s the laptop. Everything works flawless, and it's still pretty fast even though it's two years old already.
And I do not miss at all the Microsoft bullsh*t on tracking and advertising. Or the general sluggishness of Windows.
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Before the Tuxedo, I used an old Lenovo. I didn't check before if it works well with Linux, but it worked flawlessly. I am so used to devices working well and not having to think much about drivers. That's probably why I am disappointed by Tuxedo. They market themselves to Linux users but until recently they did not emphasize upstreaming and embracing standards.
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I ran a Dell XPS (not even the Canonical certified version) for a few years at a past job, and everything worked pretty well under Ubuntu. But it's always a matter of which exact hardware combination has mainstream support, and if the version you get doesn't e.g. have a shitty WiFi chip with bad support.
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Funny to read replies to your comment. One can be sure that on HN for every single critical comment about Linux viability one gets multiple responses claiming that Linux is perfect and without issues.
Inb4: I have used Linux exclusively from 2019 to 2024. It wasn't that bad but it wasn't flawless. At least once per month I met some issue that took few hours to solve. Currently on Win11, zero problems (yes, I am using pirated LTSC IoT version, how did you know?)
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The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 machines have no touchpad or touchscreen support. Listing them as "supported" requires a creative interpretation of the term.
They don't say everything works they say kernel works on those laptops.
I'd say "boots" would be more appropriate.
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Works for me - those are the first things I turn off!
I'm still waiting for the apple laptop killer (a 12h+ laptop with plain Ubuntu) but it's still brittle as fuck. I'm so frustrated by the current state of the mobile computing space. I have to have an Apple locked down device, which I hate, just because I want proper battery life.
A aarch64 Ubuntu vm inside MacOS runs faster and lasts more time than a booted up Ubuntu on arm in these devices. This is how far behind these things are.
and what bums me the most is that it's all about software. The hardware is great, but software on Snapdragon is taking a lot of time to catch up and it screams M$ lobby to me
Pretty sure there are plenty of traditional x86 Linux laptops that have north of 12h battery life. System76 comes to mind (mandatory "System76 is just a Clevo wrapper" comment).
My AMD Framework 13 running Fedora (an officially supported option: https://frame.work/linux ) also gets around that amount of battery life. And can run games surprisingly well.
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Lenovo X1 Carbon g13 gets you close to 12h. Also similar results for other laptops using the same CPU, such as Asus Zenbook S14.
It's not "just a Clevo wrapper."
Clevo is their ODM. They work with Clevo to put together a laptop, and Clevo gets the right to sell a Windows variant. Their version differs, particularly in firmware but also possibly in chips.
But do they weigh 3 lbs at the same time?
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Microsoft has definitely put a lot of work into the arm surface laptops. I'm having a good time using a surface 15 inch. I picked the lowest spec model, only 16 GM ram and 256 GB drive. But I use it like a terminal: I run vscode server on either my desktop or a VM, and the vscode client on the laptop. So the actual compiling and I think also the LSP is running remotely, but I still have a responsive editor on the client. The result is phenomenal battery life, 16 hours if not more. It also has the side effect that any build artifacts are produced directly on the server, no more uploading multi-gigabyte containers over my home Internet to the cloud. But of course, it assumes 24/7 internet connection.
I would appreciate a native Linux arm laptop, but this setup works for me in the meantime.
> I'm still waiting for the apple laptop killer (a 12h+ laptop with plain Ubuntu) but it's still brittle as fuck.
Try Intel's Lunar Lake. My Zenbook 14S (S is important here!) does 12h+ on VS Code, browser & meetings (but compilation is remote). The screen is better than on Macbooks (it's high-res OLED), overall build is good. You probably won't be able to run Ubuntu LTS without installing latest kernel, but regular version should do just fine.
If you don't like ASUS, you can also try Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13. It's a bit on the smaller side and costs twice as much, but it's a pretty neat device.
Oh that's nice hardware for the price. I wonder if ChromeOS Flex installs as easily.
In an alternate universe my hope was AMD builds a killer mobile/embedded Arm APU instead of the failed Opteron A series. Of course this would never happen because what software would run on it? Apple on the other hand steers the entire ship so they had the ability to produce the entire stack. Even MS could not build an Arm ecosystem.
> I have to have an Apple locked down device, which I hate, just because I want proper battery life.
Chicken and egg. The Linux vendors don't have the power to drive ODMs nearly as much as Apple because everyone keeps buying Windows and slapping Linux on it (then complaining online when they have to be the systems integrator themselves, fixing the inevitable razor cuts)
We learned one simple lesson, the past 10 years: if you want good ARM support, it has to come from the vendor. Nobody else can reverse-engineer devicetrees or GPU drivers with a remotely comparable release cadence. Linux has supported new x86 chipsets on day-1 since forever now; compare that to Broadcom or Apple Silicon's "best effort" community support that often takes years to boot into a graphical environment. Forget about stability or regression testing, it's a tinkertoy.
This is a shame because all the ARM licensees worth buying hardware from always have higher margins on smartphones or services. They have no commitment to supporting the PC or server market, let alone the software they use or featureset they depend on. It's no wonder that ARM adoption is stalling on the runway while Power11 gets upstream kernel support and RISC-V displaces integrated ARM ICs. Their only stakeholder is making their money off iPhone apps, not professional software.
Get a recent AMD or Intel laptop, add Linux, and install TLP. Idk if you'll get 12hr or not, but my Asus PX13 survived a 9hr+ intercontinental flight while working on a C++ codebase including compilation in Sublime Text with clangd LSP plugin (and no, I can't fall asleep on planes lol)
> but software on Snapdragon is taking a lot of time to catch up and it screams M$ lobby to me
On Linux?
The hard reality is that Apple invests in SoftBank, the owner of ARM's IP, and nobody in the Linux (or Windows) world does the same. They really just don't care. There aren't entrenched hardware manufacturers that want to reprise the featureset of UEFI on ARM. You will be waiting forever if you demand an ARM laptop that works like an x86 one with Linux.
ARM has been like this forever, and it's unlikely it will change due to Asahi or Apple Silicon. ARM lives or dies based on Apple's treatment of it, no other corporate stakeholder has comparable control over the ISA.
Last time I was at FOSDEM was about a decade ago, it was kind of ironic to see so much Apple gear around, given the conference tone.
I'd suggest that top non-Apple businesspeople try using a MacBook for a few weeks, hopefully it sparks some fresh thinking and decisions. Like it or not, Apple's advantage in battery life (and processor efficiency) is remarkable. If I recall correctly, Samsung made a real dent in the iPhone's lead with the Galaxy S2 around 2011, four years after the iPhone launched in 2007. But with the M1 chips released in 2020, Apple's lead this time around seems poised to last even longer.
Note: not an Apple fanboy.
> businesspeople
Well, there's your leading qualifier. Covid taught us that businesspeople can do their work on an iPad with Google Docs if they had to. It's not much of a surprise to anyone that they can do their work on a Mac with a souped-up iPhone processor.
My shock with Apple Silicon is how it collapses with non-browser-oriented tasks. The moment I stop watching YouTube it's like I'm back on Linux in 2008 again, trying to run everything through a Windows VM. My old Pro Tools plugins? Gotta use a VM, Rosetta won't work. A modern OpenGL program? Gotta wrestle depreciation flags to compile it. Even my old Homebrew casks had to get rewritten because Apple Silicon had to switch stuff around again.
By the time people insisted "try the M2 for a few weeks!" I was already dailying NixOS. MacOS is continuing the frying-pan-to-fire arc it started ever since 10.14.
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I echo that wish.
I'm about to try the Dell XPS 13 Snapdragon Q Elite with Linux so we'll see how it goes.
I'm waiting for this. I like low powered laptops as more of a terminal. I dont want the apple ecosystem, but I'm getting really tired of windows, high end chromebooks kinda disappeared, I have Linux servers at home. Do I have to wait much longer?
An alternative that is available right now is to get an M1/M2 MacBook Air and run Asahi Linux on it. The older models are pretty cheap, but still quite fast. There are some missing features, but it runs really well. I've been using it as my home driver for over a year and it's really solid.
I am so tempted. Is battery life good with Asahi?
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I have a think pad I use this way. Super light, battery lasts forever but it’s super low powered. However, I use Tailscale to connect to my beefy desktop at home with ssh/tmux and Zed remote editing. It’s perfect.
A laptop with a recent ryzen processor and a large battery goes a long way already. It is not as good as my m1 macbook but it is really good
If you can avoid eye rolling at the stupid name, the new Ryzen AI lineup (codename strix point) is really, really good. Very efficient.
OK interesting. I'm not interested in AI stuff, but looks like they are lower power too which is what I want.
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> the current Linux Kernel 6.15 already supports many commercial laptops: Lenovo Yoga 7x, Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, Dell XPS 13, Asus Vivobook S15, HP Omnibook x14, Microsoft Surface 13/15
Has anybody had any first-hand experience with Linux on such laptops?
I run Linux on a Thinkpad T13s, with the previous generation of Snapdragon CPUs. It runs great - quick, excellent battery life and very stable. Installation is a bit obnoxious, but nothing a modestly seasoned Linux veteran can't handle.
Completely agree with this. Ubuntu installs from the standard ARM installer on the X13s and openSuse Tumbleweed needs a litte help at the start but then runs great.
It looks like the Snapdragon X gets quite a lot of support now and end of the year or earlier next year it should be quite useable for most.
When the Snapdragon X laptops came out they where all over 1000$ and I completely understand that the number of Linux kernel enthusiasts to set things up would initially be limited.
Used prices come down now and that will also help.
I have one of those too. Found a nice 32gb spec one on eBay for a good price. Last I tried Ubuntu the main issues were the speakers were very quiet and usb-c display out didn't work.
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did you mean Thinkpad x13s?
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When you say "excellent battery life" .. can you be more specific?
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As someone with a Yoga 7x .. I'm still waiting. It's not fully supported.
The issue is drivers for peripherals and wifi.
I think the GPU is now supported.
It's been a long wait, mostly due to Qualcomm as I understand.
I was down-voted by saying back then (snapdragon x elite release date) that Qualcomm has no priority in making Linux a first class platform. Qualcomm does what Qualcomm does. I won't purchase a laptop which has no known Linux support.
You can however, put Ubunutu no problem on the Ryzen versions.
https://github.com/jrandiny/yoga-slim7-ubuntu
I have an XPS 13. It does run linux, but so does every other laptop with an x86 chipset. It's horrible in pretty much every other way though. The battery, GPU fan, and left USB-C port failed successively shortly after the warranty was up.
Surface Pro X here, the support is meh (see https://github.com/linux-surface/surface-pro-x/issues/7) but good enough to use it casually as a second computer.
In my case the biggest drawback is not being able to use an external screen via HDMI and the sound support (although you can workaround that with BT). Let's not talk about widevine, I managed to eventually get it to work but it was very painful.
If we get full audio support and solve some of the widevine issues, this can easily become a daily driver for when I'm traveling or giving presentations.
Flawless on a ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 and on an HP EliteBook G6.
They are talking about Snapdragon equipped laptops.
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Last I checked power management didn't work so they would run hot and burn through your battery. So unless there is full software support for hardware that makes laptops a portable computer, it's just not a practical solution for me.
Tho, I really want this to happen. As far as I've tested on Volterra (ms dev kit 2023), linux has a lot going right for it. there is a ton of ARM64 packages, and drivers just work (e.g. I had to wait so long for Wacom to release WoA drivers while it worked out the box with ARM64 linux builds). the potential is there and it's great.
On a last note, not being able to ship necessary firmware and relying on a WoA boot drive still sucks.
Poor power management has always been the last bastion keeping me from using Linux in certain machines. My desktop won’t sleep or wake up at all (or it will wake but show a grey screen and glitch out) on any distro I’ve tried. Every time I use it on a laptop the battery life is terrible. Makes me sad.
Power mgmt has worked very well on our old Dell precision that came with Linux, and two newer Frameworks (1 Intel, 1 AMD). Basically perfect for over a decade.
Battery life could be a bit better but is decent.
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It's not precisely a laptop, but I have an augmented reality cyberdeck using XReal AR glasses running into a battery powered Raspberry Pi 5 that I built, which runs pretty well. I feel like the Pis have long been a canary in the coalmine for Linux and ARM (first ARMHF and now ARM64) support.
That sounds… awesome! I want one; links to a part list or anything?
It's easy to find the company (https://www.xreal.com/us/air/) but they sell different models, and I'd be interested in gp's model and user experience.
I'm waiting for Android Virtualization Framework to run a full Linux distro on my smartphone with portable monitor (glasses). Already using Termux but AVF is hopefully much more performant. Maybe the Samsung S26 Ultra will have full support. I might ditch my miniPC if this works out.
I've been playing with it[0] - it still has a few rough edges. It's rather slow to start up compared to firing up a VM in virt-manager, and when you shut it down you must wait for it to finish shutting down before trying to restart it.
Woe to you if Debian pushes a systemd update. It took repeated incantations with apt to get that update to take, because updating systemd would crash the VM Every. Damn. Time.
[0] The current console-only incarnation.
Thanks for sharing. I hope with Android 16 and Samsung implementing AVF for DeX these issues will be ironed out.
> Already using Termux but AVF is hopefully much more performant.
I'm cautiously optimistic about AVF, but I don't see why it would have any better performance than native code running directly on the host system?
I thought AVF has hardware virtualization where proot is user-space.
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I'm waiting for one of the headset vendors to support IMU-based HID mouse cursor control in hardware, with the same end goal in mind. In the meantime I'm stuck on amd64 with my little libinput driver[0].
[0]: https://github.com/boomskats/woahland
How long can work on one of these for?
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Full Linux distro already works fine on my Librem 5, without unnecessary, costly virtualization.
It's a very interesting project, but I don't think I'm ready to let go of all my Android apps.
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If it's not fully supported and has major roadbumps, which it has, it is not supported. I don't know why companies take linux users as fools that'll accept anything thrown at them. Until lenovo can get their shit together and make a respectable laptop with 12h+ battery life, good build quality and a decent enough screen even on the worst configs, im not getting it
Since 2019 there is also the ARM64 MNT Reform Laptop https://mntre.com/reform.html
A little more context : in june 2024 at Computex, Tuxedo announced a possible christmas 2024 release [1]. A Qualcomm/Tuxedo collaboration was expected but did not materialize [2].
[1] https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/TUXEDO-on-ARM-is-coming.t... [2] https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/How-is-TUXEDOCOes-ARM-Not...
Do the Snapdragons implement TSO/Total Store Order like the Apple chips to allow Rosetta 2 like x86 compatibility?
No. But what x86/x64 support that is available on Windows/Linux isn't as slow as you might think.
Do you have any data or reviews to link for that?
I'd really like to replace my old Thinkpad with a long-running, lightweight Linux laptop that can also do some gaming on the side (think Witcher 3 on good settings) but Snapdragon has not lived up to the hype AFAIK.
But big thumbs up to all the Linux devs that are working on improving the situation!
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Any word on a compibily layer project for x86/64 like Rosetta? Seems like an important thing to have imo.
The article mentions an emulator, but it seemed to be for running games.
I also heard MS had something similar in their arm dev kit, but haven't looked much into it.
It's not just for games. FEX-EMU is used here alongside Wine/Proton to run games but it'll also run the x64 version of other things. There's other layers like Box64 that do the same thing. For Linux, a lot of the software traditionally found in repos already has an ARM version and it's not as necessary. On Windows on ARM sometimes the only way to get an ARM native version is to run the Linux version under WSL.
Windows on ARM has allowed running x86 code from launch with Windows 10 and x64 code since Windows 11.
There is Box86/box64/box32. A bit confusing but it's box86 for x86 > ARM32. Box64 for x86_64 > ARM64. And Box32 for x86 > ARM64.
I think they mention games because a lot of other software for Linux is generally open source. So a lot of times it's pretty easy to get an ARM build.
It also does a neat performance trick where it intercepts library calls and redirects them to native versions of the same library.
http://github.com/ptitSeb/box64
There's lots of responses but they miss the point. Rosetta let you run x86/64 apps without even knowing they were x86/64. Back when I ran Asahi, I searched far and wide, but Linux doesn't support that level of transparent integration. You always had to fuddle with the launch params.
Pedantic point, but Linux (the kernel) absolutely does. You can register an executable handler for amd64 binaries, and have Linux call that whenever one is invoked.
There is absolutely no user land infrastructure for using this in the way that Rosetta does on macOS, though. Feel free to contribute it!
You can run x86 steam games on asahi easily now. muvm makes it quite easy to run x86 binaries fairly transparently on arm.
qemu user mode does that
https://wiki.debian.org/QemuUserEmulation
Been daily driving an M1 for two years at this point; no complaints.
With a Linux distro on it?
Yes, with Asahi (Now a Fedora was Arch initially). Think the fingerprint reader still didn't work but not really tried. Also only one external monitor (or DisplayLink) but the screen, sound, battery life, performace all best any x86 I have used.
Asahi Fedora here, works good.
A Unix.
With applications.
And working webcam light and audio.
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Does Linux arm64 run Windows x86 applications in Wine? I mean, I'd be surprised if it did, but I need that. Otherwise an arm64 Linux laptop is super tempting.
Yes, with Box86 and Box64 along with Wine.
well, Wine is not an emulator.
Will this enable plain Debian on tablets like the the Microsoft Surface?
That would be awesome!
Is there something like Rosetta for linux?
box64: https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64
Looking forward to this, thanks.
This sound nice but I don't like the incompatibility with x86. Docker and many other things.
Yeah we need some trade off's. But for dev's & a lot of ops stuff I enjoy more x86 as it's de facto standard.
Docker works fine on arm. Docker has multi-arch image support and it works seamlessly if implemented correctly. Tons of docker images already support multi-arch. https://www.docker.com/blog/multi-arch-build-and-images-the-...
But tons of them also don't. And for those that don't, there are usually alternatives available, but they are just that tiny bit different. So while Docker works, there is extra effort needed to use it.
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I am fed up with the linux world. I run Ubuntu on a randomly selected Thinkpad, everything works, outta the box. Why should i buy a new laptop because it holds another cpu doing the exact workload? I cant code faster, cant talk faster with people and being productive 8hrs strait is just a lie. Since almost 10years i read about pre-installed devices, but i dont see them anywhere. Most companies dont have business linux apps and they wont be available, an armada of developers is busy bringing the light of the webcam functioning. Why not specialize in something else like software the entire world runs on like SAP or whatever? Its nice to spend a rainy day to compile your kernel...but the outcome?
Nobody is telling you to buy a new laptop. Same goes for software. If it's not for you then don't use it. It's all about choice. And the entire Linux ecosystem is not a single entity to "specialize on SAP or whatever". I suspect a large portion of SAP systems already run Linux anyway.
This sort of device is not really “the Linux world,” it is a company trying to provide Linux to people outside it; people who need pre-installs.
It is fine, and good of them to try, but if you don’t need it, you don’t need it.
You don't "have to" do anything, you can stay with the setup you're using right now just fine, I don't get the point of this post, you're fighting ghosts.
Or you could say they are "tilting at windmills".
> Why should i buy a new laptop because it holds another cpu doing the exact workload?
Long battery is pretty nice. And you don't have to be productive for 8 hours straight to feel the niceness.
Why not switch to Windows then? You'll of course have to chuck that perfectly finely working laptop when Windows 12 declares it obsolete, but such is life there.
I think you're confusing Microsoft and Apple. :-)
>Why should i buy a new laptop because it holds another cpu doing the exact workload?
Do you think that you are the center of the world and no product deserves to exist unless you have an immediate use for it?
I was pushing this into the marketing perspective. You are told what to buy...