Similar to the Ubuntu 24.10 concept ISOs for Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptops, Canonical has begun publishing new “concept” images of Ubuntu 25.04 ISOs optimized for use on the growing number of Qualcomm Snpadragon X Elite laptops. This week marks the release of the new ISOs for enhancing Ubuntu Linux on various ARM laptops.
While Ubuntu 25.04 shipped with a desktop AArch64 (ARM64) ISO image, that generic image isn’t as well suited for Qualcomm Snapdragon X laptops as the “concept” images that include various Qualcomm extras for extracting the needed firmware from Windows partitions and other bits exclusively used by the Snapdragon X devices. More about this situation and the concept images tailored for Snapdragon X hardware within my prior review from May of Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Benchmarks On Ubuntu Linux vs. AMD vs. Intel and Linux review.
With my testing on the Acer Swift 14 AI SF14-11, the best Ubuntu experience had been installing Ubuntu Concept 24.10 and then manually updating to 25.04 packages since the generic Ubuntu 25.04 ARM64 failed to boot after install. Now this experience will hopefully be smoother with the Ubuntu Concept 25.04 ISOs.
I’ll be running some fresh tests and performance benchmarks of the Snapdragon X1 Elite powered Acer Swift 14 AI SF14-11 laptop with the new ISO release. In addition to the Acer Swift 14 AI SF14-11, other supported laptops by the Ubuntu Concept 25.04 release include the ASUS Vivobook S 15, Dell XPS 13 9345, HP Omnibook X 14, Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen 6, Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, and Microsoft Surface Laptop 7.
The new concept ISO is “plucky-desktop-arm64+x1e-20250624.iso” and can be downloaded from this directory. More details on the Ubuntu Snapdragon X Elite support via this Discourse thread. New Ubuntu Snapdragon X Elite benchmarks up on Phoronix soon.
