This week a new Ubuntu X1E Concept ISO was published for Ubuntu 25.04 ARM64 with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite/Plus laptop optimizations. With this new ISO the Linux 6.17 kernel is now leveraged for the latest upstream kernel bits. Additionally, the new X1E ISO is finally working again on the Acer Swifth 14 AI laptop that I have used for my Snapdragon X Elite Linux testing.
The plucky-desktop-arm64+x1e-20250827.iso image is now available for those wanting the latest Ubuntu Linux experience catering to the Snapdragon X Elite laptops. The ISO is available for download from this directory.
Excitingly, when trying it out on the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop I’ve used for the Linux testing, this new ISO is working properly on that laptop without any Device Tree issues or boot issues post-install. It’s been months since this “supported” laptop has been working nicely with the new Ubuntu X1E Concept images – I think the last time was when installing the Ubuntu 24.10 X1E Concept ISO and then upgrading manually to 25.04 packages at the time.
This new concept image is working out fine on the Acer Swift 14 AI. Also making this new ISO image more exciting is that it has transitioned to using the Linux 6.17 development kernel for the very latest upstream kernel support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X hardware.
Post-install you still need to install qcom-firmware-extract and run it for those laptops (most models out there, unfortunately) without any upstream linux-firmware support by extracting the firmware files from your Windows on ARM partition.
In any event I am now working on some fresh Ubuntu X Elite benchmarks now that I have a working laptop. Stay tuned for a fresh comparison against AMD Ryzen and Intel Core laptops.
