When it comes to using Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops on Linux, one of the big challenges have involved [1]the need to extract the necessary firmware from the Windows 11 partition due to most vendors not providing the firmware in an easily redistributable and public form. The one exception has been the Lenovo ThinkPad with X1 Elite having upstream firmware in linux-firmware.git while now the Dell XPS model has joined the party too.

The Dell XPS 13 9345 (2024) laptop featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite as of today has its firmware upstream in linux-firmware.git . This makes it like the Lenovo ThinkPad where the firmware binaries can now be easily fetched and shipped by Linux distributions without having to worry about extracting firmware assets from the Windows partition and the associated headaches affecting the other X1 Elite laptops on Linux.

[2]This commit added all of the firmware blobs for the Dell XPS 13 9345 to the upstream repository.

Nice seeing this move by Dell but unfortunate it's taken so long for it to happen, especially with that model now being old and the Snapdragon X2 Elite laptops since shipping.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Snapdragon-X-Elite-Ubuntu-26.04

[2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/commit/?id=827c67ef8287b8ec00214c66b64528a790e3cce6