Buying a Lenova Yoga 7X with the snapdragon - would like to run Neon as a Dualboot - any tips on what to download?
Be aware that at this point since these Snapdragon laptops are really new they likely won’t work well with Linux yet, if they do at all, so you will probably have to wait several months.
Also KDE Neon doesn’t offer generic ARM64 images (at least not yet) but the packages exist anyways so, hardware compatibility aside, you could install Kubuntu for ARM64 and then add the Neon repository (https://archive.neon.kde.org/user/)
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You will need a lot of work, probably a custom built kernel for this specific device, on top of drivers for all the peripherals.
Arm is not at all like x86, it is very much like phone ROMs, mostly unique to each device, though this is mostly kernels and drivers, not the software and desktops.
The good news is that neon do build Arm packages, so once you have a working kernel and drivers built for Ubuntu, you can sort of create a neon system by adding their repos to the flashed Arm image, either a Gnome, server, or “preinstalled” images, or starting from debootstrap (the hard way).
The bad news is that until the hackers create/modify drivers for all the hardware (embedded on the chip), it may be a while before something usable comes out.
I had a Lenovo Flex 5G witth a Snapdragon until this past April and it only had rudimentary support after 4 years, compared to the more popular Thinkpad X13s, let alone any working installer images outside of PostmarketOS (and one has to build those themselves via scripting)
Poke around in https://oftc.irclog.whitequark.org/aarch64-laptops, this is where the Snapdragon Windows device development action is.
tl;;dr just getting Linux on it will be a process, and maybe a long one since this is fresh kit, and neon will be a manual thing no matter what.
On non-Snapdragon platforms Arm is a bit easier. I have done this on Lenovo Chrome OS tablets and a Lenovo Duet 5. The tablets ran well, the Duet not so much, as it lacked good/any video drivers for the Snapdragon SoC at the time.
I even hacked a set of scripts to build a neon Arm image for the 10e tablets, which was a pain in the butt.
But the uniqueness for each SoC makes for spotty support, and numerous sets of projects.
Good luck!
There isn’t such a thing.
Unless I’ve missed something of course.
you could install Kubuntu for ARM64
There isn’t such a thing.
Whoops, you’re right. While normal Ubuntu has ARM64 ISOs, Kubuntu doesn’t.
Arm is not at all like x86, it is very much like phone ROMs, mostly unique to each device, though this is mostly kernels and drivers, not the software and desktops.
That’s true for most ARM devices on the market today but not for the ARM architecture as a whole.
There are ARM64 servers and workstations that simply support normal ACPI and EFI and stuff and will let you install any generic ARM Linux distro from an ISO that doesn’t need to be custom tailored to the specific device.
Qualcomm is working on upstreaming Linux support for these chips, and at that point, if I understand things correctly (I hope I do), the situation for these laptops should be similar to what I described, where any laptop can run any Linux distro - you’ll have cases where some drivers are not supported, just like on some x86 laptops - but at least Linux should generally boot easily.
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There is now a way - use the new Kernel at 24.11 xle developed for the new qcom chip, get everything going, then dowload the Plasma DT to run along side the Vanilla DT and then select to log in to the Plasma Weyland DT. The DT reflects off the Kubuntu getting 6.1.5 kde Plasma DT. Enjoy.