Ubuntu 12.04 Git'ed With Intel Ivy Bridge

To no real surprise, there are noticeable performance improvements to be found for the Intel HD 4000 Ivy Bridge graphics with the newer driver components. What Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is shipping is from approximately February, even before the first Ivy Bridge hardware shipped. However, this will not be updated until Ubuntu 12.10 in Q4'2012. Updating the open-source Linux graphics drivers simply is not trivial for novice end-users as you could risk breaking the Linux installation. However, for those capable of updating to the very latest Linux kernel and Mesa development code, the performance improvements are worthwhile.

Beyond the performance improvements, there is also MSAA (Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing) that is finally coming about for the open-source Intel driver, better OpenGL 3.x support, and various other enhancements.