Thunderbolt On Linux Not Yet Primed For Success

As a word of caution for anyone that was hoping Thunderbolt (a.k.a. Light Peak) was in good shape for Linux, the Intel technology doesn't appear to be quite ready yet.

Over the past few days there's been a kernel mailing list thread about Linux support for Thunderbolt when using an Apple MacBook Air computer and a beautiful 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt display. It turns out that monitor hot-plugging isn't working for the Thunderbolt driven display that effectively pairs DisplayPort and PCI Express into a serial data interface. The display isn't lighting up when being hot-plugged.

There was a talk at last year's Linux Plumbers Conference about Thunderbolt support for Linux, but it doesn't seem that all of the pieces are in place yet. The latest communication from the Linux kernel mailing list is that Greg Kroah-Hartman is going to try to get some Apple Thunderbolt hardware to look into the situation.