Intel's Linux Sandy Bridge Graphics Still Troubling

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Intel's Linux Sandy Bridge Graphics Still Troubling: When Intel launched their newest "Sandy Bridge" processors earlier this month there were no Linux benchmark results available. We were not seeded with any CPU in advance and the other publications that have flings with Linux were unable to get the Linux graphics support working. There is no "out of the box" Sandy Bridge support under Linux with Ubuntu 10.10 and other distributions released in the past few months. It was not until the time that Sandy Bridge launched that there was the releases of Linux 2.6.37, Mesa 7.10, and the xf86-video-intel 2.14 DDX that are the versions reported to play well with the new Intel graphics. Because of the lack of "out of the box" Linux support, there was a very scathing review at SemiAccurate.com that went as far as calling Sandy Bridge the biggest disappointment of the year. The code was said to be ready, but there is a challenge in installing open-source GPU drivers by many Linux users.