A Control Panel / UI For Intel's Linux Graphics Drivers Is Still Under Evaluation

At the end of last year we reported on the possibility of an Intel Command Center / graphics driver control panel for Linux but not set in stone. The latest to report on the matter of an Intel Linux graphics GUI solution is that it's still being evaluated by the company.

When recently inquiring about the state of IGC compiler usage by their Mesa drivers, I also asked whether there was anything new to report on the prospects of an Intel Linux graphics driver control panel akin to the Intel Command Center on Windows.

Interest in such a control panel is hardly new but something desired for many years by particularly novice Linux users, gamers, and those in general just preferring GUIs to running the terminal. After all, much of the same functionality found within the Intel Command Center is available on Linux but only exposed via sysfs files, setting module parameters, and other command-line driven interfaces for managing their Linux graphics stack. This also remains one of the most frequent complaints/requests for the AMD Radeon graphics stack on Linux too, with only NVIDIA's proprietary driver having quite a feature-rich control area (nvidia-settings). There are some independent open-source operations like ADRIConf and some options integrated into different desktop environments but they tend to not be as close to full-featured as what is available for GPU drivers on Windows.

Would you be interested in seeing an @IntelGraphics #Linux driver control panel GUI?

— Phoronix (@phoronix) July 8, 2021

In any case, while it's a common request, it's not a current priority. I'm told that they are still evaluating a Linux UI and collecting input/thoughts on the matter. So, what would you want to see out of a modern Intel Linux graphics driver control panel?