Phoronix takes a quick look at the new Intel Sandy Bridge platform under Linux

Intel does have out launch-day support (in the form of Git code) for the new graphics found on Sandy Bridge, but you must be willing and comfortable building the graphics stack from source on any modern Linux distribution. This would be a big problem for new Linux users and even journalists -- aside from at Phoronix where building graphics drivers from source is a daily ritual. Unfortunately, the open-source Linux graphics driver stack does not allow new/updated drivers to be easily installed like driver installations are done on Windows or under Linux with the ATI Catalyst and NVIDIA binary drivers.

  Intel Sandy Bridge Linux Graphics? It's A Challenge