While Clarkdale and Arrandale CPUs with on-die integrated graphics apparently work just fine under Linux, give or take a bug here and there, it’s now Sandy Bridge time.

Intel’s open-source development team, the guys committed to make Intel some open source money, has now begun churning out first bits of code to support Sandy Bridge and the code is available in the Git master repository for the Direct Rendering Manager and in the xf86-video-intel DDX X.Org driver.

The code will continue to trickle down in the following months as well and should be ready for when actual Sandy Bridge CPUs arrive. The Sandy Bridge has been taped out last year and beta development of drivers and additional support is long under way. 

More here.