Hi,

I frequently find myself in situations where by applying the logic of 'always using the latest release' is not possible.

So, how do I choose a kernel release to run on a specific x86 computer?

For example,
I have a Sandy Bridge / Cougar Point system. I know that the latest kernel will work, but it is not supported by RTAI. So, at what point in the previous releases of the kernel does support for this system start?

Where can I find this information?

thanks,

Andy

Cool question.

According to my findings, the last commit referencing Sandy Bridge (explicitly) went in in November. So, incremental improvements are probably continually being added.

(In linux-stable.git)
As for just basic support, I personally have used recent Sandy Bridge Xeon CPUs that seemed only to be supported after 3.x.

These are some interesting articles:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...l_linux31_gen6
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...el_snb_linux31
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTAxNTQ

As a final note, I've heard grumblings about Linux support for the Sandy Bridge SoC's GPU. Personally, it works fine for my purposes (web browsing, gnome-terminal.)

Thanks for the reply,

I did as you suggested with the following search terms,

* gen6
* cougar
* sandy

in all cases i only seemed to get graphics related information.


So perhaps the kernel is not that specific to the architectural changes of sandy bridge and cougar point from their predecessors'?

Although I do require some level of graphic support, what I am really concerned for is the support of the chipset and mostly the APIC.

Perhaps hardware at this level works to a generic API and so it is irrelevant what version of kernel is used?

Thanks,

Andy