The two new architectures haven't been released yet

Jun 8, 2015 07:06 GMT  ·  By

Intel doesn't provide binary installers for its drivers, but it does have a dedicated installer. Intel has just released a couple of binary blobs for the upcoming Skylake and Broxton architectures for the Linux platform.

Linux users know that Intel Graphics Installer is available, but that piece of software is released only four times a year, and it's usually obsolete by the time it's already out. Fortunately, the maintainers for the Intel drivers keep them updated, and there are third-party repos that have the latest version, but it would be nice to have all the drivers in binary form so we can install them by hand.

The reason Intel doesn't want (or hasn't thought about it) to have binary drivers is not known. Maybe they don't want Linux users to get frustrated if the kernel gets updated and the drivers they have installed manually become worthless. This happens all the time with NVIDIA and AMD drivers, and Linux users usually resort to repos.

Intel Linux Graphics Firmware for Linux in binary form

Intel is preparing to release two new platforms called Skylake and Broxton, one for regular PCs and the other one for SoC solutions (Atom). It wouldn't be good PR for Intel if some users were to buy these products and find out that they don't work properly or to let them wait until the Intel Graphics Installer becomes available. So, for the first time they chose to release binary blobs for Intel Linux Graphics Firmware, which can be found on the official website.

This is not exactly in a user-friendly format, but all you need is a terminal and some limited knowledge about the system. It goes without saying that you should only do this if you know what you're doing. The two new platforms from Intel, Skylake and Broxton, should be announced in August.