How do I get OpenGL 4.0?

[CptElectric]

I'm running Fedora 17 64-bit on a laptop with an Intel graphics card with a Mesa DRI Intel(R) Sandybridge Mobile driver. I'm trying to run a program which requires OpenGL 4.0 or higher, but I only have OpenGL 2.1. Is there any way I can upgrade or does my driver only support up to 2.1?

[DBelton]

As far as I know, the only Intel graphics processors that support OpenGL 4.0 is the Ivy Bridge. Sandy Bridge only supports 3.0.

Edit:

I believe that Intel just recently added the OpenGL 3 support in their drivers for Sandy Bridge.

[CptElectric]

Oh ok, thanks. But then how do I upgrade to 3.0?

[DBelton]

You should be running the current drivers that support OpenGL 3.0 on the Sandy Bridge graphics.

If you are running the versions (or newer) of the packages listed below, you should have the support. (a fully updated Fedora 17 system should be running newer versions than listed below)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.x release
3D driver: mesa 8.0.1 release
2D driver: xf86-video-intel 2.17.0 release
Libdrm: libdrm-2.4.31 release
Libva: libva-1.0.15 release
Vaapi-driver-intel: vaapi-driver-intel-1.0.15 release

The mesa driver is what provides the OpenGL support. But I did notice that Intel has a few notes about OpenGL 3.0 support.

Compatibility with the OpenGL 3.0 specification. Note that for full OpenGL 3.0 compatibility the following additional steps are necessary:

It is necessary to use the xserver package which supports the GLX_ARB_create_context extension (support is available in the master branch of the xserver project, separate patches available here).
To enable floating-point texture, it is necessary to build Mesa with --enable-texture-float parameter. Please not that the enablement of this feature can be protected by patents (consult the mesa release note on patents here).