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Translucent Windows for X using OpenGL

Posted by chrisd on from the really-nice-hack dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "Take a look at this! This guy is working on an OpenGL backend for X. But he needs pizza and some new hardware. He's on a TNT2 for heaven sake!"

1 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. This doesn't automatically mean higher performance by FooBarWidget · · Score: 5, Informative

    Everybody seems to be obsessed with all this "3D-accelerated desktop" stuff but IMHO it's all overrated.

    Using OpenGL will not automatically make everything faster. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if some things become slower. OpenGL is good for 3D stuff, but sucks for 2D stuff. Ever tried blitting in OpenGL? Slooooooooow. And guess what? Most applications use 2D drawing primitives.

    The biggest performance bottlenecks are, and have always been: 1) the driver 2) the kernel.
    2 has already been addressed (my system flies with these patches; it's even faster than Windows!). The upcoming 2.6 kernel will be amazing.
    1 remains a problem. X's architecture doesn't cause the slowness, it's all in the driver! If the driver doesn't implement all OpenGL features then you'll still be stuck with slow drawing speed (or maybe even slower, since emulating OpenGL is slow beyond imagination. ever tried running TuxRacer in plain non-accelerated Mesa?)