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The State of Linux Graphics

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

jonsmirl writes "I've written a lengthy article covering what I learned during the last two years building the Xegl display server. Topics include the current X server, framebuffer, Xgl, graphics drivers, multiuser support, using the GPU, and a new display server design. Hopefully it will help you fill in the pieces and build an overall picture of the graphics landscape."

4 of 349 comments (clear)

  1. ATI Drivers by GecKo213 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just want an ATI driver that will work in full screen mode with my Dell Laptop. Too much to ask, maybe, but I'm making due just fine with what I've got. (Fedora FC4 w/ Enlightenment)

    --
    Generation Trance: What generation are you?
  2. A little OT, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    here's a demo of a hacked version of KDE running on a XGL server

    http://rapidshare.de/files/4553011/xgl_wanking.avi .html

    Demoed at aKademy 2005, KDE's developers conference.

    According to the developer, this is on a 4-years-old notebook running ATi hardware. Quite impressive.

  3. Thanks Jon! by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'd just like to say thanks to Jon Smirl for writing this. I've been following X development for some time on the various mailing lists and so on, but for an outsider looking in it's nearly impossible to get an accurate picture of what's happening and which bits do what let alone what peoples plans are.

    I think it's a crying shame Jon has stopped working on Xegl - we can only hope others will pick up from where he left off. It looks like Linux graphics is going to go through a series of half-way steps before arriving at fully OpenGL accelerated graphics: Exa based drivers first to speed up RENDER based graphics, then Xglx running on top of an existing X server to utilise its mode setting and input code, then finally Xegl which eliminates the existing X server entirely in favour of a new one that pipes all its drawing directly into the 3D pipeline.

    Question is, how long will it take?

  4. Re:_Eight_ redirections? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Well, it's not as bad as it looks.

    App to GTK+ is just some function calls and data structure manipulation. Like on any OS widget toolkit.

    GTK+ to Cairo is the same: Cairo and GTK+ are both shared libraries. Cairo takes drawing instructions from GTK+ and translates it into low level primitives that map directly to the XRENDER protocol.

    XRENDER is just a wire format - a way to tell the X server what to do.

    Xgl is an X server. You need a single entity controlling video hardware, otherwise things get complicated very fast. Existing GL drivers don't like being used by lots of apps at once as they were built primarily for games. By centralising control of the hardware you can optimise things and deal with existing hardware/drivers.

    GLX->GL->hw - this is only temporary until enough infrastructure has been integrated into the kernel to obsolete the existing X server.