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KDE SC 4.7 May Use OpenGL 3 For Compositing

Posted by timothy on from the that's-software-compilation-to-you dept.

An anonymous reader writes "KDE SC 4.5 is about to be released and KDE SC 4.6 is being discussed. However, Martin Graesslin has revealed some details about what they are planning for KDE 4.7. According to Martin's blog post, they are looking at OpenGL 3.0 to provide the compositing effects in KDE SC 4.7. OpenGL 3.0 provides support for frame buffer objects, hardware instancing, vertex array objects, and sRGB framebuffers."

4 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. XRender and OpenGL 2.1 by Cyberax · · Score: 4, Informative

    KDE can use XRender and/or OpenGL 2.1.

  2. Nothing special about this by xynopsis · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just the need to upgrade how Kwin uses OpenGL currently to do rendering. Right now its still using the old OpenGL 1.1 - style rendering (fixed-function rendering pipeline) to a programmable one using vertex and fragment shaders. This way, it'll be easier to port it on embedded devices that uses OpenGL 2.0 by default

  3. Re:bloat ware by Erikderzweite · · Score: 4, Informative

    Eye candy in Linux DEs can make work a good deal smoother -- resources are better shared between CPU and GPU. Plus there are some very useful effects -- expo and scale plugins (both in Kwin and compiz). Transparency can come handy too. Granted, desktop cube is there just for show as there are wobbly windows, fire or water effects.

    And advanced effects don't really add that much to boot time -- I still manage to stay within 30 seconds on a rather old hardware, even with P4-class PC.

  4. Stop your trolling folks, you're overreacting by Danious · · Score: 5, Informative

    Oh for god sakes people. Kwin provides pluggable back ends for rendering engines for compositing. Currently we support xrender and OpenGL 1.1, soon we will support the next version of OpenGL. Big deal. You can turn compositing on or off, or choose which engine is best for your platform. We will not remove the old engines or force everyone to use compositing. So stop your trolling.