Mesa 9.0 Released With Open Source OpenGL 3.1 Drivers

An anonymous reader writes "The Mesa developers released Mesa 9.0 with open-source OpenGL 3.1 driver support. This de facto OpenGL Linux implementation now supports the several year old OpenGL 3.1 specification for Intel hardware while the other drivers are still at OpenGL 3.0 or worse. Other features to Mesa 9.0 include completing MPEG1/MPEG2 video acceleration, early OpenCL support, bug-fixes, and new hardware support." OpenGL 3.1 support is limited to Intel hardware, but at least ATI/AMD hardware supports some of OpenGL 3.1. A few features from OpenGL 4 were also added.

Comments

Mesa Same As Me

[smittyoneeach]

Mesa same as me,
Slashdotty as I can be,
Loving software free,
Cleanshaven, save goatee.
Burma Shave

Re:Mesa Same As Me

[gatzke]

Cleanshaven, save goatee.

I accidentally read this as goatse. Not. the. same.

Perhaps the importance of opening up will be noted

[erroneus]

More and more as home computing becomes about appliances instead of about general purpose PCs and more and more, different detail markets are looking to Linux to make these things happen, video chip makers who have bet most of their business on Microsoft-only support will soon need to rethink that notion.

Long ago, no one thought IBM could be humbled. No one could have imagined Novell becoming a novelty. And no one in Windows-centric IT shops want to admit that the vast majority of internet and databases out there are running on Linux servers and services.

Things are shifting but some people aren't noticing or believing.

F* You NVidia... F* You.

Re:Perhaps the importance of opening up will be no

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I get the impression(whether this is better or worse is another question) that makers of video chipsets understand that Linux support is necessary to win certain markets(embedded Android stuff, *nix graphic workstations, compute clusters, etc.); but that "support" does not need to mean anything other than 'set of binary blobs that work with the one blessed kernel version and system configuration. If you are the purchaser of a consumer product, suck it up. If you have a suitably large enterprise support account, please contact our engineering/integration team.'

In the 'appliance' market, you aren't even supposed to touch the software, just twiddle the 'apps' on top of it, and much of the hardware(even when the components are well understood and fairly standard) is overtly hostile to tinkering. Yes, the chipset vendor had better have a Linux BSP if they want to make a sale; but(based on the state of 3rd-party Android ROMs), they definitely don't have to do it in a way that is overly helpful to 3rd parties.

In the expensive Workstation and Compute Stuff market, you have customers who will pay good money, sometimes excellent money, to Make It Work; but you also have customers used to the fact that 'Product X is only supported on RHEL Antiquated Edition with Nvidia Drivers v.Y'.

More importantly...

[DMJC]

More importantly... Nouveau is starting to become performance competitive with the Nvidia Binary Blob. As Mesa adds features and rapidly catches upto the closed drivers, it'll surpass them for performance if not features. The time is coming quickly when the drivers built into Linux will be better than the official ones.

What the hell is Mesa?

[westlake]

The documentation for Mesa begins --- short and sweet --- with this simple one line description:

Mesa is an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification - a system for rendering interactive 3D graphics.

The Mesa 3D Graphics Library

Re:Switching to the Linux

[dexotaku]

There has been no strong push to provide alternatives for the Adobe-applications, so why would there be anything such now all of a sudden? I do not see the situation changing for years to come.

Um. What? Seriously, what?

This .. the lack of usable, powerful equivalents [that don't require an engineering degree or at least mindset in order to learn how to use, like software such as Blender] to such applications as:

• * Photoshop [GIMP ain't there yet, but it's getting closer - the next major release may shift this considerably, when they add 16bpc image support among other things]
• * Lightroom [Raw Therapee is getting -really- close but metadata interoperability with Adobe apps via XMP or equivalent is basically a requirement for professionals to take it seriously]
• * Premiere .. or Sony Vegas .. or farther up the line, AVID et al [there are literally no even remotely-near-equivalents in the video NLE arena, basic editors - sure, but anything more advanced doesn't exist, though again - development -is- at least taking place in tools to build up to that degree of functionality - we'll probably be there in the early 2020s]
• * After Effects [no even remotely-near-equivalents at all, no development that I'm aware of]
• * Indesign [Scribus is inching forward but there are a few interface obstacles that make it simply bizarre to use for anyone who's ever used "pro" layout software .. even Pagemaker 4 - from the early 1990s, for Windows 3.1 - is still functionally superior]

... are basically what are holding back *all* of the people I know who would like to switch away from Windows but can't due to the requirement of usable production tools [for business -or- any other use].

There are some shining examples [look for an audio NLE on linux and there are several very decent competitive options to programs like Vegas, Audition, Sound Forge, etc., or check out Inkscape for graphic design] as well of course, but there are various reasons why those may not be suitable solutions too [such as the multitude of choices on linux of who-knows-how-well-they're supported low-latency audio driver subsystems which may make required things like synchronous multitracking impossible with a given piece of equipment or even particular distro].

I occasionally teach uni [mostly arts] how to use graphic design / video / audio software; many can't afford Macs [where the Adobe applications and other stable equivalents already exist and credulous, uneducated users aren't even aware of or simply don't care about the walled-garden[s] that will affect what they can do with their own hardware] and among those who can't, the majority would like nothing more than to switch away from using Windows.

My observation of reasons for resistance to the adoption of linux by the sections of the populace that I deal with on a regular basis [musicians, videographers, video/audio editors, graphic artists, photographers, professional academics of many stripe[s], writers, etc.] are thus:

• #1 the lack of serious production tools - closed- or open-source, free [as in beer] or not .. almost everyone I know would GLADLY pay Adobe or whomever fistfuls of dollars for native linux versions of their applications *just* to be able to get away from Windows.
• #2 is the lack of native iTunes because so many people are inextricably tied to Apple's store [half of the reason I refuse to open an iTunes store account or for that matter purchase any iDevice - the other half being that I both can't afford to and also refuse to effectively pay more to get less overall functionality/control].
• #3 is, predictably, gaming [Steam may alter this somewhat].

I have helped a number of people [including both children and seniors] switch to linux, but their usage profiles are pretty uniform: they're content consumers, not p