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OpenGL Becoming a Requirement For the Linux Desktop
An anonymous reader writes "Modern Linux desktops like Ubuntu's Unity and the GNOME Shell have placed a requirement on OpenGL 2.0+ support for handling their compositing window managers and desktop effects. Wayland's Weston also needs OpenGL ES 2.0 support. Now with modern Linux distributions like Ubuntu 12.10, rather than falling back to a 2D unaccelerated desktop if you don't have a sufficient GPU or graphics driver, users are being forced to run LLVMpipe as a CPU-based software rasterizer. LLVMpipe works fine if you are on a new PC with a fast x86-64 CPU, but the OpenGL-based Linux desktops are causing growing pains for ARM hardware, virtual machines, servers, multi-seat computers, and of course all older hardware. LLVMpipe is a Mesa Gallium3D driver that uses LLVM for run-time code generation as an attempt at accelerating graphics faster on the CPU. So much for Linux being good for old computers?"
The KMS based graphics stack is already effectively unusable on AGP systems (if you have SMP + AGP, there are race conditions somewhere leading to really hard crashes that appeared a couple of years ago and dozens of years old open bugs with no resolution other than "use PCI mode" which cuts bus bandwidth by 4 or 8 times, and still doesn't work with SMP), but for those with older PCIe/IGP systems you could always runs Window Maker, Sawfish, Enlightenment, Open Box, or one of many other window managers without a compositor. Of course then you lose compositing, and there aren't any usable external compositors for some reason. The flipside to this is that moving to OpenGL as the primary interface to the GPU means one fewer driver that has to be written, and will probably lead to an overall improved experience for those with supported hardware given the limited resources Free Software drivers authors have.
Is why I will never install Ubuntu again, and why this distribution is doomed to irrelevance.
Seriously, though, OpenGL? WTF? Fluxbox is good enough for me. XFCE, not far behind.
Don't misunderstand me: Ubuntu is fine if you are an absolute Linux beginner. For the rest of us, frankly, this is just one more nail in its coffin, as far as I am concerned, Ubuntu is fast becoming the Mandrake of the 20xx.
Of course, there is always Slackware 14 and NetBSD 6.0, who both just came out and promise tons of (non-OpenGL) goodness.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Get a fucking grip, man. What's with you frothers? I bet you cried blue murder when distros started requiring i686 or newer ISAs.
OpenGL is a great, open, widely implemented graphics API.
Firstly, almost everyone who wants to use video is accelerating it to some degree. Particularly mobile devices, because offloading to a more energy efficient coprocessor is just the right thing to do.
Secondly, for those few who want graphics but don't have any acceleration, software rendering works just fine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyw4elrcfvQ
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=mesa_81_llvmpipe
Of the 3 people remaining who have such an old computer that this is too slow for them, and yet they want to still run newest software, there are other rendering systems and window managers that do not use OpenGL. Nobody ever claimed their goal is to make your piece of shit computer work great, and you certainly never contributed a line of code in your life, so shut the hell up.
What do you think of them apples?