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OpenGL Library Mesa 11.0 Brings Open Source OpenGL 4

jj110888 writes: Mesa, the open source implementation of OpenGL, has just announced version 11.0. This adds support for the amdgpu driver, fixes for non-Windows platforms, new OpenGL ES extensions supported, and more. Most notable is the support for all extensions in OpenGL 4.1 by the radeonsi and nvc0 drivers, and support for extensions added in OpenGL 4.2 by the i965 driver. This brings the OpenGL version supported by core Mesa from 3.3 to 4.2, five and a half years after OpenGL 4 was released. Mesamatrix gives the status of which OpenGL extensions are supported by which open source driver. Vulkan, on the otherhand, will have an open source driver once the spec is released.

3 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Open Wide and say Ah. by kthreadd · · Score: 4, Informative

    OpenGL is a specification, not source code. It's a document that describes a number of interfaces that an OpenGL implementation should implement. OpenGL is also quite old and stems from the early 90s, long before open source was even termed. Open simply means that the specification is open, as in anyone can read the specification and create his or her own implementation.

  2. Re:Software using OpenGL by hitchhacker · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sorry for that obvious question but is there left any software still using OpenGL? :-) (mesa demos do not count)

    The first things that come to mind would be any hardware accelerated 3D graphics not targeting a Microsoft-only platform. Any software or games that are compiled against D3D and run through Wine are implicitly using OpenGL. All iphone and android apps are using OpenGL. Scientific visualization applications are most likely using OpenGL along with any other industry that goes back to the early 90's or before. I don't see a whole lot wrong with OpenGL for my needs, and Vulkan doesn't seem to add a whole lot that I can't do already though it is apparently necessary for pushing the envelope wrt next generation game engines. -metric

  3. Re:Can I jump ship yet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Have you looked at steam? You might be surprised at the number of proprietary games available for Linux.

    Also, you should look be looking at this site as well.

    I don't know about bad recent graphical support. I can tell you that I've been happy with the FOSS OpenGL support by Intel and AMD for the past 11 years. The only consistent issue I ever had was with NVidia's proprietary drivers that chained me to a specific linux kernel and even then would still cause kernel panics. I threw out my last NVidia card 6 years ago and never looked back.