Arch Linux

Cromulent

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From: United Kingdom

Registered: 2011-08-28

Posts: 52

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OpenGL programming in Arch using open source Radeon drivers

I've done OpenGL programming on Mac OS X and Windows 7 / 8 but I want to finally move the last bit of development over to Arch Linux but I'm confused about how OpenGL is supported on Linux.

Mesa seems to be the library that provides the OpenGL implementation but from reading the website it seems it only supports OpenGL 3.1. Is this really true? Is there no support for newer versions of OpenGL on Linux using the open source Radeon drivers? I'm particularly interested in OpenGL 4.2 since that is the version that is supported by my graphics card.

I know that the closed source drivers provide support for newer versions of OpenGL but since they were removed from the official repos because of AMD failing to keep up with Xorg I decided I should probably stick to the open source ones.

Ledti

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Registered: 2010-07-31

Posts: 122

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Re: OpenGL programming in Arch using open source Radeon drivers

Yes, that's true. Mesa provides 3D support for all of the open source drivers and currently it only supports up to 3.1 of OpenGL spec (for most cards). Though 3.2 and 3.3 don't seem to be that far away according to this.

From the content of that document and from reading various sources on the matter ( ), I would say that:

3.2 and 3.3 are probably 1-2 months away at most., though most likely less than that.
4.0 is probably at least 2-4 months away.
4.1+ is at least a half a year away.

Mesa development is very active though and the radeon drivers in particular have greatly improved over the last year, so those guesstimates could be way off in either direction.

Last edited by Ledti (2013-07-25 18:07:37)

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dotfiles

Cromulent

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From: United Kingdom

Registered: 2011-08-28

Posts: 52

Website

Re: OpenGL programming in Arch using open source Radeon drivers

Yes, that's true. Mesa provides 3D support for all of the open source drivers and currently it only supports up to 3.1 of OpenGL spec (for most cards). Though 3.2 and 3.3 don't seem to be that far away according to this.

From the content of that document and from reading various sources on the matter ( ), I would say that:

3.2 and 3.3 are probably 1-2 months away at most., though most likely less than that.
4.0 is probably at least 2-4 months away.
4.1+ is at least a half a year away.

Mesa development is very active though and the radeon drivers in particular have greatly improved over the last year, so those guesstimates could be way off in either direction.

Excellent. Thanks for the information.

That makes me feel somewhat better. With Linux now having Steam I guess developers are more interested in having decent open source graphics performance.