Utah GLX was a project aimed at creating a fully

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

basic hardware-accelerated 3D renderer using the

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...

rendering API This is a glossary of terms relating to computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and comp ...

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

-based operating systems. Utah GLX predates

Direct Rendering Infrastructure The Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) is the framework comprising the modern Linux graphics stack which allows unprivileged user-space programs to issue commands to graphics hardware without conflicting with other programs. The main use ...

, which is what is used as of 2014. John D. Carmack worked on Utah GLX.

History

File:Linux graphics drivers 2D.svg, 2D drivers inside of the X server File:Linux graphics drivers Utah GLX.svg, Indirect rendering over

GLX GLX (initialism for "OpenGL Extension to the X Window System") is an extension to the X Window System core protocol providing an interface between OpenGL and the X Window System as well as extensions to OpenGL itself. It enables programs wishing ...

, using Utah GLX File:Linux graphics drivers DRI early.svg, early

File:Linux graphics drivers DRI current.svg, Finally all access goes through the

Direct Rendering Manager The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) is a subsystem of the Linux kernel responsible for interfacing with GPUs of modern video cards. DRM exposes an API that user-space programs can use to send commands and data to the GPU and perform operations su ...

File:Linux graphics drivers DRI Wayland.svg, In Linux kernel 3.12 ''render nodes'' were merged and the

KMS driver The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) is a subsystem of the Linux kernel responsible for interfacing with GPUs of modern video cards. DRM exposes an API that user-space programs can use to send commands and data to the GPU and perform operations su ...

was split off. Wayland implements direct rendering over EGL/ GBM

References

External links

Utah-GLX Homepage

Historical view at OpenGL and Direct3D
Free 3D graphics software Free software programmed in C Graphics libraries Graphics-related software for Linux Linux APIs {{unix-stub