Free and open-source graphics device driver

Software that controls computer-graphics hardware Data and instructions are sent to the graphics processing unit (GPU) for processing. The rendered results are stored in a framebuffer, which content is scanned by the display controller and sent to the screen. A free and open-source graphics device driver is a software stack which controls computer-graphics hardware and supports graphics-rendering application programming interfaces (APIs) and is released under a free and open-source software license. Graphics device drivers are written for specific hardware to work within a specific operating system kernel and to support a range of APIs used by applications to access the graphics hardware. They may also control output to the display if the display driver is part of the graphics hardware. Most free and open-source graphics device drivers are developed by the Mesa project. The driver is made up of a compiler, a rendering API, and software which manages access to the graphics hardware. Drivers without freely (and legally) available source code are commonly known as binary drivers. Binary drivers used in the context of operating systems that are prone to ongoing development and change (