KDE SC 4.7 May Utilize OpenGL 3.x For Compositing

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE SC 4.7 May Utilize OpenGL 3.x For Compositing

We're just days away from the release of KDE SC 4.5, but details are now surfacing from Martin Graesslin about his planned KWin compositing changes in the KDE SC 4.6 and 4.7 releases. Compositing in KDE SC 4.6 should be much faster, support mobile rendering using OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0, and potentially offer a stable ABI. With KDE SC 4.7 is where we're looking at the KDE world to potentially begin tapping OpenGL 3.0 for a better compositing experience...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODQ1Ng

[atmartens]

What does this mean if graphics drivers or cards don't support the standard?

[Tsiolkovsky]

What does this mean if graphics drivers or cards don't support the standard?

The blog says:

My abstraction for VBO is able to fall back to legacy rendering if VBOs are not available (very unlikely), which gives us just one high level API call to do legacy, normal and modern (forward compatible) rendering.

So I guess this means that if the driver doesn't handle it the current (legacy) mode will be used. And if even this isn't posible there is still XRender mode I guess.

[V!NCENT]

KDE, always two steps ahead of any other GUI on the planet, including Windows and Mac OS X

Where will KDE be 3 years from now? Oh boy excitement

[xeros]

I wish it would be only some instructions from OpenGL 3.0 which even older cards (not OpenGL 3.0 compiliant) and drivers could handle (in hardware acceleration).

[curaga]

What does KWin gain from OpenGL 3? The blog post doesn't say.

[kraftman]

Compositing in KDE SC 4.6 should be much faster,

There's a space for improvement. Compiz is much faster in some things right now. Btw. great article, good to see it's not a few liner only.

[phoen1x]

KDE, always two steps ahead of any other GUI on the planet, including Windows and Mac OS X

Where will KDE be 3 years from now? Oh boy excitement

Cool story... NOT. Amature looking gui is ahead osx? What were u smoking? Technology might be not bad, but the look of kde stuff is so damn ugly, they should hire REAL designers.

[Koorac]

Cool story... NOT. Amature looking gui is ahead osx? What were u smoking? Technology might be not bad, but the look of kde stuff is so damn ugly, they should hire REAL designers.

I like the design, but firefox and eclipse are a real pain!

[kraftman]

I like the design, but firefox and eclipse are a real pain!

Then blame gtk.