More Details On The OpenGL Situation In KDE's KWin

[Hephasteus]

1. This doesn't seem to be the matter here. Were it so, the blobs would have faced the same issues (they run on the same silicon after all).

2. Kwin's issues seem to be with older "pretty much everything works" hardware, not with beta R800/Nouveau-level 3d support.



You can implement blur all the way down to OpenGL 1.1. It won't look as good without shaders (no gaussian blur) but it's doable and easy - it's what games did before shaders were available!

You have many options: mipmap blur (GL1.1), render-to-texture blur (*), gaussian blur (GL1.4 with ARB shaders or GL2.1 with GLSL shaders), take your pick.

(*) render-to-texture is available on most GL1.5+ GPUs, as long as the drivers don't suck.

You can't show a see through window without shaders. You can but it's going to be a nightmare of font rendering and guessing and stuffing code through the gpu 187 times. Even something small like semi transparent menu bars is way way too much trouble. It can be done and that is the gist of the problem. Just because something can be done even though it's a herculean task doesn't make it a good idea.
Then there's the opposite. You can use gpu gaussian functions on shaders to emulate a "physx" system. But the effects from it are so rediculous that they turn everything you destroy in the environment into tiny poop balls. That's easy and doable it's just bad taste.

[energyman]

The point is that he claims that he doesn't "want" to develop for the blob but that he doesn't have any other choice, which is not true. He can update his X/Mesa/Driver stack on his own or switch to another distro.

if you are done posting crap...

>Personally I would like to test more with free drivers, but my Laptop has an NVIDIA card and my desktop has an Ati R700 card which are both unsupported with mesa drivers in the distribution of my choice.

and please point out which dirver for R700 cards support FBO? Or opengl 3? Or Opengl 4?

[RealNC]

But you're not a KWin developer.

[monraaf]

if you are done posting crap...

>Personally I would like to test more with free drivers, but my Laptop has an NVIDIA card and my desktop has an Ati R700 card which are both unsupported with mesa drivers in the distribution of my choice.

and please point out which dirver for R700 cards support FBO? Or opengl 3? Or Opengl 4?

I don't think R700 cards support OpenGL 4 at all. But besides that, like you really need OpenGL 4 for desktop effects. Anyway if KDE wants to stay relevant as a desktop environment it cannot simply ignore Intel. Intel may not have the best graphics solutions, but ignoring their market share is just plain stupid.

As a more of a GNOME guy myself I must say that it's quite amusing to see how the KDE folks are shooting themselves in the foot with this

[pingufunkybeat]

Well, they have to do something while waiting for GNOME to catch up

[marek]

and please point out which dirver for R700 cards support FBO? Or opengl 3? Or Opengl 4?

All ATI open source drivers for every Radeon support FBO provided you have KMS.

R700 cannot do OpenGL 4.

OpenGL 3 won't be in Mesa unless someone resolves some patent issues.

[RealNC]

OpenGL 3 won't be in Mesa unless someone resolves some patent issues.

Hmm. That means there's no real future with the open drivers when it comes to desktop multimedia/gaming. Staying with GL2 will render them useless for that audience.

How would this patent issue be resolved?

[nanonyme]

Hmm. That means there's no real future with the open drivers when it comes to desktop multimedia/gaming. Staying with GL2 will render them useless for that audience.

How would this patent issue be resolved?

By the patents expiring? This will likely happen 2020'ish.

[marek]

Or distribution makers may start buying patents.

[RealNC]

If that's true, then we have an extremely serious issue here where the open drivers can't possibly even begin to compete with the blobs.