The Most Important Project Since Mesa 1.0?

The Direct3D 9 state tracker could prove to be the most important project since the original release of the Mesa graphics library.

Earlier this week I wrote about Direct3D 9 support coming to Linux via Gallium3D. Unlike the earlier experimental Direct3D 10/11 state tracker, the D3D 9.0c state tracker actually works with the Nouveau and Radeon Gallium3D drivers and can be used for running Windows games at much better performance than using Wine and its Direct3D layer.

Marek Olšák, the well known open-source developer for his contributions to Radeon Gallium3D as a prolific independent contributor and making many improvements to Mesa/Gallium3D, chimed in on the mailing list with his thoughts on the Direct3D 9 state tracker:

I think this Direct3D 9 state tracker is the most important project since Mesa 1.0. I mean this adds native Direct3D 9 driver infrastructure for Wine on Linux and as such should eventually be competitive with Windows in terms of performance.

Do we need the horrible OpenGL anymore? Haha, just kidding.

If the Wine modifications are accepted by upstream Wine, I'd like this state tracker to get merged. :)

Hopefully the Wine developers will end up adopting this support. It won't be used as an outright replacement for Wine's D3D9 handling since this is a Linux-only solution and at that only works for the Gallium3D drivers (Radeon and Nouveau). But as it can serve as a drop-in replacement on Wine, it has chances of being an alternative offering for those with supported hardware/drivers for obtaining better Direct3D performance on Linux.