NVIDIA Is Still Working On The New Linux OpenGL ABI

It's been a while since hearing anything new about the proposed overhaul of the Linux OpenGL driver ABI, but it's continuing to be pursued by NVIDIA.

For two years we've been hearing about a new Linux OpenGL ABI to address the shortcomings of the existing over decade-old application binary interface. Among the reasons for wanting this new Linux OpenGL ABI have been to favor EGL over GLX, meeting the needs of modern OpenGL, and for better allowing multiple Linux OpenGL drivers to co-exist on the same system. This last reason is a big deal for users and developers with improving the Linux driver packaging abilities, avoiding clashes between drivers, allowing multiple GPU drivers to better cooperate, etc. The main focus for this to work is for libGL.so.1 to become a vendor-neutral API library that will then interface with the new driver implementations.

The last update we had on the new Linux OpenGL ABI was last year during XDC2013 but now with XDC2014 Bordeaux being one week away, we know NVIDIA is going to be discussing the proposed ABI with other X.Org stakeholders in France.

Andy Ritger of NVIDIA will be sharing a status update on the new Linux OpenGL ABI with the work that's been done this year and what's still left to be tackled. Stay tuned to coverage on Phoronix of the sessions during XDC2014 with our remote coverage this year (sadly due to ad blockers, I'm not going to be over there this year in person due to the tightened travel budget). NVIDIA's work-in-progress code for the OpenGL vendor-neutral dispatch library remains hosted on GitHub as libglvnd.

Embedded below is Andy's presentation from last year on the vendor-neutral OpenGL dispatch library, for those not up to speed on this advancement for the Linux graphics stack that will benefit both open and closed-source graphics drivers.