Unlike other platforms, where the Operating System and OpenGL implementations are often updated separately, OpenGL updates are included as part of macOS system updates. Vendors have different approaches to drivers on Linux, some support Open Source efforts using the DRI, and others support closed source frameworks but all methods support the standard ABI that will allow correctly written OpenGL applications to run on Linux.įor more information on developing OpenGL applications on Linux, see Platform specifics: Linux macOS Popular Linux distros come with XOrg now.

These days, XFree86 has been rejected in favor of XOrg due to the change in the license of XFree86, so many developers left Xfree86 and joined the XOrg group. In addition the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) is a driver framework that allows drivers to be written and interoperate within a standard framework to easily support hardware acceleration, the DRI is included in of XFree86 4.0 but may need a card specific driver to be configured after installation. There is a standard Application Binary Interface defined for OpenGL on Linux that gives application compatibility for OpenGL for a range of drivers.

Supporting OpenGL on Linux involves using GLX extensions to the X Server. Graphics on Linux is almost exclusively implemented using the X Window system. If your system does not contain a GPU, or the GPU vendor delivers graphics drivers providing OpenGL support that's so old as to be useless to you, you might want to consider installing the Mesa3D OpenGL library on your system. None of these options are particularly fast, so installing drivers is always a good idea. Without drivers, you will default to a software version of OpenGL 1.1 (on Win98, ME, and 2000), a Direct3D wrapper that supports OpenGL 1.1 (WinXP), or a Direct3D wrapper that supports OpenGL 1.1 (Windows Vista and Windows 7).

Some sites also distribute beta versions of graphics drivers, which may give you access to bug fixes or new functionality before an official driver release from the manufacturer:

However, you will need to ensure that you have downloaded and installed a recent driver for your graphics hardware. In all three major desktop platforms (Linux, macOS, and Windows), OpenGL more or less comes with the system. This Wiki maintains a FAQ page for OpenGL.

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