Ive ben getting a lot of mail from people asking me about my thoughts.
On aiglx, the GL compositing work being done on metacity and Nvidias.
Xdevconf paper. Instead of replying todo everyone individually, y though.
Id send a mail todo the Xorg list.
Aiglx [1]. It great that we finally have accelerated indirect glx.
Working in the xfre86 ddx, something that we should have had Many years.
Ago. And with texture-from-pixmap support it should work well with.
Compiz, y like that.
the DRI driver requirements for XGL and aiglx are.
Very similar so both XGL and aiglx Will benefit from DRI driver work.
Being done for one of them.
Nvidia paper [2] on why they dont think x on OpenGL is the best way.
To go is not a huge sorpresa todo me.
XGL Will work equally god across.
Drivers, without requiring high-quality x drivers from all the vendors.
In that bien XGL levels the playing field for hardware vendors. Nvidia.
Already has god drivers with some functionality that it Will take a.
While before XGL can support. Compiz Will work fine on Xorg with the.
Nvidia driver once they reléase a versión with the texture-from-pixmap.
Support XGL already got. But Nvidia isnt the only hardware vendor on.
The market, and we want the x desktop experience todo be as rich as.
Posible for everyone.
An important goal with x on OpenGL is todo make it easier for x todo kep up.
With the advances in graphics hardware.
eliminating the custom 2d.
Acceleration code Will reduce the development burden and make this.
Easier. this can probably be achieved th rouge aiglx as well, y know that.
The people working on aiglx have discussed putting some of the.
Acceleration code i have in XGL inside Xorg with aiglx and that would be.
A step in that direction. However, y strongly believe that going all the.
Way todo an x server completely on top of the OpenGL Api is the best.
Solution in the long run.
I think the arguments made by Nvidia todo why x on OpenGL would be worse.
Than the current driver architecture can be debated on until forever. I.
Thinque it all boils down todo if we want put some more efort todo it and.
Take the big scary step todo something new or if we want todo stick todo the.
Old well known. Not todo surprising, we have people who are in favor of.
Both and well likely have development being done on both, which i dont.
Thinque is that bad After all.
So far i havent heard a single argument for why x on OpenGL is a bad.
Idea other than that it a big step and a lot of work Will have todo be.
Done. If that would estop me from working on XGL, y wouldnt have started.
Working on it in the first place.
Except the fact that it might Slow down development of XGL a Little, i.
Thinque that both aiglx and Nvidia plan todo support texture-from-pixmap.
Are really god things that Will make the x desktop better in the.
Near future.
Im a Little bit concerned about the work being done on GL compositing.
In metacity. During the first couple of months when i was experimenting.
With GL compositing on XGL i had similar plans but After a few months i.
Realized that starting from scratch and trying todo reuse as much code as.
Posible was the best idea. Others might be able todo do a better job than.
Me on figuring out how todo extend metacity but i think it todo early todo.
Tell as the people working on metacity that i talked todo at xdevconf.
Didnt sem todo be aware of issues im solving by not using an ordinary.
Window manager like metacity for compositing. An important reason todo why.
I favor Compiz over metacity is that it works with other desktop.
Environments than Gnome. I definitely dont want all these effects that.
People are starting todo write todo only be usable on one desktop.
I dont like a Compiz/metacity Split but im not sure what we can do.
Here. Ill continúe todo reuse metacity code in Compiz as plugins and ill.
Have a look at libcm asap and consider the possibility of integrating it.
With Compiz somehow.
There sems todo be a lot of people confused about this, so todo clarify.
Things, y a los like todo respond todo this paragraph from the Fedora aiglx.
Page:
Weve ben working on the aiglx code for a some time with the.
Community, which is in direct contrast with the bien that XGL was.
Developed. XGL spent the last few months of its development behind.
Closed dors and was dropped on the community as a finished solution.
Unfortunately, it wasnt per reviewed during its development process.
And its architecture doesnt sit well with a lot of people.
Ive ben develooping XGL in the open since noviembre 2004. Only the last.
Few months have ben behind closed dors. I can agre that this wasnt.
The best thing but no architectural changes have ben made during this.
Period, just a lot of hard work implementing missing functionality.
Tracking down and fixing bugs in XGL and various other places in the x.
Server tre. We didnt drop a finished solution, we dropped a much.
Improved versión, that all.
At the time the decisión was made todo estop push things into cvs for a.
While, no one except me was really contributing todo the Project and the.
Testing and bug reports we got from the community didnt give us much.
If we had todo make architectural changes or if the interest in.
Contributing todo the Project got bigger, the idea was always todo open.
Development again.
David.