Linux: Xgl, Xegl and X’s architecture (and future)

After reading the news about the development for Xgl opening up, I decided I wanted to know more about X’s architecture and what has been going on recently with all the work to add support for OpenGL in the X server. Googling around I’ve found some pretty interesting material that I suggest to read. Let’s start with the latest Xgl announcement on freedesktop’s xorg mailing list:

• Latest Xgl code (post by David Reveman)

Then other, more introductory, material:

• The State of Linux Graphics (by Jon Smirl)
• The X factor (Linux Format article)
• New Evolutions in the X Window System (paper by Matthieu Herrb and Matthias Hopf)

and the papers forming the basis for the newer technologies behind X:

• Glitz: Hardware Accelerated Image Compositing using OpenGL (paper by Peter Nilsson and David Reveman)
• Compositing Digital Images (paper by Thomas Porter and Tom Duff)
• A New Rendering Model for X (paper by Keith Packard)

Lastly some definitions, useful to better understand the papers above:

• Definitions surrounding OpenGL support in Linux (by ajax)
• Freedesktop’s wiki pages on: Xgl, Xegl, glitz

Hope this material is useful to you. I’m still getting through it and starting to have a better idea of how things work inside X and to appreciate the amount of work that is being put to make sure that it will be able to take full advantage of what the newest GPUs offer.

Until next time, –tg.