UNC Linux Users Group

[Brian Pike <bapike AT email.unc.edu>]

It does seem strange that the page specifically mentions the Nvidia 
drivers, but I think they really mean, "Install proprietary graphics 
drivers if necessary."  Many of the open-source drivers for recent video 
cards can't do OpenGL in hardware (because the companies won't release the 
specs, so people can't write drivers...), and will do any OpenGL in 
software.  This means that Xgl, which (AFAIK) tries to perform X requests 
using OpenGL, will be as slow as normal X, if not slower, unless your 
video card is doing OpenGL in hardware.

This page:
http://en.opensuse.org/Xgl
lists Xgl as working with the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 SE (and probably 
similar cards), provided that you install the proprietary drivers from 
ATI.  According to wikipedia, ATI's name for these drivers is "fglrx". 
I'd bet that any hardware supported by that driver would work with Xgl.

Regarding trying to get this to work under VMware, I don't think it'll 
work well because OpenGL will not be accelerated in the guest operating 
system where you want to run Xgl (as I said before, it may run, but it 
will be slow).  VMware probably doesn't give access to raw hardware 
resources, including the video card.  That's why the graphics card on SuSE 
running under VMware appears to be "VMWare INC VMWARE0405"; VMWare is 
emulating a video card, trapping messages to the video card, and 
translating and sending them to the host operating system.  I suppose, in 
theory, VMWare could make their video driver appear to support 
accelerated OpenGL, passing what data it gets to the host operating 
system.... but they apparently haven't implemented this yet.  According 
to:
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/ws_vidsound_d3d_enabling.html
the only way you can get (experimental) accelerated 3d is if the 
application is using Direct3D in, of course, a Windows guest operating 
system, with the host operating system being either Windows or Linux with 
accelerated 3D support.

-Brian

On Thu, 25 May 2006, Jesse Aaron Safir wrote:

> Greg et al,
>
> > http://en.opensuse.org/Using_Xgl_on_SUSE_Linux
> >
> > Steps your through the process. It is unclear to me if the i830 is
> > supported. Best thing to do is try. The i845 is supported.
>
> So...these instructions say to install the NVIDIA drivers.  I can do that
> but I'd just like to make sure this applies even if you don't have an
> NVIDIA graphics chipset.  I have an ATI Mobility Radeon in my ThinkPad
> R40.  Perhaps I'm asking too much, but I'd like this to work under VMWare
> Workstation v5.5.1.  In this case, SuSE 10.1 sees the graphics card as
> "VMWare Inc VMWARE0405".  Is this Xgl still still as "experimental" as
> these docs make it sound?  I thought maybe it came installed in SuSE 10.1
> by default and took advantage of most graphics cards that do OpenGL.
>
> ********************************************************
> *  Jesse Aaron Safir, Chief Windows Systems Engineer   *
> * Server Farm Group, ITS Infrastructure and Operations *
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