[compiz] XGL and Xorg confusion

[Dotan Cohen]

On 12/03/2008, Karthik Ramgopal <applefreakpeeps at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>       As there has been some confusion over Xgl and Xorg here, I thought I'd
> just post this. XGL acts as a client to the Xserver and acts as a server for
> all programs connecting to itself. Instead of displaying its results on a
> monitor, it interprets the display and calls the appropriate OpenGL APIs;
> the OpenGL driver physically interacts with the screen, keyboard and mouse.
> So you do need a XServer with driver support for OpenGL acceleration to use
> Xgl with composite window managers via glitz and glitz-glx.
>
> AIGLX on the other hand does not require a separate server like Xgl. AIGLX
> uses indirect rendering. The commands are first sent to X which then
> redirects them to the GPU via the drivers. To support AIGLX the driver needs
> to support GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap as well as Composite in order to use
> compositing window managers. AIGLX has been integrated into Xorg since Xorg
> 7.1.
>
> ATI proprietary drivers upto 8.41.7 did not have AIGLX support and hence XGL
> had to be used. From 8.42 AIGLX support has been added.
>
> Hope this clears it up.

Thank you. I still feel like I don't know enough about the underlying
technologies (and wikipedia is way over my head on these subjects) but
this clears up a bit.

Dotan Cohen

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