RE: using OpenGL without windowing systems

The hardware have direct access to the frame buffer, the frame buffer is 
both used by the XWindow system (of course) and the text-mode system (!) 
(someone have written games under MSDOS? :) ). When you are working on the 
text-mode console, the underling system is using the frame-buffer. The 
problem (I think...I've not verified) is that the underling system 
(text-mode driver) have not been designed to allow concurrent access to the 
frame-buffer (while a graphics system is designed for this...). Read also 
"7.2 Kernel support for graphics cards" from 
http://www.finux.org/Reprints/Reprint-Gettys-OLS2004.pdf .

About X servers, exists very lightweight ones, for example "fvwm":
http://www.fvwm.org/documentation/faq/#1.6
or "lwm":
http://www.jfc.org.uk/software/lwm.html
or "9wm":
http://unauthorised.org/dhog/9wm.html
or...:
http://www.plig.org/xwinman/others.html

About using OpenGL under text-mode Linux machines, I think this links can 
be useful:

http://www.mesa3d.org/fbdev-dri.html (hardware accelerated)
http://www.mesa3d.org/MiniGLX.html

http://www.mesa3d.org/glfbdev-driver.html (software only)
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Framebuffer-HOWTO.html


         Daniele.

At 18:40 12/16/2004, Andras Balogh wrote:
> > I assumed the question here is about how to get hardware
> > acceleration without a windowing system proper.  Is it?
>
>Correct.
>
>The strange thing is that OpenGL tries to be independent of the windowing
>system, yet it's so tightly coupled to the windowing system, that you cannot
>use it without one...
>
>How about OpenGL Embedded??
>
>I understand that Windows based systems come with a windowing system by
>default, but if you would want to use Unix for example, then why would you
>have to setup a behemoth like X??
>
>
>
>
>Andras
>
>
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