GLX

GLX ( Open' GL' Extension to the X Window System , in French “OpenGL Extension for waiter X”) provides connection between OpenGL and the waiter X: it allows the programs which wish to use OpenGL to do it in a window provided by waiter X.

GLX consists of three parts:

a API, which provides the OpenGL functions to an application turning on waiter X;
an extension of the protocol X, which authorizes the customer (the OpenGL application) to send orders of returned 3D to waiter X (the application responsible for posting), which possibly which can turn on another computer;
an extension of the waiter X which receives the orders of returned of the customer and who sends them to the graphics card (when it is possible), or possibly uses one made software (generally with the library Mesa, which is much slower).

If the customer application and the waiter are located on the same machine, and that the latter is equipped with a graphics card able to accelerate returned the 3D, the last two points can be carried out by DRI. This one makes it possible to the customer to reach directly the material responsible for posting without passing by waiter X, and of this fact is faster. This system remains completely transparent from the point of view of the developer of the customer application.

The order “glxinfo” makes it possible to obtain information on the implementation of GLX of the machine customer and the machine waiter, such as the numbers of version, the supported extensions and the views available.

GLX was created by Silicon Graphics and the current version is the 1.4. GLX, as well as the DRI and Mesa, belong to X.Org - free implementation of X Window - since the version X 11R 6.7.0, and of XFree86 (another free implementation) since version 4.0.

See too

Internal bond

AIGLX

External bond

Spécifications of GLX
SGI' S Open Source Codes GLX

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