DirectX 10/11 Coming Atop Gallium3D

[whizse]

So at least in theory this would mean that someone could write a single driver and ship it for both Linux and Windows (at least when/if earlier versions of Direct3D is supported)?

Focusing your resources on a single driver for all platforms could be a big win, at least for companies like Intel, where the Linux driver isn't a port from the Windows side?

[BlackStar]

And this is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE thing that should be avoided at ALL COSTS.

[Throwing oil to the fire]

Why? D3D is a pretty nice API.

Not to mention that the people who design D3D are mostly the people who design OpenGL (that is, AMD, Nvidia, Intel and the rest).

[V!NCENT]

The first thing I thought about when I first read about Gallium3D was DirectX and Glide.

Any change of a Glide state tracker being usefull? I'd love to play an old Glide game in under Wine

Or is this totally unrealistic? In other words; would it work just as much as DirectX does as a state tracker under Wine?

[Kazade]

And this is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE thing that should be avoided at ALL COSTS.

I agree, but if we get native D3D I think it's quite likely to happen.

[droidhacker]

So, if all that happens, DX will gain popularity as a graphics API on Linux

And this is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE thing that should be avoided at ALL COSTS.

[marek]

Hey guys, you don't really believe VMWare will release source code of their D3D state trackers, do you? That would be like saying "come VirtualBox and take some of our market share, you're welcome".

What Zack says and what will FOSS community get are two entirely different things.

[bugmenot]

Michael, first, i really enjoy the services Phoronix provides me (both news and discussion-wise), and I know that as a non-subscriber leech I can't possibly make any demands, but could you please stop using "atop" in every second sentence? Reading this word is actually making me cringe by now.

[Kazade]

It won't help the Wine devs, they still need to support closed source drivers like FGLRX and Nvidia...

However, looking long term, this is very interesting. If the open source drivers support D3D 10/11 (and I'm sure D3D9 at some point) that means there will be a standardized API for creating a D3D context under X.

At a guess, I'd say in 2 years time we'll have these state trackers, also by that time nouveau and the open source radeon drivers will be used by people that don't need the extra performance that the closed drivers give, I'd say that was a large majority of people.

So, if all that happens, DX will gain popularity as a graphics API on Linux, and it would be relatively trivial for ATI/Nvidia to implement the X-D3D API (if as they say they share most of the code with Windows).

If that happens, Wine won't need their WineD3D layer, as both open and closed drivers would support D3D on Linux. Cool eh

[Perry3D]

Maybe not so boring for the wine developers?

[droidhacker]

Boring... vmware+msdonkey=uselessness.