A nice explainer on the Linux kernel graphics stack that I thought would be helpful to share.
Redirect link: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=CW1CLcT83as
Oh my god, we have a Torvalds emoji?
I love this site.
Thank you for this. Shit is WILD confusing.
Still not sure I have a 100% grasp on everything but good intro video
If you have any questions don’t feel afraid to ask!
I think my confusion is around MESA. Is it basically that the userspace drivers are packaged together and that’s MESA? And each one needs a separate driver to interact with graphics libraries like OpenGL and Vulkan?
Mesa is an open-source implementation of OpenGL & Vulkan, it’s job is to act as a sort of translation layer between a graphics API such as OpenGL or Vulkan and the kernel drivers for whatever hardware you’re using. Now for Nvidia, since they don’t like to play ball with the rest of the world, they decided to throw Mesa out of the window completely and instead make their own proprietary implementation of OpenGL & Vulkan. Though there is Nouveau & NVK for the Nvidia side of things, they’re still very work in progress and don’t really offer the same performance as their proprietary counterparts, but maybe one day.
Also Nvidia, please, I need my hardware cursors on Wayland.
Okay so MESA interacts either driver type! That clarifies, thanks