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I want to write application for digital signage but I want it to run in minimal environment so I don't want X11 server. Is it possible to run on one account OpenGl app without X11 (or any other graphic drawing library with at least 2D graphics)?

RzR
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Hauleth
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2 Answers2

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One way is via the Mesa off-screen rendering API. Be aware that this will most likely be unaccelerated.

If you just don't want X11 and you're willing to use OpenGL ES then Wayland and corresponding Gallium drivers would get you hardware acceleration.

genpfault
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  • Wayland is not nearly complete, and also the Wayland compositor will most likely require a physical screen. Technically Gallium could be extended to allow for GPU accelerated offscreen rendering, but so far this is not implemented. – datenwolf Dec 21 '11 at 23:06
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I`m working in a very similar project. Since for me the need to run opengl without xserver was primarily performance based, I opeted instead to install damn small linux to a flash drive along with the program i wrote. Damn small linux is super small (50 mb for the entire os), and since its designed to run on low spec hardware (it can be run on a pentium 1 with 16 mb of ram) it uses a minimal ammount of system resources. I just run ny application on top of damn small linux, and it performs extremely well.

Joss Steward
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