> I'd rather expect that the 'user-facing' GL implementation (GL2.x, GL3.x, ...) is identical and can be statically linked, and that only the graphics driver la

> I'd rather expect that the 'user-facing' GL implementation (GL2.x, GL3.x, ...) is identical and can be statically linked, and that only the graphics driver layer differs between machines (which would be similar to an executable which links the C library statically, which in turn talks to the operating system through syscalls). The problem is that the "graphics driver layer" (except a small amount of security-sensitive pieces) runs in user space, in the same process which is doing the OpenGL/Vulkan/Metal/etc calls. The way modern graphics hardware works is that the application writes a very complex and hardware-dependent set of command buffers, which are then submitted to the hardware, and only this final submission goes through the kernel (for security reasons). If the application had to call the kernel for each and every step of the creation of the command buffers, it would kill the performance.