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When I bought my computer I didn't think graphics were important. Now I wish I had spent some money on a good graphics card. I might have to buy one so I can de
by jxcole 15y ago
When I bought my computer I didn't think graphics were important. Now I wish I had spent some money on a good graphics card. I might have to buy one so I can develop stuff like this.
For those who are interested, if you have a laptop with an intel based graphics card, you are probably using something called Mesa. After researching for a long time, Mesa is some sort of a graphics driver that works on Linux. Apparently, if you have Mesa 7.10+ and Firefox 6 webgl works, though I haven't figured out how to upgrade Mesa. The default on Ubuntu 10.04 is 7.4 or something like that. Apparently, Mesa is pretty buggy and can crash a lot.
If anyone has more info about this subject, I would appreciate it.
- oomkiller 15y agoMesa is a software 3D driver. It uses the CPU instead of your GPU. I've never had an intel igp on Linux, but it should probably be using intel drivers for 3d, not Mesa.
- thristian 15y agoMesa was originally a pure-software implementation of OpenGL (with the trademarks filed off), but since it was the only complete, open-source GL stack, a lot of open-source hardware drivers re-use parts of it, including the official Intel graphics drivers. To the grandparent poster: Like any system component, the best way to upgrade Mesa is to upgrade your OS. Sadly, the latest version of Ubuntu is 11.04, which comes with Mesa 7.10.2, and Firefox blacklists every version of Mesa before 7.10.3, so you'll probably have to wait for 11.10 (or just force-enable webgl).
- oomkiller 15y agoThanks for the extra info. I wasn't aware that hardware drivers used it, I just remember back in the day Mesa meant no Soldier of Fortune demo and Beryl :)