Using OpenGL Without X-Window System

Question

How to OpenGL on Linux Platform Without X-Window System, can I send OpenGL Graphics Directly to Framebuffer Device?

There Is Project Named DirectFB (Direct FrameBuffer). With DirectFB We can do this but DirectFB needs for driver for each hardware and I want to user a graphic card that only have Linux driver.

Answer 1

This is how i did it in my ubuntu 11.04 in detail: 1- Install the dependencies using the command:

sudo apt-get install xutils-dev libpciaccess-dev x11proto-dri2-dev x11proto-gl-dev libxdamage-dev libxfixes-dev 

2- The mesa library needs libdrm version >= 2.4.24 which is not available in the ubuntu 11.04 repository (older version is available) so you have to download the source and build it using the following commands:

./configure make make install 

3-Download mesa library and then compile it using the following commands: ./configure --prefix=install_directory

make realclean make linux-fbdev sudo make install 

be careful when you choose the install_directory so that you don't overwrite the system's mesa library. after that compile your application using the options : -lGL -lOSMesa -ldl -L'install_directory/lib' -I'install_directory/include'

Answer 2

Apparently is possible to have SDL running without X.

Basically, your kernel should have framebuffer support and you could use SDL on top of DirectFB.

These threads are ok:

http://lists.libsdl.org/pipermail/sdl-libsdl.org/2006-October/058305.html

http://forums.libsdl.org/viewtopic.php?t=4079