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Artix Linux => Applications & Software => Topic started by: kixik on 24 July 2025, 07:15:04

Title: What does it mean "legacy-x11" on the context of mesa?
Post by: kixik on 24 July 2025, 07:15:04
Looking at mesa's 25.2.0-rc2 (https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2025-July/226536.html) I'm wondering what does legacy-x11 means:
Quote
Dylan Baker (1):
      meson: set the `legacy-x11` option as deprecated
Title: Re: What does it mean "legacy-x11" on the context of mesa?
Post by: kixik on 24 July 2025, 07:20:08
BTW, on artix's mesa's PKGBUILD (https://gitea.artixlinux.org/packages/mesa/src/branch/master/PKGBUILD) I see it set to dri2:
Code: [Select]
    -D legacy-x11=dri2

Like 2-D rendering.  Does it mean mesa will only supports 3-D rendering?  Does it affect old GPUs somehow?
Title: Re: What does it mean "legacy-x11" on the context of mesa?
Post by: Dudemanguy on 24 July 2025, 16:59:45
No this has to do with DRI2 (Direct Rendering Infrastructure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Infrastructure)). This was a very old method of userspace graphics on linux that was superseded by DRI3 a few years later. Note that DRI3 is over 10 years old and DRI2 is even older. The 'legacy-x11' option (there's also a 'legacy-wayland' option too btw) builds mesa with support for the old DRI2 codepath. The chances of you actually using this is close to nil however. We're not talking just old graphics cards here, but truly ancient ones. Even then, xorg's modesetting driver (which is DRI3) probably would work with most of these if they're still around?

Basically, they're just going to drop some extremely legacy code that close to nobody still uses today.
Title: Re: What does it mean "legacy-x11" on the context of mesa?
Post by: kixik on 24 July 2025, 19:07:28
Understood, many thanks !
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