[Pkg-ltsp-devel] Wish: Getting VirtualGL into Debian

[Oliver Grawert]

hi,
Am Mittwoch, den 22.04.2009, 10:52 +0200 schrieb Josselin Mouette:
> Le mardi 21 avril 2009 à 20:08 +0200, Alexander Kurtz a écrit :
> > have you seen this amazing piece of software: VirtalGL[1][2]
> > In short, it is a library which is pre-loaded into applications, catches
> > all OpenGL calls, renders them on the local graphics board and sends
> > them jpeg-compressed to a (thin) client. It works almost perfect and the
> > best thing: It is free software!
> > 
> > Why I am writing this message: I have used VirtualGL for some time now
> > to bring OpenGL-apps to my LTSP-Thin-Clients. Since LTSP is already in
> > Debian, it would be great if VirtualGL was too! The VirtualGL authors
> > have already released .deb-packages, so I guess integrating it into
> > Debian shouldn't be too hard.
> 
> This looks very promising. Especially since GNOME 3 will make OpenGL
> mandatory, and that would be a problem for thin clients.
> 
> I’m not interested in maintaining OpenGL stuff myself, but I think you
> should discuss with the LTSP maintainers if you want to help with
> maintaining this package in Debian; I’m CCing them.
just a sidenote, but whats wrong with "real" GL on thin clients ?
in ubuntu LTSP (and i'm pretty sure as well in debian since we largely
share the same LTSP code and have a similar Xorg base) using GL based
apps on thin clients has worked for ages.

many users use compiz under LTSP in ubuntu, the only problem here is
that the check mechanism requires to read the Xorg logfile to determine
if the client is GL capable which in case of LTSP is simply stored
inaccessible on the client. using SKIP_CHECKS=True for compiz on ubuntu
LTSP with a GL capable card in the client makes compiz work flawless...

since i assume even virtual GL needs to know if a client is actually
capable of doing GL output (else you would just saturate the bandwith by
shoveling full frames over the network all the time and defeat the
advantage of GL to just send vector diffs while keeping the bitmaps in
local videoram), what would be the method to determine GL capability on
the client ?

ciao
	oli

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