Direct3D natively on Linux through Gallium?

fernandocarvalho · Post by **fernandocarvalho** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 9:30 am

I have just read from Phoronix that Gallium is going to support native directx on Linux.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... 3d11&num=1
Is it really possible?
Is this true?

Luis Alvarado · Post by **Luis Alvarado** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 10:43 am

Was going to ask the same question. And i quote:

"In fact, today a new Gallium3D state tracker was pushed into Mesa and it's perhaps the most interesting state tracker for this open-source graphics driver architecture yet. It's a state tracker that exposes Microsoft's DirectX 10/11 API on Linux! And it's already working and can be hooked into Wine!"

The way it reads it suggests that can help wine with the DX10/11 Api. It sounds at it could accelerate wine by a full year. 1.3.3 is great and i dont even use windows, not even for playing which was my LAST "excuse" of using windows for "something". But with this, if it is true, i think a lot more people wont be seeing or missing that other OS

fernandocarvalho · Post by **fernandocarvalho** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 10:55 am

If it is really true, it is the best thing that I heard in the latest open source advances in all the times.
Gaming is the only thing that is really missing on Linux.
If it become true, we will be able to fill this gap an strike against Microsoft monopoly.

Thunderbird · Post by **Thunderbird** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 12:21 pm

First of all take stuff you read at Phoronix with a grain of salt.

We have had a discussion about this Gallium D3D10/D3D11 project on the Wine irc channels (and there is a summary at wine-devel). The short answer is that Direct3D is very tied to the Windows API and that you just can't easily replace the d3d dlls and forward those to lets say gallium. It would require deep integration with the Wine X11 driver.

Remember we also have initial D3D10 support in Wine, but it is not at a state at which it can run games. Though it is much further along than the Gallium3d project, but it might still take a while before it is usable. If you want to see it finished soon, patches are welcome

aydos · Post by **aydos** » Wed Sep 22, 2010 9:16 am

Thunderbird wrote:First of all take stuff you read at Phoronix with a grain of salt.

We have had a discussion about this Gallium D3D10/D3D11 project on the Wine irc channels (and there is a summary at wine-devel). The short answer is that Direct3D is very tied to the Windows API and that you just can't easily replace the d3d dlls and forward those to lets say gallium. It would require deep integration with the Wine X11 driver.

Remember we also have initial D3D10 support in Wine, but it is not at a state at which it can run games. Though it is much further along than the Gallium3d project, but it might still take a while before it is usable. If you want to see it finished soon, patches are welcome

If you are right then what a shame. I jumped and rejoiced when I read this on phoronix.com yesterday. I love Linux and want to run it so badly, but I am a huge gamer. I would say that 95% of the time I am using my pc it is to game. I might browse the web at the same time and what not, but I am gaming. It really makes dual boot not an option for me since I might once a month on a blue moon boot into linux, because I am not playing a game that day.

I really hope the day comes that windows games can be played on Linux easily. I understand that I am talking about running Windows games on a non windows OS, but what other choice do I have. The game developers obviously are not keen on making Linux clients or using OpenGL to make running it on Linux easier.

I have ran some games on WINE fine, but usually the ones I am mainly playing have problems (Starcraft 2 and Warhammer Online).

Maybe the day will come that I can have the reliability, speed, and safety of Linux combined with my love for gaming.