
For that reason, it gives us a great deal of power to customize the widgets to our liking. It defines its own markup language, QML, which is syntactically similar to CSS. However, there are bindings for other languages as well. The Qt framework is thoroughly implemented in the C++ language. Therefore, it’s the toolkit of choice for software that targets both embedded and desktop systems. We can easily port Qt programs to other platforms with little to no changes in the source code. Unlike GTK, Qt has its own designer called QtDesigner and an integrated development environment called QtCreator.Īdditionally, it defines its own implementation of networks, web sockets, multimedia, SQL, XML, and a web engine. Qt is a cross-platform application development framework that provides a widget library and a complete set of additional functionality. This synchronization process is known as Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI).
#COMPOSITOR TOOLKIT UPDATE#
However, we need a way to let the window system, such as the X Server, know what’s happening so it can synchronize and update itself. So, this process goes on as long as the graphical application is running. The driver, in turn, loads libdrm, which enables talking directly to the kernel through ioctl.
#COMPOSITOR TOOLKIT DRIVER#
So, when we run a graphical application, it loads the OpenGL driver - for example, Mesa. In this case, it deals with the input and output operations of a video card. The ioctl system is a special type of system call that deals with device-specific input and output operations. DRM uses a set of generic system ioctls to allocate memory for the graphical objects and stuffs the commands and texture it needs.

On Linux, we have libdrm, which makes it easy to access the DRM on the operating system. Therefore, they produce a set of card-specific instructions, which the Linux kernel handles through Direct Rendering Manager (DRM). However, if we were to use any other operating system like Arch, LFS, Gentoo, or Alpine, we’d need to configure the graphics stack manually in order to be able to have access to the graphical environment.īoth OpenGL and the window system implement the parts that are related to drawing objects on the screen. Therefore, we have access to the graphical environment out of the box.

So, most Linux-based operating systems like Ubuntu, Debian, and openSUSE have this graphical stack already packed into their distributions. To make Linux work with complex graphics, we’ll need a complete graphical stack including graphics drivers, graphics API wrappers, a window system, a compositor, and more.

#COMPOSITOR TOOLKIT INSTALL#
If we build and install a Linux kernel on a machine alongside helper tools and utilities, we can get very primitive graphics through Kernel Mode Setting in the virtual terminal but not complex graphics such as program windows, visual effects, and images with fancy gradients. The kernel is the interface between actual hardware and processes. It’s not a complete operating system that contains everything out of the box, but rather a kernel around which everything is set up. The name “Linux” merely refers to the Linux kernel.
