Subject: Summary Linux/OpenGL/Motif

From: "Gustavo A. Mercier Jr" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 14:30:58 -0500 (EST)

Hi, CCL'ers!

Below is the summary to my query on OpenGl and Motif libraries for
Linux boxes.

As somebody suggested, the first thing is to find out what you want
to run and then get the libraries that you need. (We did that! :-))

In a nutshell,

MESA is the OpenGL for Linux.
Lesstif is the MOTIF for Linux, but ... it is still in development.
A few commercial vendors where mentioned. See below.

One user was satisfied with f2c/g77, but another was not. Unfortunately,
I must apologize to the latter user whose message I deleted by
mistake (or Freudian Slip!) I also deleted Dr. Janne Ravantti's message
that had personal stuff, but his recommendation is in line with
the comments made by other users.

Bye
****** SUMMARY starts below my signature ******
-- 
                                      ("`-/")_.-'"``-._
Gustavo A. Mercier,Jr.,MD,PhD         (. . `) -._    )-;-,_() 
Division of Nuclear Medicine          (v_,)'  _  )`-.\  ``-
Dept. of Radiology                    _;- _,-_/ / ((,'
University of Pennsylvania           ((,.-'  ((,/
3400 Spruce St.                  [email-masked]
Philadelphia, PA 19104         215-662-3069/3091 fax: 215-349-5843
---

******
Hello
	I'm using OpenGL and Motif from Xinside (www.xinside.com),
this is under FreeBSD but they have the same products for Linux.You'l
need also de Xserver from Xinside. All the other things you use from XFree86. 
	One observation: the OpenGL implementations around do not
have hardware 3D acceleration (or are minimal) so you should use a fast
card.
	A good free OpenGL implementation under X11 in general is Mesa
by Brian Paul it does produce very high quality graphics at very good
speeds that can run over the wire using standar X11 protocol (OpenGL
uses GLX).
	You can find out more about mesa at:

	http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~brianp/Mesa.html

Pedro
*******
Hello.

Well, you can buy Motif and OpenGL. I would guess that both of them cost
about $200 each but I might be wrong. Motif has been ported to Linux/Xfree
by Metrolink and there are at least two companies offering OpenGL. Check
e.g. www.li.org or www.linux.org - they might have links to those
companies.

OpenGL is - as far as I understand - VERY slow. The implementations on
Linux/Xfree are basically just emulators, i.e. they run on top of X11.

Someone is working on a freeware implementation of Motif, but since I have
strong feelings against Motif (looks too much like M$-Windows to me), I
don't know the status of that project.

< stuff deleted >
Best wishes
  Kenneth

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| Kenneth Geisshirt                                 Ph.D.-student |
| Department of Life Sciences and Chemistry,  Roskilde University |
| Currently at: University of Colorado at Boulder                 |
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******

I'd generally don't recommend to switch to commercial Xserver.  
You'll pay money, receive no sources and the tech sup answers 
that are worse than usenet replies.  But this is just my 
humble opinion.

There is a free implementation of OpenGL for Linux.  It's called
MESA.  I don't remember the url now, but you can make search on
'OpenGl free MESA' keywords.

Unfortunally, there is no working free implementation of Motif for
Linux.  Hungry programmers (http://www.hungry.com) are working on it,
but their implementation LessTif is WIP - Work In Progress now.

There are quite a lot vendors, who sell their Motif for Linux.
Typical prices are $30-$50 for runtime and ~$100 for development 
version.  Of course, to compile programs, you'll need the development
versions.  Check Cheapbytes http://www.cheapbytes.com/ for example.

Andrey V Khavryutchenko
[email-masked]
Interests: Computational Chemistry, OOA&OOP, The Net
********
Hi,

maybe you should try "Lesstif" which you can find on the net (Redhat
software). This is a freely available Motif clone

Steven

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven Creve                       [email-masked]
Labo Quantumchemie
Celestijnenlaan 200F
3001-HEVERLEE                      tel: (32) (16) 32 73 93
BELGIUM                            fax: (32) (16) 32 79 92
********

Both of them work on top of X11, so they should be considered add-ons.
There are several implementations of Motif at reasonable prices for
Linux. The OpenGL clone I know of is Mesa, which is a free and
portable OpenGL clone relying on nothing more than standard X functions
(meaning it doesn't use specialized graphics hardware optimally).

You should first make a list of the requirements of all programs
you consider interesting. Preparing yourself for anything imaginable
might be a waste of time.

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