[[!meta title="From Click to Pixel: A Tour of the Linux Graphics Stack"]]

## Abstract

The Linux graphics stack can be a bewildering thing. What do all those
names actually mean (cairo? Mesa? Glucose? UXA? GEM?). How can an
application designer hope to debug a graphics performance problem?
This talk provides a simple overview of the 2D and 3D graphics stacks
for Linux with clear diagrams, and several recipes for debugging
graphics performance problems at several layers. We conclude with an
overview of upcoming changes to the graphics stack, (in particular,
several different attempts to unify the 2D and 3D stacks).

Presented at [linux.conf.au 2009](http://linux.conf.au) in Hobart,
Tasmania, Australia on 2009-01-21.

## Presentation

  * [PDF slides](lca-2009.pdf)
  * [HTML slides](html) (OK, so really just a bunch of images with links between them)
  * [SVG slides](svg)

The slides alone don't capture the material very completely. The talk
was recorded, so I do plan to add a link to the video here once I
receive one, (the last I heard the conference organizers were still
working on transcoding the video capture). Also, I could be convinced
to write an article with similar content as this presentation. Please
let me know, (email address below), if you would be interested in
reading that.