Folks, is OpenGL standard on distributions (I use Fedora) or do I need to download and install seperately?

I recently installed Celestia on my linux box and it runs like a dog with three legs and a heart condition. It was suggested to me that I should get OpenGL to make it run better, but i thought it was already installed by default with the distro.

Thanks

Seb

You may have OpenGL, but the important thing is configuring your graphics card to utilize it...you may need to install new drivers to do this.

thanks for the reply. I have an nvidia tnt2 card (legacy stuff i know). How would i find out if i have openGL?

I'm not sure how you would do it on RedHat.
I did a "locate *GL" and came up with a few hits, and in /etc/X11/XF86Config it lists "load glx". I can also determine whether OpenGL is enabled using Sax2, which I don't think you have.

In any case, if you haven't installed drivers from nvidia's web site, you may want to do that.

Ok, i'll need to update the drivers i think, i'll check the nvidia site. as for the openGL, i'll try and have another look this evening.

just to manage my expectations, once i have openGL installed/configured, what differences can i expect?

what does it do exactly?

s.

I was searching for Celestia information, and ran into this unanswered question (and thought I'd answer this one)...

Most of the time, to get OpenGL support for your card, you need to download a partial-binary driver directly from ATI and/or nVidia. OpenGL support, when offered by your Video card driver enables applications to access the advanced hardware acceleration (most often for 3-D support) of your video card hardware.

For compiling, editing text files, or anything done in the console or a terminal window, OpenGL support gives you absolutely nothing. However, when using a 3-D processing program (and sometimes for video stream playing) such as Celestia, a great amount of the 3-D processing can be done directly by the Video card. This speeds things up.