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Comment by arghwhat | Hacker News Reader

These are however the same on Linux - mesa may change, but what the app uses is OpenGL and GLX. A more modern app might use EGL instead of GLX, or have switched to Vulkan, but that doesn't break old code.

You can also run an old mesa from the time the app was built if it supports your newer hardware, but I'd rather consider that to be part of the platform the same way you'd consider the DirectX libraries to be part of windows.

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> These are however the same on Linux .. that doesn't break old code

An example from another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43519949

Apologies, but "I heard that..." is not an example.

The phrase you quoted is not from the comment I linked; you’ve quoted from a response. Here’s the comment I have linked above:

> I have flatpaks from several years ago that no longer work (Krita) due to some GL issues.

That’s an example of Linux GPU APIs being unstable in practice, and container images not helping to fix that.

Ah apologies, you're right - I was tired and read things wrong.

But I suspect "GL issues" (i.e., GL API stability) is being mixed together with e.g. mesa issues if mesa is being bundled inside the app/in a "flatpak SDK" instead of being treated as a system library akin to what you would do with DirectX.

Mesa contains your graphics driver and window system integrations, so when the system changes so must mesa change - but the ABI exposed to clients does not change, other than new features being added.

It more likely is an example of immature container images causing issues.

I'm running Loki game binaries just fine today btw.

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