Is Xlib used?

Question

Is xlib used? The helpful documentation I can find is http://tronche.com/ , which seems very outdated to me. Who uses xlib? Is GTK + and QT built on it? thanks in advance, ell.

Answer 1

Yes, a suite of tools like GTK + and Qt are still built on Xlib. The transition to xcb is performed, but far from complete or universal. Applications, though, really need to write a toolkit API, not Xlib.

By the way, you can also find Xlib documents directly from a source in X.Org: http://www.x.org/releases/current/doc/

Answer 2

These days, libxcb is used. There is also an available xlib compatibility level (xlib-xcb).

Answer 3

Well, if you want hardware acceleration, according to freedesktop.org:

An OpenGL application on X Windows must use Xlib and therefore cannot be executed using only XCB.

You must have xlib even if you use xcb if you want opengl.