directfb.org

DirectFB

DirectFB is a thin library that provides hardware graphics acceleration, input device handling and abstraction, integrated windowing system with support for translucent windows and multiple display layers, not only on top of the Linux Framebuffer Device. It is a complete hardware abstraction layer with software fallbacks for every graphics operation that is not supported by the underlying hardware. DirectFB adds graphical power to embedded systems and sets a new standard for graphics under Linux.

2013-01-18 DirectFB, SaWMan, FusionDale, DiVine, FusionSound updated to 1.6.3, linux-fusion 9.0.0 released

This is the latest maintainance release for the DirectFB 1.6 series. It includes many bugfixes and some improvements backported from the experimental DirectFB-1.7 branch.

Please find in the download section the following releases:

DirectFB 1.6.3
SaWMan 1.6.3
FusionDale 1.6.3
DiVine 1.6.3
FusionSound 1.6.3
linux-fusion 9.0.0

For details on the release please refer to the NEWS and ChangeLog files in the corresponding download directories

andi

2012-10-23 DirectFB Demo running on R-CarH1

We proudly present the latest DirectFB and ilixi developments in this new demo video.

This video runs on the R-CarH1 SoC and shows an automotive appliance with a status bar including output from the nagivation app, several web based apps, classic demos, ilixi based applications, and more...

The work on improvements, sample applications, integration, compositor development and optimisations has been sponsored by Renesas.

This was the first major activity carried out by the new DirectFB integrated media GmbH. If you are interested in collaboration or engagement in product development, please contact us at business@directfb.biz.

For technical information about this work, please see our presentation from ALS 2012.

dok

2012-10-07 First Raspberry PI binaries for Raspbian

There are Raspbian packages available at a very early and experimental stage, please see the README here.

Click on the news header for some benchmarking results

dok

2012-09-13 linux-fusion 8.10.4

This release fixes a bug with reference counting that can lead to a memory leak. We recommend you to upgrade.

As usual, this release is compatible with all DirectFB versions.

Please find it in the download section

andi

2012-07-25 linux-fusion 8.10.3

This release fixes two bugs which could lead to a kernel oops

Please find it in the download section

andi

2012-06-29 DirectFB 1.6.1, linux-fusion 8.10.2

This is the first maintainance release for the new DirectFB 1.6 series. It includes some bugfixes and many improvements to the (still experimental) android system and the gles2 driver. It also adds an always-indirect mode for the single application core, which uses a dispatcher thread and is needed for most systems using the gles2 gfxdriver.

Please find in the download section the following releases:

DirectFB 1.6.1
linux-fusion 8.10.2

The photo on the right shows the compositor with four applications, ALL running 2D accelerated at 60 fps (720p) on Broadcom 97425 SoC. Compositor output is synced to display. Total CPU load is only 22%!

For detailed info click on the news title

andi

2012-06-28 Compositor demo on Broadcom 97425

Check out the new video showing ilixi compositor running on Broadcom's 97425 SoC!

It's all 2D hardware accelerated and running at 1280x720 with DirectFB 1.6.0.

dok

2012-06-14 First release of DirectFB 1.6 series!

This is the long awaited first release of the DirectFB 1.6 series.

It has lots of Secure Fusion updates, performance/security improvements, Compositor support, better Mesa support and initial Android support.

Please find in the download section the following releases:

DirectFB 1.6.0
DirectFB-examples 1.6.0
SaWMan 1.6.0
FusionDale 1.6.0
FusionSound 1.6.0
linux-fusion 8.10.1
flux 1.4.1

For detailed info click on the news title

DirectFB

2012-05-25 DirectFB integrated media GmbH

We have signed the contract for our new company.

So DirectFB is represented and developed by a real company with employees now.

We have the majority in a joint venture with IGEL (Takanari Hayama).

That means we have someone with a lot of experience with his own company since 1998!

Visit our company web site which is still being filled with life...

dok

2012-05-23 DirectFB 1.4.17, linux-fusion 8.9.0, SaWMan 1.4.17, flux 1.3.0 release

This is a maintainance release for the DirectFB 1.4 series. It includes bugfixes and some performance improvements. There are also some secure fusion fixes, backported from the upcoming 1.6 releases.

Please find in the download section the following releases:

DirectFB 1.4.17
SaWMan 1.4.17
linux-fusion 8.9.0
flux 1.3.0

For detailed info click on the news title

andi

2012-05-17 1.6.0 prerelease demo

We managed to get the ilixi compositor demo running on Broadcom's 97425 SoC!

The framerate of all the applications and compositing is higher than in the software only video we have posted.

On this picture three applications are running plus compositor, the fourth application (gallery) is idle.

dok

2012-04-14 1.6.0 prerelease demo

Check out the demo video showing ilixi compositor and home screen with several applications!

Turn up your volume and please wait until the video has been prebuffered to achieve the best impression! (high bitrate, download)

The input events were generated by spooky (of DiVine) using this script and the C preprocessor (cpp).

This video is a live capture and has not been edited in any way!
Frames were dumped within DirectFB's X11 backend (using this patch) to tmpfs (RAM) with current timestamp, converted to fixed frame rate and encoded using ffmpeg including the brilliant Bach-Step audio track.

Look at the penguins running around 50Hz all the time even after starting all other applications!

Compositing is absolutely tearing free, applications run at the same maximum speed asynchrously synchronised with the compositor.

If you see tearing it's your video playback. Look at each frame in pause mode!

Up to ten DirectFB processes (plus spooky and bb) were running on an Intel Quad Core 3.4GHz CPU desktop (all software rendered) with 8GB of RAM to store the 4.6GB of PPM files.

You might think OK, this was running on a fast PC. Right, but it is all software rendered. So on an embedded device it should all be hardware accelerated and 1GHz CPU should be enough, even single core!

We will prove this by using Raspberry PI or other Broadcom hardware.

We've spent a lot of time to create this piece of art. The prerelease and demo images should be ready this month.

This demo runs accelerated on DirectFB supported embedded platforms. We will have it running on Mesa/DRM and Raspberry PI soon.

Feedback, ideas and help are very welcome.
Join us now!

dok

2012-04-01 Release date

The first prerelease of 1.6.0 will most likely be out by April 6th.

Update: This was no April Fool's Day joke, but after some last minute compositing enhancements we'll have it ready coming week!

dok

2012-03-23 DirectFB 1.4.16, linux-fusion 8.8.1, SaWMan 1.4.16, flux 1.2.0 release

This is a maintainance release for the DirectFB 1.4 series. It includes a lot of bugfixes and some performance improvements. There are also some secure fusion fixes, backported from the upcoming 1.6 releases.

Please find in the download section the following releases:

DirectFB 1.4.16
SaWMan 1.4.16
linux-fusion 8.8.1
flux 1.2.0

For detailed info click on the news title

andi

2012-02-12 Release schedule

The stabilization phase is still ongoing so that we expect the first release of DirectFB 1.6 in March.

dok

2012-01-11 XDirectFB

XDirectFB is back!

Thanks to Ville Syrjala for updating the port to xorg-server-1.11!

dok

2011-12-26 Raspberry Pi

This sweet little berry is a tiny computer with a Broadcom SoC that has OpenGL ES 2.0 support.
We'll be porting DirectFB to this device as soon as we got our hands on :-)
Join us!

dok

2011-11-20 ilixi developer joins team

DirectFB proudly presents the new Core Developer Tarik Sekmen.
This talented guy is one of our first employees!

He will also continue working on ilixi, his new UI engine for DirectFB.

See the new Videos section in the menu featuring a video of ilixi showing off tweens in the picture gallery!

dok

2011-11-08 Fenestra - DirectFB SDK for Windows (MSVC)

Fenestra is the new build environment for the native Win32 based DirectFB and related libraries and applications such as PluggIt that allows your desktop to be forwarded (input and output) to a TV set or other Voodoo Player.

This contains a Visual Studio Solution for building several DLLs and executables from the DirectFB and related projects, including DiVine, FusionDale, ++DFB and others.

Try and download the Fenestra snapshot, just press 'Play' after open with Visual Studio 2010 Express :)

It will show the FormsTest as on the screenshot to the right, waiting for players to become visible, connecting to one when selected, with the colored buttons for filling its screen with colors.

You can also download the binaries for a quick test.

dok

2011-09-26 DirectFB 1.4.15, linux-fusion 8.7.0, SaWMan 1.4.15, flux 1.1.0 release

These releases superseed the 1.4.14 releases which introduced a lot of new features (most notably secure-fusion), and also unfortunately many regressions. We tried to fix all known regressions with this 1.4.15 release and also backported secure-fusion fixes and feature completion from the master branch.

If you are building a project with 1.4.14 you really should update. If you are on 1.4.13 or earlier, you should know that updating to 1.4.15 changes a lot.

As we noted in our post about the new release model, 1.4.15 will be the last 1.4 release that introduces a lot of internal changes. There will be only bugfixes from now on and no API/ABI changes. Note that there could be an exception regarding the new optional resource-manager interface.

Please find in the download section the following releases:

DirectFB 1.4.15
SaWMan 1.4.15
linux-fusion 8.7.0
flux 1.1.0

For detailed info click on the news title

andi

2011-09-25 New Qt backend using DirectFBGL

Qt applications on DirectFB can utilise OpenGL now.

The merge request 1399 adds a new backend to Qt. It has all features of the old DirectFB backend, but also uses IDirectFBGL that allows the GLWidget to be used.

One interesting application of this is QML.

Thanks to Cedric Chedaleux from Orange for this contribution!

dok

2011-08-12 An important note from DirectFB.org regarding release cycles

We got a lot of negative feedback regarding our current release policy. Too many changes in minor releases, non-forseeable changes in both 1.4.x and 1.5.x branches.

We thought about that and came to the following conclusion: You are right.

So how can we solve the problem?

We decided that it is best to adopt a time-based release schedule, like many projects already did. (GNOME, Ubuntu, etc). The last three major releases will receive critical fixes, but we will try to keep the changes minimal. That way, users of DirectFB building a product can update to minor releases without the fear of breaking things or making custom changes hard to port to a new minor release.

We will also start to release -pre releases for testing, which will be open for major core and API changes.

We also plan to integrate more packages (e.g. SaWMan) into the main DirectFB tree, to make sure that each major release comes with a SaWMan that is feature-frozen and fits best.

All these measures are meant to make DirectFB releases feel more finished and easier to adopt.

So what will happen next?

The 1.4.x branch will get frozen after the 1.4.15 release but will still receive bug fixes
The next release of the 1.5.x branch will be 1.6-pre1
The release of 1.6.0 is planned for end of November 2011
1.7.0-pre will be opened with the 1.6.0 release
During the freezing phase of 1.6.0 any development would need to take place in a branch and merged into trunk when 1.7.0-pre is opened

We hope you agree to our new policy and apologise for the inconvenience caused by some volatile releases in the past.

DirectFB

2011-08-09 SaWMan 1.5.3 including stereoscopic display support, and DirectFB 1.5.3 with stereo on X11

The new SaWMan release has stereoscopic display support now!

This includes windows with stereo depth (disperity), but also allows windows to have two buffers (left and right) by themselves.

Special thanks to Broadcom for development of that extension!

There's also another DirectFB release allowing stereo output via X11, e.g. on second head to 3DTV using side-by-side output!

This works via a new runtime option, e.g. "x11-borderless=1920.0,mode=1920x1080" removing the window borders and moving the X11 window onto second head at 1920,0 and size 1920x1080.

For detailed info click on the news title

dok