Linux Graphics Components and Troubleshooting Tools #001

Linux Graphics Components

Compositors: Combine and render multiple graphical elements into a final display output. In X11, use the Composite extension to work with the X server, managing window transparency, effects, and desktop composition (ex: Compiz, KWin, Mutter). In Wayland, the compositor is the display server itself (ex: Weston, Sway, GNOME mutter-wayland). Compositors interact with the graphics stack through DRM/KMS for direct hardware access and use EGL or similar APIs for GPU-accelerated rendering.
DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure): A framework that allows applications to directly access graphics hardware for accelerated rendering while maintaining security and coordination with the display system. DRI provides device interfaces at /dev/dri (such as /dev/dri/card0, /dev/dri/renderD128) that applications and drivers use to communicate with graphics hardware, enabling efficient GPU operations without going through the X s