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Introduction
============

The Mesa project began as an open-source implementation of the
`OpenGL <https://www.opengl.org/>`__ specification - a system for
rendering interactive 3D graphics.

Over the years the project has grown to implement more graphics APIs,
including `OpenGL ES <https://www.khronos.org/opengles/>`__ (versions 1,
2, 3), `OpenCL <https://www.khronos.org/opencl/>`__,
`OpenMAX <https://www.khronos.org/openmax/>`__,
`VDPAU <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU>`__, `VA
API <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API>`__,
`XvMC <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Video_Motion_Compensation>`__ and
`Vulkan <https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/>`__.

A variety of device drivers allows the Mesa libraries to be used in many
different environments ranging from software emulation to complete
hardware acceleration for modern GPUs.

Mesa ties into several other open-source projects: the `Direct Rendering
Infrastructure <https://dri.freedesktop.org/>`__ and
`X.org <https://x.org>`__ to provide OpenGL support on Linux, FreeBSD
and other operating systems.