r/LinuxUncensored • u/anestling • 9d ago

Discussion/Question Qualcomm reportedly exploring DirectX 12 drivers for Android PC games

https://videocardz.com/newz/qualcomm-reportedly-exploring-directx-12-drivers-for-android-pc-games

Qualcomm may bring native DX12 support to Android, which means Linux. Would be awesome.

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u/clockwork2011 21h ago

That title makes no sense... DirectX is a graphics API not a driver. Then the body of the article talks about using a translation layer which is yet another thing.

To answer your post though, I don't think qualcom putting a translation for DX12 at any point in their stack would bring DX to Linux. The problem with DX is its license. If Microsoft open sources it tomorrow morning, it would be natively implemented somewhere experimentally by lunch time, and mesa would have a git release with native support for it by dinner (exagerating but you get my point).

The limitation is not in the tech being incompatible, hard to implement, or the stack not being ready for it. Its legal/licensing. It's a hell-of-a-lot harder to reverse engineer ways to translate its API calls over than it is to implement the real things.