I’m interested in getting into some Indie Game Development in C++, and I would like to use OpenGL 3+ to do so. The main problem I am facing right now is deciding how to bridge the gap between OpenGL and the operating system, as I intend to do all my development across Windows, Linux, and Mac. Should I write my own top layer, using platform specific code for window management, I/O, ect.? Should I use a cross platform library such as SDL, or FreeGLUT? Will these sacrifice performance?
As a side note, I haven’t done much Linux programming.
Is there a tutorial on how to use the X Window Server with OpenGL?
I use SFML (C++ SDL), but FreeGLUT and Allegro are both also good. They provide basic window creation, input handling, and more (depending on what you choose). I don’t think that any of them are innately cross-platform though (They have different versions for Windows, Mac, Linux).
In terms of performance, SFML’s window package alone (creating a window and setting up an openGL context) doesn’t slow anything down. I’ve had performance issues when using it’s Graphics package though.
Can’t help you on the linux programming myself, but a quick google search got me results like this.