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Well, the question is simple. At home I have three computers of which two are quite old with integrated graphics cards, which do not support OpenGL 2.0. Now, I'm wondering if this is common, so that I know if I should bother developing with Kivy, for which OpenGL 2.0 seems to be mandatory.

I know that people who play games usually have computers that will be able to run any app I make with Kivy, but if it were non-gaming app, would there be a lot of people who would not be able to run it?

genpfault
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UrbKr
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    Kivy is better suited towards tablets and phones .... which it runs on almost all of them (I run a kivy app on android2.2 ...) I think if I was developing for desktop I would use wx(or qt) and build it on both a mac and a pc so that I would have a build for both ... (and probably one on ubuntu ...) ... however this does not always work out as cross platform as you would like ... it really depends on your goal ... – Joran Beasley Apr 09 '14 at 23:16
  • Thank you for your response! I have used QT before, and while I liked it, I find that I slightly prefer kyvi, so if not many people would be affected by the OpenGL2.0 requirement I would, programming wise, rather work with kyvi. – UrbKr Apr 09 '14 at 23:38

1 Answers1

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Kivy, for which OpenGL 2.0 seems to be mandatory.

Strictly, Kivy targets OpenGL ES 2.0 as the minimum requirement. This is not the same as OpenGL 2.0.

Well, the question is simple. At home I have three computers of which two are quite old with integrated graphics cards, which do not support OpenGL 2.0.

This is fairly unusual nowadays. Even mobile devices have almost all supported it for years.

The only places you tend to see lack of support are older machines with integrated graphics, like yours, though I have no statistics on how common these are. Any machine with a 'proper' graphics card, or integrated graphics from the last few years (e.g. intel's integrated with sandy bridge etc.), will almost certainly work fine.

I've seen the occasional problem in newer machines, e.g. some netbooks with particularly poorly supported graphics chips, but these are very much the exception rather than the norm.

Edit: For reference, Google seems to claim that 99.9% of devices support OpenGL ES 2 (at the time of writing). I know you asked about the desktop, but I don't know where to look for statistics on that.

inclement
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  • Thank you for your answer! What you say is encouraging. I really like what I've seen so far of kivy, and wasn't excited to drop it right away. I will give it a spin for my project and see how it goes! – UrbKr Apr 09 '14 at 23:32
  • The 99% statistic pretty much seals the deal for me as far as mobile versions go. Very helpful link as well. – UrbKr Apr 09 '14 at 23:42