# Mesa 8.0 Release Notes / (release date TBD)

Mesa 8.0 is a new development release. People who are concerned with stability and reliability should stick with a previous release or wait for Mesa 8.0.1.

Mesa 8.0 implements the OpenGL 3.0 API, but the version reported by glGetString(GL_VERSION) depends on the particular driver being used. Some drivers don't support all the features required in OpenGL 3.0.

See the Compiling/Installing page for prerequisites for DRI hardware acceleration.

## MD5 checksums

    tbd

## New features

- GL_ARB_ES2_compatibility (r300g, r600g)
- GL_ARB_depth_buffer_float (r600g)
- GL_ARB_vertex_type_2_10_10_10_rev (r600g)
- GL_ARB_texture_storage (gallium drivers and swrast)
- GL_EXT_packed_float (i965)
- GL_EXT_texture_array (r600g, i965)
- GL_EXT_texture_shared_exponent (i965)
- GL_NV_fog_distance (all gallium drivers, nouveau classic)
- GL_NV_primitive_restart (r600g)
- GL_OES_EGL_image_external (gallium drivers)
- GL_OES_compressed_ETC1_RGB8_texture (softpipe, llvmpipe)
- ARB_texture_rgb10_a2ui (softpipe, r600g)
- Many updates to the VMware svga Gallium driver

## Bug fixes

## Changes

- Removed all DRI drivers that did not support DRI2. Specifically, i810, mach64, mga, r128, savage, sis, tdfx, and unichrome were removed.
- Removed support for BeOS.
- Removed the obsolete (and unmaintained) Windows "gldirect" and "ICD" drivers.
- Removed the linux-fbdev software driver.
- Removed all remnants of paletted texture support. As required by desktop OpenGL, `GL_COLOR_INDEX` data can still be uploaded to a color (e.g., RGBA) texture. However, the data cannot be stored internally as color-index.
- Removed support for GL_APPLE_client_storage extension.
- Removed the classic Mesa r300 and r600 drivers, which are superseded by the gallium drivers for this hardware.
- Removed the dead Gallium i965, cell and failover drivers, which were either broken and with nobody in sight to fix the situation or deprecated.