Comment by quailfarmer
5 days ago
Damn, this will break Minecraft on my original machine, an Acer C720 Chromebook modded to run Linux. The Intel HD4400 iGPU doesn’t support Vulcan!
I always appreciated that MC would run on virtually any hardware, especially as a kid without access to anything nice.
> Once this happens, players will be able to switch between OpenGL rendering and Vulkan rendering
I think this means you'll be able to continue using Minecraft with OpenGL.
In the following paragraph:
> Once we’re happy with the performance and stability of Vulkan across devices we will remove the OpenGL implementation.
So not for long.
It's pretty interesting that OpenGL achieved its stated goal and is the graphics API with the highest degree of compatibility across many devices.
Vulkan more or less also has that goal, but for then-current hardware 24 years later (2016). In this case (Intel HD Graphics 4400, Haswell?), there is unofficial support on Linux that can be enabled with some hacks, and it may or may not work. Similar support for my previous (desktop) AMD GPU generally worked fine. The situation for Haswell seems more iffy, though.
At least Java lets you run older versions so you can just play 1.7.10 forever as Notch intended.
Notch already sold Minecraft to Microsoft before 1.7.10 was released.
It depends what features they use but under Mesa that chip does have some Vulkan support.
it looks like "in hardware" it has vulkan 1.0 support, but looking at https://mesamatrix.net the hasvk driver (which i think is the haswell/gen 7 and 8 driver) seems to have some support for more recent extensions
and of course all the previous minecraft versions will continue working on opengl :p
I'm glad someone else is still using a C720. I keep mine in a case with some SDR gear. One of my favorite computers i've owned.
It was a great machine. It was my daily driver until a few years ago. I ran xubuntu on it with the Mr Chromebook firmware for a loooong time until my most commonly used websites became so heavy browsing was impossible.
I got mine first year of college because my 5ish year old 15" mbp was just too much of a boat anchor. I got a launch model with the celeron, 4gb of ram, and no touch screen so the battery life would last all day and then some.
I installed Chrouton which let you switch between chromeOS and a full ubuntu chroot, which was the best of both worlds as you could do the optimized browsing on ChromeOS and development tasks on the chroot.
After it fell out of ChromeOS favor, I just installed arch on it and called it a day. It's my go-to conference laptop because it's still so conveniently small, light, and 12 years on the battery still gets 6 hours.
Time for an upgrade buddy. I need my 32 chunk render distance when i play java, personally. A 10+ year old chromebook would not be cutting it - but it doesn't take much either if your simulation distance is low.