About OpenGL

What is GLES?

GLES, or OpenGL ES, or OpenGL for Embedded Systems, is what the full name suggests: it is a stripped down version of OpenGL, a subset, with a slightly different API here and there. It is used mostly for devices with ARM chips such as smart phones and tablets, but is also used in gaming consoles. On the Linux desktop, you typically have desktop, or full, OpenGL, EGL, GLX, and GLESv{1,2,3}.

GLES, specifically v2 and v3, are used sometimes, but mostly in one area. Such an area is in Wayland compositors and compositor libraries, such as Hyprland, Mutter, Wayfire, and Wlroots. While compositors can utilize Vulkan, most compositors require GLES rendering and don't offer a Vulkan solution, or any other rendering API solution. GLESv1 on the otherhand is an outdated specification of the GLES API that has been phased out for many years. This book disables building for GLESv1 as it is deprecated. You may build the API spec if you wish.

History of Wayland and GLES

When the Wayland set of protocols were made, a reference implementation had to be made for it to show what was possible, and how to create a compositor for the new protocol. The result was Weston. For its rendering API, it used, and uses, GLES and EGL. This was done so that the dependency on the libraries from the X Window System wasn't needed, that a Wayland-only setup was possible. A small benefit of using GLES was that it could run on embedded systems like Raspberry Pis.

Thus, compositors and compositor libraries followed suite and did the same thing. However, any rendering API can be used as long as it can be put through EGL. Desktop OpenGL and Vulkan can be used with no issues. Today, the situation is the same and most compositors don't accept any other rendering API besides GLES.

Do I need GLES?

If you are wanting to use Wayland compositors, and are going to use one that does not support Vulkan rendering, you are very likely going to have to build GLES v2 and v3, or else OpenGL and EGL rendering will not be an option. There are very few Wayland compositors that support Vulkan and do not require GLES. If you do find one, like dwl, you won't really need GLES beyond compositing. Wayland clients, which are applications, will typically just use OpenGL and/or Vulkan with EGL. This means that you would be able to skip GLES support but would kill off the ability to use other Wayland compositors that require GLES rendering.

On the otherhand, if you are using the X Window System, GLES will almost never be used and that support for the API can be disabled without much worry. However, you kill off the ability to use Wayland compositors that require GLES rendering if you want to switch over to Wayland in the future.

Disabling GLES

If you decided to disable GLES support, it is pretty easy to not build in support for the API. In “Command Explanations”, for both libglvnd-1.7.0 and Mesa-25.1.1, they will explain the options required to disable the support. Furthermore, NVIDIA-575.57.08 installs drivers for GLES. The installation instructions for that driver will cover how to delete them if you do not need GLES.

If you already have installed GLES from any of the OpenGL providers, removing all the related files is pretty easy. You can follow the instructions below as the root user to remove the API:

for libdir in /usr/lib*; do
  rm -vf  $libdir/pkgconfig/gles*
  rm -vrf /usr/include/GLES*
  rm -vf  $libdir/libGLES*
done
ldconfig

Recompile any packages as necessary to remove the dependency on GLES.

If you have decided to revert your decision and wish to build support for GLES, just recompile OpenGL from the original OpenGL provider you went with without the option needed to disable GLESv2. You can however keep the option to disable GLESv1 as v1 is an outdated spec and not needed today.