Nux is an OpenGL, graphics-accelerated GUI canvas/toolkit, comparable to GTK+.
Nux is an OpenGL based widget toolkit and canvas used to create user interfaces, similar to GTK+. At a high level, nux is broken down into 3 libraries.
- NuxCore
- NuxGraphics
- Nux
NuxCore is responsible for basic things like a type system, math functions, color definitions, etc. It basically provides all the primitive types for a widget system (color, rectangle, point). Very little logic is present here, this is a foundational library.
NuxGraphics is a thin OpenGL abstraction layer. It provides simplifications of common OpenGL patterns (pushing and popping clipping rectangles, changing render targets, state setting, etc), however it does not directly forbid users from making raw OpenGL calls themselves. NuxGraphics provides abstractions for textures and loading/unloading data.
Nux is a widget library implemented on top of NuxCore and NuxGraphics. Nux contains a duplicate for almost every major widget in the GTK stack as well as several composition widgets (color picker, graphs, 3d views). The Nux widgets are not yet at the same level of complexity as GTK widgets, lacking advanced text rendering (being fixed) and clear theming support.1
1Source:Ask Ubuntu
Notably, Unity uses Nux, which facilitates GPU acceleration (and 3D effects) in the desktop user interface it provides.
