# Mesa 7.8 Release Notes / date TBD

Mesa 7.8 is a new development release. People who are concerned with stability and reliability should stick with a previous release or wait for Mesa 7.8.1.

Mesa 7.8 implements the OpenGL 2.1 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 2.1.

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

## MD5 checksums

    tbd

## New features

- GL_NV_conditional_render extension (swrast driver only)
- GL_EXT_draw_buffers2 extension (swrast and i965 driver only)
- GL_ARB_fragment_coord_conventions extension (for swrast, i965, and Gallium drivers)
- GL_EXT_texture_array extension (swrast driver only)
- GL_APPLE_object_purgeable extension (swrast and i945/i965 DRI drivers)
- Much improved support for EGL in Mesa
- New state trackers for OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0
- Dedicated documentation for Gallium

## Bug fixes

- Massive improvements to the Gallium driver for R300-R500 Radeons; this driver is now moderately stable but not terribly performant.

## Changes

- Removed support for color-index rendering
- Removed support for GCC versions earlier than 3.3.0.