GLUT

Greetings,
I’ve heard that OpenGl is normally included as a standard accessory to Windows 9x / NT, but apparently the GLut library (GLut32.dll or whatever it is) doesnt’ seem to come along with the rest. Most of the examples i run across use the GLut library. Is GLut really vital to OpenGl application development or are there easy alternatives to go around using it?
Thanks,
-brian

if you want to write cross platform apps, glut is a good way to go…

anyway the real benefit of glut is that you can ignore the native windowing system e.g. winapi or x or whatever … it is not vital however… if you want to use native windowing system and opengl that is fine… and then you do not need glut it is up to you

Thanks, i was just wondering why the GLut DLL isn’t shipped with Windoze, its clearer to me now. So GLut isn’t actually responsable for anything more than API and stuff? That sounds pretty simple…
-Brian