Ummmm... A question

It will only use the software renderer if the user is lacking graphics hardware or drivers. Windows doesn't ship with drivers but they should come with the graphics card, and you can download them. So no, it's not a reason to pick d3d over gl.

Ok, so what you saying is that it is striclly driver\hardware dependent?
The driver should replace the system header files? or it ships with it's own headers and I should include the driver's ones in my program... sorry for the noobish questions but that's what I am, a noob to the world of 3d programming :)

I have a Intel Extreme Graphics 2 card... It's not the best as far as I know :)

EDIT: the thing that I love about ogl is that it is system independent and I can use it on Linux when I will move there or on any system that has the api implemented for...

Basically, the graphic card's driver just replaces the .dll which contains the software renderer (the default one in windows) with an accelerated version.

OpenGL is a standard, so all graphic card manufacturers have to implement it more-or-less in the same way, so you don't need to recompile your program (or use different headers / libs) to run on a different card.

Of course, every manufacturer adds its own 'extensions' to opengl (because it's possible) and if you use any of those, then you need to check for their presence.

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The driver should replace the system header files? or it ships with it's own headers and I should include the driver's ones in my program...

You shouldn't have to change anything in your program. If you create an OpenGL application, the operating system will use the software renderer if an OpenGL-supported graphics card is NOT present. Hopefully this answers your question.

If I am remembering correctly when a user installs a hardware OpenGL driver it does not replace opengl32.dll. Instead they install their ICD and write to a registry key OpenglICD in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE somewhere. When you link to opengl32.lib, and your application starts, opengl32.dll loads the hardware ICD and mitigates calls between your application and the hardware driver.

okay question, how exactly does one get ahold of openGL for programming or just normal use even? I've been searching for hours and have yet to see a single download for any version of OpenGL that is useable.

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Original post by Shenjoku okay question, how exactly does one get ahold of openGL for programming or just normal use even? I've been searching for hours and have yet to see a single download for any version of OpenGL that is useable.

If you're using Visual Studio, you already have the libraries and headers. If you are using a different compiler, look at that compilers documentation. Search for NeHe on google to see how to link to the libraries.