OpenGL 3.2 What is it?

Looking at OpenGL today and honestly I am totally confused. I followed Mesa3D for two years when I was in Genetics at school and it was actually 4 years before I grasped the big picture. I can code in C and C++ now. I grasp the interface and I have many OpenGL programs that I have created. I convert them to Python and so I thought I understood what was going on, but GLSL escapes me. I look at it and can't seem to grasp what it implies.

I got the new Linux 3.2 samples here. I compiled them easily with "make all" and every program says.:

Could not create window!

It could be as simple as not having hardware to support the methods, but it seems that it should give a bit more information when it fails if that is the case. So now I will dig deep into the soul of the machine and look into the heart of the GPU in hopes that it will tell me in ARB_EXT language what it wants from me and how I can become 1 with 3.2. What I discover will be listed here as it becomes understood. I already read Wikipedia OpenGL and that was no help. Until I understand it, I am going to call it the OpenWTF extensions.

So this is a window in example 01 and it doesn't use any of the functions, it only creates a window. I don't know why some people use error messages without \n ,( or endl), but it seems odd and perhaps there is some reason for that other than lazy, IDK. So I changed the library to return error codes that I could interpret and see what is happening generally. There is nothing new in example01 and it could just have easily been a library call to check for EXT(very long) to indicate compatibility. I may make a single file that opens a window and then does 10 things in that window ( IF the computer supports it) otherwise falls back to an earlier version and prints a sensible err message and waits for ESC to exit. Perhaps I can have an intelligent error code that explains why it won't work and how to remedy the situation, like ( Buy a new card, upgrade your system, read a web document, etc. ) instead of "MXLYPLYP V78 EXT ARB 4j epsilon quandry WTF-V1 quails to varple the garthok with appropriate terpitude. Recalibrate "

Something like "Your graphic card does not have these capabilities." would be a bit more realistic. Not everybody is as smart or informed as Brian Paul.

This doesn't look too promising for getting to version 3.2. In fact it looks like I haven't even gotten to 2.0 yet. Now it is becoming a riddle that must be solved. I am even more confused now than when I started. I thought I knew something about OpenGL, but something is wrong with this picture. I have to be missing some critical information. This link at Ubuntu explains this in a more human way in context.

Package nvidia-glx is a virtual package provided by:
  nvidia-glx-96 96.43.13-0ubuntu6
  nvidia-glx-185 185.18.36-0ubuntu9
  nvidia-glx-173 173.14.20-0ubuntu5
You should explicitly select one to install.

This makes it more complex, but then getting more complex is the only way to solve things many times. It is obviously not a simple case of using the latest version as it has to do with whether the software matches the hardware. You can't record video with a microphone or mouse. I guess you could pretend with "cat /dev/random". It seems more information is needed to identify what hardware handles techniques and how it is interfaced.

So the answer is lots of answers and it is a decision tree. Mainly, you cannot run HalfLife II on a vga card and have any fun with it. The same is true of fast graphics. I will make a 3d decision tree that shows me what is gained and how it is gained with different choices.

Here is one of those choices OpenCL, which may be useful and I will test it.