Freeglut VS Glut

GLUT

The original GLUT library needed to be improved as many of its components was long outdated. Furthermore, the GLUT's license is incompatible with some software distributions and also, its license does not allow anyone to distribute modified library code. One last thing to note that it had several years since any significant changes or bug fixes have been made to OpenGLUT and it should probably be assumed to be a dead project.

FREEGLUT

Freeglut is a completely OpenSourced alternative to the OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) library. It allows the user to create and manage windows containing OpenGL contexts on a wide range of platforms and also read the mouse, keyboard and joystick functions. Moreover, it is also very stable now and has fewer bugs than the original GLUT.

OVERALL

Hence, with the more and upgraded version of the GLUT, freeglut is obviously and noticably the better choice to use in terms of openGL codings. However, there are places where the original glut did not make the functions (eg callback) and it thus might be possible that some applicable programs to work under GLUT but fail under freeglut as they assume something that the GLUT never guranteed to be true. But as a whole, with the more and stable freeglut, programs that originally compiled for GLUT can be linked to freeglut without worries.