Posted by Xerxes Rånby on Oct 08, 2012; 6:38pm
URL: https://forum.jogamp.org/Pls-test-new-JOGL-aggregated-build-pre-RC11-no-XInitThreads-tp4026312p4026433.html

AWT is one of the first GUI frameworks for Java unfortunately it is single-threaded and gets in the way for fluid OpenGL rendering all the time. AWT got a event dispatch thread that is also in charge of GFX updates.
AWT only work on Desktop devices with a JavaSE and some JavaME stack. thus not really suitable for mobile where you want portability and have to do graphics updates using OpenGL ES.

NEWT got created inside the JOGL project in order to be able to do event handling in parallel to OpenGL rendering.
NEWT work on AWT-less java implementations where we can cut all the legacy AWT like on for example Android phones and tables. We can also use NEWT to get hardware acceleration on exotic frame-buffer EGL implementations like the Raspberry Pi also suitable for running on devices like MeeGo/Harmattan Nokia N9 phones.
If you want to remove layers of abstraction then NEWT is the tool, it will give you the lowest level access to OpenGL/ES. Using NEWT the Window is the EGLNativeWindowType.
http://jogamp.org/jogl/doc/NEWT-Overview.html

Also we have less obscure bugs using NEWT so we love it.