So far I was happy programmer of OGL in Windows and everything was beautiful. But, my nightmares started when my idiot of a professor managed to forget to tell me that my masters project has to run in Linux as well. So, I installed a version of Linux and started to cry because of my ignorance. This is mainly a question on how can I set up an environment on Linux that will let me use hardware accelerated OpenGL? I have tried many things, looked at many tutorials, and failed (I think because of my general lack of knowledge about very basic Linux stuff) Before I go on, I have Mandrake 10.1 Linux, X.Org 6.8 that comes with it, and a Radeon X800 Pro. I went to the ATI web-page and installed the newest Proprietary Linux Drivers. With Mesa 6.3.2 I managed to get the software renderer to work (by using the default make configuration). For the hardware acceleration I read that I need DRI, so I got that. But, it won't compile on my machine. When I run ./autogen.sh it throws an error message saying ./autogen.sh: line 9: autoreconf: command not found it seems that I am missing a script and I can't find it anywhere on the net nor on my setup discs. With SDL I managed to compile the libraries, but this time when I try to compile an OpenGL application an error message says that I am missing the lGLU.o library, and I don't know where to find it (or how to compile it) I have tried many many other things, but for most of the time I had no idea what I was doing... These two tries were the closest I got to an answer. Excuse me if this is a really common question, with a really simple solution, but I just could not find an answer that worked for me on the internet. And my general stupidity regarding Linux doesn't help much. I did stumble on some information that X800 cards do not have an appropriate Linux drivers for full hardware acceleration. I surely hope that is not the case... Thank you in advance for any pointers and tips that you might give me. Rados

Well, for one, there is no autoreconf, it should be autoconf, edit your autoge.sh file.

I dont know how far you got, but I think you might get some pointers from my tutorial, its on my signature [smile].

Hey, thanks a lot for the reply!
I have tried to change autoreconf into autoconf, and it still gives me a similar message (./autogen.sh: line 9: autoconf: command not found). When I try to man either autoreconf or autoconf I get nothing. I found an autoconf script on the internet and installed it, but after running autogen.sh again I get "autoconf: invalid option --install"

I downloaded the DRI source from their official site (dri.freedesktop.org) and I am closely following their instructions (which are run ./autogen.sh and then type make install) and it fails in the first script. Why would they distribute a non working script? Bah...

Your tutorial will be very handy once I enable OpenGL. (but my SDL problems involve "/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lGLU").

If I can either somehow get the DRI to work, or find the GLU library, I will be very happy :P

Thanks again

AFAIK you don't need DRI if you have ATI's proprietary drivers. I think DRI is only used for hardware acceleration using open source drivers.

I don't know if it's the same, but NVIDIA's drivers come with a GLX implementation that supports hardware acceleration and it gets installed with the drivers and all i have to do is link against the libs. I don't know if ATI's drivers work the same way.

You could download NeHe's tutorial number 1 for Linux and try to compile it. It already got a Makefile with the good compiler's and linker's switches to make it compile.

Good luck ! and I hope that helps !
matchu

You have to install autoconf then, dont know what Mandrake uses for package updates, though I do know it uses the RPM system.

The best would be to use a package manager and install it, you'll probably need automake too.

for GLU, all you really need is to append -lGL -lGLU (case sensitive) to the list of your libraries at link time.

if you get a file not found error, you probably need the xorg-X11-Mesa-libGL and xorg-X11-Mesa-GLU packages, install them as well.

If you really need your OGL acceleration and don't care about Linux except for the project, you could try Mepis. It's always worked fine for me, with acceleration available by default from the LiveCD. I've only tried it with my Radeon 9000 Pro and Go6800, though, not a new ATI card.

On a Debian-based system like Mepis, you should be able to install the required development libraries via 'apt-get install libGL-devel'.

If you want to stick with Mandrake, you should have a graphical package manager under your 'K' menu (if you're in KDE), use that and install autoconf through that. That way you'll use a package modified to work with Mandrake.

For ATI's proprietary drivers, look here

Another option is to see if the school has any linux computers with 3d graphics. It would be less convenient to have to work in a lab, but it would be much easier to learn Linux on a professionally administrated network.

Hello,

To lemurion: ATIs drivers did not install any libs. And I have tried the to compile all Linux versions of the first NeHe tutorial and for the Mesa and the SDL version I am missing lGLU library, and GLX spits a million errors. And a question: if I don't need the DRI drivers because I have the ATI drivers, what make parameters should I put when I compile Mesa? The default compilation produces software rendering libs, and there is an option for hardware accelerated but I need to link it to DRI libraries.

To Kwizatz: in the Mandrake package manager I couldn't find autoconf, but I downloaded it from the internet, and it gave me an error when I ran the script again (as I said before the error is "autoconf: invalid option --install")

For the lGL and lGLU, I downloaded xorg-x11-Mesa-libGL-6.7.0-5.1.sh3.rpm and xorg-x11-Mesa-libGLU-6.7.0-5.1.sh3.rpm but when I try to install them it says it's already been installed. Bah.

I am going to re-install Linux on my computer and try again. And maybe I should install a different distribution of it. What is the most OpenGL friendly Linux distribution out there?


Thank you again.

Rados


EDIT:
Thanks nagromo, I will try to install Mepis now. I will ask help from the Lab Administrators when I go to school on Monday, but I was hoping that I would get up and running before that.

Hi,

First of all I would like to thank everyone for the help. My problem is finally solved.

I made it work with the newest stable build of Mepis Linux.
After the installation, using the package manager I uninstalled everything with "nvidia" in the name, downloaded the newest ATI proprietary drivers, installed them, and then under Mepis OS Center under Mouse and Display and ATI tab I enabled the ATI drivers. It was very simple.

After that my glxgears FPS jumped from 110 to 8000. Using glxinfo I saw that all new OpenGL extensions are supported (even the OGL 2.0). And the nehe GLX tutorials compile and run (with no borders on the window, but those are details)

Thank you all for the help again.


Rados