Nvidia OpenGL Configuration mini-HOWTO

Robert B Easter

reaster@comptechnews.com

Revision History
Revision v1.7	2025-01-21	Revised by: rbe

This miniHOWTO is about how to install the OpenGL drivers for Nvidia graphics cards on Linux. In addition to just installing the Nvidia drivers, this mini-HOWTO also explains how to install XFree86, the OpenGL Utility library (part of Mesa), the OpenGL Utility Toolkit (glut), the full set of OpenGL manpages, Qt and its OpenGL extension, and Java and its Java 3D extension so that a user can have a complete runtime and development environment for OpenGL applications on Linux.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1. New Versions of this Document
1.2. Copyright Information
1.3. Disclaimer

2. Download the software packages

2.1. Linux Kernel >= 2.2.12 Required
2.2. XFree86 4.0 or later
2.3. OpenGL man pages
2.4. Mesa
2.5. Qt
2.6. NVIDIA drivers (Mesa libGL replacement)
2.7. Java 2 SDK, Java 3D extension, and Java PlugIn for Netscape (optional)

3. Install Software

3.1. Install XFree86
3.2. Install Mesa
3.3. Install Nvidia OpenGL drivers
3.4. Install Qt
3.5. Install GLUT 3.7 Distribution (optional)
3.6. Install Java 3D (optional)

4. Final comments