Today's thread has you poking at your graphics card...

[KGIII]

Have you ever wanted to know your graphics card version information? Well, you can get that information from the terminal. Of course, there are GUI ways to do so and there are multiple ways to do so in the terminal. In fact, you can use lshw to learn this information. You don't even need to install anything!

So, let's do it the more complicated way. Why? Because we can. Plus, you can get quite a bit of other information that may or may not be useful to you.

Show Your Graphics Card Version • Linux Tips

Today's article is not going to be all that complicated, consisting of just one real command that will show your graphics card version.

linux-tips.us

Yup... You can install an application dedicated to telling you about your graphics card/GPU. You probably don't need to, but you can - and that's the important part.

 

[dos2unix]

sudo yum install mesa-utils

dnf info mesa-utils ( Fedora 38 )
Last metadata expiration check: 0:28:58 ago on Sat 07 Oct 2023 10:22:06 AM PDT.
No match for argument: mesa-utils
Error: Unable to find a match: mesa-utils

dnf whatprovides glxinfo
Last metadata expiration check: 0:02:59 ago on Sat 07 Oct 2023 10:50:08 AM PDT.
glx-utils-8.5.0-1.fc38.x86_64 : GLX utilities

Also, glxinfo only works if you have Xwindows GUI installed.
If you ssh to a remote system, and run glxinfo

It will say "unable to open display".

If you install nvidia or radeon drivers, glx-utils gets installed as a dependency on RPM based systems.

 

[KGIII]

I'm on the road at the moment.

This one came from my notes. If some of that changes, I am going to find out who did it and set them on fire.

Well, probably not...

The missus is driving.

 

[osprey]

Here's some info on the glxinfo command from a debian trixie box.

[flip@flop ~]$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/glxinfo
mesa-utils: /usr/bin/glxinfo

The glxinfo command is in the mesa-utils package.

[flip@flop ~]$ apt list --installed | grep glx
<snip>
libgl1-mesa-glx/now 22.3.6-1+deb12u1 amd64 [installed,local]
libglx-dev/testing,now 1.6.0-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libglx-mesa0/testing,now 23.2.0~rc3-3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libglx0/testing,now 1.6.0-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libxcb-glx0/testing,now 1.15-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]

Debian doesn't have a separate glxinfo package, rather just the glx libraries that work with mesa-utils.

[flip@flop ~]$ glxinfo -h
Usage: glxinfo [-v] [-t] [-h] [-b] [-l] [-s] [-i] [-display <dname>]
        -display <dname>: Print GLX visuals on specified server.
        -i: Force an indirect rendering context.
        -B: brief output, print only the basics.
        -v: Print visuals info in verbose form.
        -t: Print verbose visual information table.
        -h: This information.
        -b: Find the 'best' visual and print its number.
        -l: Print interesting OpenGL limits.
        -s: Print a single extension per line.

The -h option offers the help output which is useful because without any options, the output of glxinfo is quite large (numerous terminal pages) with the latter three quarters of it (or more), not very informative for the seeker of basic info.

[flip@flop ~]$ glxinfo -B
name of display: :0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer):
    Vendor: Mesa (0x10de)
    Device: NVA8 (0xa65)
    Version: 23.2.0
    Accelerated: yes
    Video memory: 1015MB
    Unified memory: no
    Preferred profile: core (0x1)
    Max core profile version: 3.3
    Max compat profile version: 3.3
    Max GLES1 profile version: 1.1
    Max GLES[23] profile version: 3.1
Memory info (GL_ATI_meminfo):
    VBO free memory - total: 812 MB, largest block: 812 MB
    VBO free aux. memory - total: 838860 MB, largest block: 838860 MB
<snip>

The -B option provides quite a bit of relevant info. Easy to grep bits to lessen the output.

 

[KGIII]

Last metadata expiration check: 0:02:59 ago on Sat 07 Oct 2023 10:50:08 AM PDT.
glx-utils-8.5.0-1.fc38.x86_64 : GLX utilities

So, what's the package name, to be clear?

(I'm not sure why they'd change this. I know the command in the article worked at one point, as I'd have tested back when I had my bevy of VMs in operation.)

If you ssh to a remote system, and run glxinfo

Now that I didn't know. Do you know if it works for those using Wayland?

The -h option offers the help output which is useful because without any options,

Yup. That'd be the command I suggested folks try to see if it was already installed, as it does come preinstalled on some distros. I picked it 'cause it had the shortest output and it doesn't have a command that spits out the version. There's no --version or -v or -V that shows the version info. I do not know why some applications exclude that.

 

[osprey]

I picked it 'cause it had the shortest output and it doesn't have a command that spits out the version. There's no --version or -v or -V that shows the version info. I do not know why some applications exclude that.

The shortest output doesn't happen with the -v in glxinfo ... that's for sure! The screen fills with verbosity of little help unless it's the particular info one is after.

The command in debian to get the version needs to grep it from another command such as below. Why glxinfo doesn't have the simple: command -v, that is common, brief and informative in many apps, which is what you are after, is not clear to me, other than they've used the -v for another purpose. The capital V outputs the help menu, so that's actually available.

[flip@flop ~/notes]$ glxinfo -B
name of display: :0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer):
    Vendor: Mesa (0x10de)
    Device: NVA8 (0xa65)
    Version: 23.2.0   <------------------------------------------VERSION
    Accelerated: yes
    Video memory: 1015MB
    Unified memory: no
    Preferred profile: core (0x1)
    Max core profile version: 3.3
    Max compat profile version: 3.3
    Max GLES1 profile version: 1.1
    Max GLES[23] profile version: 3.1
<snip>

 

[KGIII]

Why glxinfo doesn't have the simple: command -v, that is common, brief and informative in many apps, which is what you are after, is not clear to me, other than they've used the -v for another purpose.

They could have gone with -V, --v, --version, etc...

Did they?

Nope!

The command in debian to get the version needs to grep it from another command such as below.

I didn't even consider that as an option. I settled on -h and was good with that. But, glxinfo -B | grep Version: will do the trick.

Man, if I used that as the command to get the version, someone is bound to complain! They already complain about having to use the terminal.

 

[dos2unix]

So, what's the package name, to be clear?

glx-utils

rpm -ql glx-utils
/usr/bin/glxgears
/usr/bin/glxinfo
/usr/bin/glxinfo64
/usr/bin/xdriinfo
/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/02
/usr/lib/.build-id/02/a936e6f267b8960436fa35864b5396b029b115
/usr/lib/.build-id/20/c44b7aff951cebbf144aadcf0f445323107771.1
/usr/lib/.build-id/20/c44b7aff951cebbf144aadcf0f445323107771.2
/usr/lib/.build-id/26/74b815b21c1a6ad2ef9fd8bab775bd93042b10.1
/usr/share/man/man1/xdriinfo.1.gz

 

[KGIII]

glx-utils

Sweet! Thanks! I'll edit it tomorrow morning.

I did some research and there is no Wayland equivalent.