How to install 64 bit openGL in linux

Question

I bought a new system with an NVIDIA GeForce 9000 graphics card. I downloaded the 64-bit NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.53-pkg2 from the NVIDIA web site which I have installed in my linux kernel 2.6.26. While it was installing it created 32-bit OpenGL but I want to create 64-bit OpenGL. How do I create it?

Answer 1

No need. The NVidia driver installed the default architecture OpenGL driver (64bit) and you choose the optional step of also installing 32bit OpenGL. You've got both installed now.

If you're having a specific problem (application won't run, opengl doesn't work, crashes), the n post the errors/logs you're getting.

Answer 2

You may want to look for a pre-packaged version for your distribution, as this is certainly the easiest way to go about doing things. If for some reason you can't get a prepackaged driver, the following information may assist you.

Now, as for installing 64-bit support, the latest Linux driver package should have already installed it. What may be causing this issue is simply that your distributions library search paths don't include where the installer put the library.

It's been a little while since I needed to know where nVidia's installer likes to put things, so I can't give you an authoritative answer on where to find it, though I'd expect it to be called libGL.so somewhere under /usr/lib64.

A few commands that may help you here:

• locate libGL.so - Searches the filesystem using a pre-built database for the library. This should find both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
• updatedb - If you've only recently installed the drivers, run this first. It will rebuild the database used by locate. Alternatively, you could use find \ -name libGL.so*.
• file libGL.so.x.y.z - Will tell you if it's a 32-bit or 64-bit library. Note that this won't work on symlinks.

If you find yourself needing to amend the library search path to include this, expect the configuration steps to be distro-specific. The main environment variable you'll be looking for will be LD_LIBRARY_PATH. However, different distros have different approaches to managing environment variables. I'd certainly recommend taking the time to understand what you're changing if you need to amend this.