graphics Archives • Linux Tips

A Couple Of Ways To Get Your Graphics Card Information

Today’s article is just a simple affair, one where I show you a couple of ways to get your graphics card information in the terminal. If that’s the sort of information you’re looking for, this is the article for you. So, do read on!

Using the commands in this article will give you some details that you probably haven’t committed to memory, so it’s a good way to learn your graphics card information. We’re just going to cover a couple of ways – as this is one of those things that can be learned with all sorts of tools.

This article shouldn’t be all that difficult or very long. It’s suitable even for a beginner, allowing new users to get to a point where they’re more comfortable working in the terminal. You largely just need to cut and paste.

We won’t really be doing anything all that new. We’ll use a couple of pretty standard commands to show hardware information, but we’ll then narrow that information down to just showing the graphics card information. So, this isn’t rocket science, it’s just using the terminal to glean the information we are after.

So, with all that in mind – and no further need to write an intro, let’s just head right into the article…

Find Your Graphics Card Information:

Yup. You guessed it. We’re gonna need an open terminal for this one. So open up your favorite terminal. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

The first command is just using ‘lspci’. The ‘lspci’ command lists PCI (peripheral component interconnect) information. We’ll then use a pipe and grep to extract just the information we’re after and nothing more. The command we’ll use to find your graphics card information would be:

lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display'

1	lspci -k \| grep -EA3 'VGA\|3D\|Display'

The second command is nice and easy. We’ll be using ‘lshw’, a command that simply ‘lists hardware’. It’s a handy command and we should do an entire article on it – and likely will. But, it’s really simple:

sudo lshw -c video

1	sudo lshw -c video

Yeah, the ‘lshw’ command requires sudo to gather all the relevant information. There are other tools that don’t require sudo, but this one does. We use it because it’s a pretty standard tool in all the major Linux distros. It’s one of those universal things.

Closure:

There you have it. You have a couple of ways to show the graphics card information in the terminal…

And, son of a biscuit eater… I just noticed I already have an article on this subject. It’s a wee bit different, so I’m just gonna run with this one. Screw it… After this many articles, there’s bound to be some overlap.

Oh well… Oops and all that. I don’t really have time/motivation to delete this one and write a new one.

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Check Your Frames Per Second (FPS) From The Terminal

Today’s article will be a nice and quick article, where I show you how to check your frames per second (FPS) from the terminal. I promise, it’ll be really simple. Do, please, read on! It’ll be a quick and easy affair!

Amusingly, this was just mentioned at a forum I frequent. At the same time, it was in my notes as an article to cover sometime soon – on a day when I wanted a quick article. Today is a good day for a quick article because I’ve been having some connectivity issues all day.

So… Well, let’s discuss frames per second…

The frames per second is how fast you can show individual frames (individual images) on your screen. This is a function of hardware. Your frame rate is going to be dependent on things like your graphics card (or onboard graphics) and your monitor.

Some frame rates are really fast, others are consistently ‘good enough’ – at least for my needs. I am a simple man that doesn’t game or do anything that’s all that ‘graphics intensive’. For me, a simple on-board GPU and a bog standard LCD monitor is good enough. As of now, I don’t need things like 4k or 8k. Heck, I just use two smaller (30″) monitors and call it good.

But, gamers are obsessed with things like frame rate. They want the most frames per second they can eek out of their machines, and they want it to perform at that rate while the rest of the computer is under heavy load. Don’t complain, those gamers help drive the tech to continued improvement!

Well, this is just a quick way to find your FPS with the terminal. It’s not fancy and it’s not testing the graphics under load.

Check Your Frames Per Second:

As the title suggests, you’re gonna need the terminal open. So many of these articles require an open terminal, so many of you will already know how to do this. For the rest, just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

With your terminal open, we’ll be using glxgears which should be installed by default in any major distro. If it’s not installed, just use your package manager to find and install it. In it’s basic form, you just call the command with:

glxgears

glxgears

If you want to specify which monitor you are using to test your frames per second, should you be using multiple monitors, you can run this command:

glxgears -display <monitor ID - usually 0 or 1>

1	glxgears -display <monitor ID - usually 0 or 1>

If you want to run glxgears and see the render information:

glxgears -info

1	glxgears -info

Finally, and I can’t get this to work on any of three devices, you can run it in stereo mode – which should display the test screen twice. It’s like so:

glxgears -stereo

1	glxgears -stereo

The output, that is your frames per second, will be displayed in the terminal itself. If you want to exit the program, you can close the window it opened or you can press CTRL + C.

Of course, you can see the same thing I just showed you by running ‘man glxgears‘ in the terminal. It’s not a complicated program, but it will let you check your frames per second.

Closure:

There you have it, a nice and simple article. This time we’ve talked about how to check your frames per second in the terminal, which is kinda neat. There’s just so many things you can do in the terminal. It’s not always complicated. A lot of what you can do is pretty simple.

Find Your Graphics Card Information

Today’s article isn’t all that spectacular, but it is useful, as we’re going to discuss a few ways to find your graphics card information. That’s handy stuff to know, especially if you are new to the computer or are looking to do things like find drivers for said graphics card. This should be remarkably quick and easy, actually.

We will be using tools we’ve used before. These are simple tools, tools used to learn hardware information. Well, they can all be narrowed down to show just the graphics card information. They can also give information about other hardware, not just graphics card information.

All the tools we’ll be using should be installed by default. We will use one program that isn’t necessarily installed by default. That program will be inxi. You can learn how to install inxi easily enough, and the rest should be installed by default. If inxi is not installed, install it.

Like I said, the article should be fairly quick and easy. You only need a few specific commands. ‘Snot all that complicated, now is it?

So, let’s take a minute to read an article that tells you how to learn more about your…

Graphics Card Information:

As is often the case, this article requires an open terminal. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

With your terminal open, let’s go ahead and use the inxi command first:

inxi -G

inxi -G

See? Plenty of graphics card information.

How about we use ‘lshw’, a tool for listing hardware information? Well, the command for that would be pretty easy. You just need to specify that you want graphics card information. It looks like:

sudo lshw -c video

1	sudo lshw -c video

Finally, we can use ‘grep’ and ‘lspci’. We’ll also use the -k flag to list kernel drivers. It’s easy. You don’t have to memorize it, you can just refer back here later when you actually have a need for your graphics card information. It looks like:

lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display'

1	lspci -k \| grep -EA3 'VGA\|3D\|Display'

That should do it. You can use any of those three methods (or more) to find your graphics card info. I just use on-board graphics, so a screenshot would be quite boring.

Closure:

Well, there you have it. You have yet another article. I didn’t go deep into the usage of each tool because there’s no reason to. Each program has a help file associated with it. Consult the help file if you wish to know more. This article’s goal was to demonstrate a specific use.

How To Install Krita In Ubuntu

Krita is an image authoring application. Some people compare Krita with GIMP. While the two programs have overlaps, the two programs are not the same and really shouldn’t be compared. Where GIMP is meant for image manipulation, Krita is more aimed at people who want to create images from scratch.

GIMP and Krita probably shouldn’t even be compared with each other. In fact, to save some time, you can read an article from the good folks at GIMP Tutorials for a good description of the benefits from either as well as why the two applications, GIMP and Krita, should not be compared with each other.

If you want to create digital art, Krita may be the software you’re looking for. When you’ve got a pointing device and plan on using the software like you’re painting, then Krita is the kind of software you’re looking for. Should you plan on creating from the ground up, not modifying memes or photoshopping dicks on pictures of previous politicians, you probably want Krita.

As luck would have it, this article will teach you how to install Krita on your Ubuntu-based system. It should also work for Debian, the official Ubuntu flavors, and Ubuntu derivatives like Mint or ElementaryOS. However, I tested in exactly none of those other systems. If you it doesn’t work, don’t say I didn’t tell you.

This process will have you installing it through your package manager. If you don’t want to do so, then there are an AppImage and Snap package that you can grab by going here. The way we will be installing Krita is a bit more ‘traditional’, so to speak.

Install Krita:

This article requires an open terminal. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard. Press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open up like magic.

The first thing we need to do is add the PPA. That’s a Personal Package Archive that adds itself to your regular repositories. A PPA is meant for software that’s not in the default repos. It’s meant for personal use – but we’ve bastardized the use to make it a way to easily install 3rd party software. That’s not important right now. What is important is that you then use this command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kritalime/ppa

1	sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kritalime/ppa

When asked, you can finish adding the repository by pressing ENTER. That should then trigger apt, making it check for new software. If it doesn’t, you can run:

sudo apt update

1	sudo apt update

After that finishes, you can go right ahead and just install Krita from the terminal. (It’d also appear in your software manager, but we’re in the terminal so we might as well just finish in the terminal.)

sudo apt install krita

1	sudo apt install krita

Krita is a pretty large and complicated bit of software, so it’s a sizable download. Once downloaded and installed, you can bring out your inner Leonardo da Vinci! It’s really as simple as that, and nothing more.

Installing Krita this way will keep Krita up to date as the repository is updates. You do have a Flatpak and an AppImage available if either of those is your preference. If not, you can go right ahead and install it the old fashioned way.

Closure:

DING! There’s another article done and done. This one just was a passing fancy, pulled more or less randomly from my notes. It’s a great way to install Krita, for those looking to do so. It’s pretty painless and it’s a solid piece of software.