Thankfully, there’s a library that can save us the hassle: GLAD. Now it’s a cumbersome process to retrieve the location of the function and load that in function pointers, for each function we need.

Since there are many different versions of OpenGL drivers, the location of most of its functions is not known at compile-time and needs to be queried at run-time. make sudo make install OpenGL Setup: GLAD LibraryĪs we know, OpenGL is only really a specification that is implemented insider of the driver that your graphics card supports. Running the below commands would install GLFW in your system: cd /usr/local/lib/ git clone cd glfw cmake. This library also helps us handle the input from the joystick, keyboard, and mouse. We’ll do this using a popular C library: GLFW(Graphics Library Framework). So open your terminal and run the following commands: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install cmake pkg-config sudo apt-get install mesa-utils libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev mesa-common-dev sudo apt-get install libglew-dev libglfw3-dev libglm-dev sudo apt-get install libao-dev libmpg123-dev OpenGL Setup: GLFW Libraryīefore you start with creating stunning graphics, you need to initialize an OpenGL context and create an application window to draw in. OpenGL Setup: Installing dependenciesīefore installing the required libraries, we’ll first have to install a few dependencies. But, we do need to install libraries, that would help us interact with the operating system to access the implementation and set up the windowing system & OpenGL context. Hence, there is no such thing as “installing” OpenGL. It is already implemented inside your driver, by manufacturers, following the specification. It is just a description of what exactly the result/output of each function should be and how it should perform. However, OpenGL by itself is not an API, but merely a specification. The API is typically used to interact with the GPU, to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering. OpenGL is a cross-platform, cross-language API that provides us with a large set of functions that we may use to render 2D and 3D vector graphics. If you prefer video tutorials, you might want to check this out. We’ll also be installing the required libraries GLFW and GLAD.įor a tutorial on how to use OpenGL, I’d recommend this website which teaches it from the very basics using easy-to-understand examples. So you wanna get started with OpenGL in Linux, but couldn’t find enough resources on the net to set it up? Don’t worry, I got you covered! This article would provide simple instructions for setting up OpenGL environment in Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux Distributions without using VS Code.

Install opengl 4.3 ubuntu 16.04