Better Graphics, More Power!!!

Hello friends in tech! It's been a while. But I'm back and ready to dive back in. I thought I would start with a small simple post that will play a big role in my computer.

Most computers today have what is called "integrated graphics" — graphics baked onto your CPU. This allows your system to handle simple tasks like browsing the Internet, playing Minesweeper, or doing basic office work. But what if you want to play GTA V? That's a modern game and integrated graphics simply aren't up to the task of rendering it smoothly.

To solve this problem, I bought a graphics card.

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a circuit board that plugs into your computer's motherboard with one job: making graphics run smoother. The card I purchased, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, has its own dedicated RAM and was designed from the ground up to optimize graphics output. This takes the burden of processing graphics off my CPU, allowing it to focus on other tasks and letting games run smoother.

While plugging the card into the motherboard was simple, getting it to work with Ubuntu was a bit trickier. After installing and rebooting, my computer detected the graphics card but wasn't using it. I had to install NVIDIA's proprietary drivers instead of the ones that come with the Linux kernel.

As discussed in previous posts, drivers are what allow your operating system to interface with hardware. Most of the time Linux already has these drivers built in — plug and play. This is not the case for many graphics cards. NVIDIA's drivers contain proprietary code they don't want competitors to have, so they are not open-source and not included in the Linux kernel.

Here's how I got it working.

Steps

1. Purge existing drivers
2. Add NVIDIA driver repository
3. Install drivers
4. Configure drivers on the computer

1. Purge Existing Drivers

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*

This removes all existing NVIDIA drivers. Best to start with a clean slate.

2. Add NVIDIA Driver Repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-drivers
sudo apt-get update

This tells Ubuntu where to look for graphics drivers, and the update refreshes the list of available packages.

3. Install Drivers

Run the following to see which drivers are compatible with your system:

ubuntu-drivers devices

Out of that list, select the one for your GPU. I chose nvidia-driver-396 and installed it with:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-driver-396

4. Configure Drivers on the Computer

Go into Ubuntu's Settings → Software & Updates → Additional Drivers tab and make sure your computer is set to use the correct graphics card.

Takeaways and Future Thoughts

• Unexpected problems: The system defaulted to the nvidia-390 driver, which didn't work. Switching to nvidia-396 and rebooting fixed it immediately.
• Future concerns: The only real concern I have is when the next console generation arrives. Do I upgrade my game console? Probably not — I think I'm a PC gamer going forward.
• Future enhancements: I'll upgrade the card as needed, but this should be good for a while.

There are other applications for GPUs beyond gaming. Mining cryptocurrency is the biggest — because GPUs are designed to be pointed at a single task, they're ideal for running the algorithms used to mine Bitcoin. Maybe I'll try my hand at that too...

Resources

• linuxconfig.org