GPU-Viewer For Linux

If troubleshooting problems with your graphics card in Linux is what you're after then brace yourself, as you may end up spending a couple of hours on the Internet reading about commands and CLI tools.

Or, you could use something like GPU-Viewer, a sleek Linux application that acts as a front-end for various useful yet not really beginner-friendly CLI tools such as glxinfo, vulkaninfo, clinfo, and es2_info (displays relevant info about the supported OpenGL ES extensions).

There are many aspects of GPU-Viewer that are worth considering, but the main role of this app is to centralize all data from the aforementioned GPU-related CLI tools in a single GUI.

Data extraction is done using glxinfo (useful CLI tool for diagnosing problems with 3D acceleration), vulkaninfo (process related to the powerful Vulkan API), and clinfo (one of the best cluster monitoring tools), and are displayed in the GUI using a combination of grep, CAT, AWK commands.

Clearly, this is not the smallest and most accessible application out there. It's somewhat understandable since it's based on three quite complex GPU-related CLI tools out there.

Be that as it may, I found the app to be quite approachable. The GTK4 GUI is not bad, but I do have to point out that there's no customization options, hence, you're stuck with the dark theme.

There are three main sections: the OpenGL tab, the Vulkan tab, and the Open CL tab. They're all quite different, but the main gist is the same - they all provide a plethora of useful information.

The OpenGL tab displays basic OpenGL information, OpenGL ES information, OpenGL hardware limits, extensions, vendors, EGL information, and provides various GLX buffer configuration options.

The Vulkan tab displays everything from device features, limits, extensions, formats, memory types, and heaps, to more complex data such as partial queue families implemented, and instance and layers.

Lastly, the OpenCL tab displays various basic details regarding the platform, the device, as well as device queue and execution capabilities, and the total number of platforms and devices for the platform.

GPU-Viewer can potentially be a very useful application in the right hands. There's no denying the fact that it's not the most beginner-friendly application out there, but the fact that it manages to bundle three very complex CLI tools into one functional GUI is definitely something I appreciate.