How To Install Mesa Drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Mesa Drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Mesa is an open-source graphics library that provides the necessary software drivers for running 3D graphics applications on Linux-based operating systems. Mesa is built on top of the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) and supports hardware acceleration using open-source drivers. The Mesa Drivers are included in most Linux distributions and are actively maintained by the open-source community.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Mesa Drivers on Ubuntu 22.04. You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• An active internet connection. You’ll need an internet connection to download the necessary packages and dependencies for Mesa Drivers.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Mesa Drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install wget apt-transport-https gnupg2 software-properties-common

Step 2. Installing Mesa Drivers on Ubuntu 22.04.

By default, Mesa Drivers is not available on Ubuntu 22.04 base repository. Now run the following command below to add the official Mesa repository to your Ubuntu systems:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/updates

After you have added the official Mesa repository to your system, you can proceed to install the Mesa Drivers using the following command below:

sudo apt install mesa-utils

To verify that OpenGL packages are installed, run the following command:

dpkg -l | grep mesa-utils

While we’ve already installed mesa-utils, you may want to explore more OpenGL utilities. These tools can help you test and experiment with OpenGL capabilities. Install them with:

sudo apt install freeglut3-dev

This package includes additional development files and tools for OpenGL.

Step 3. Verifying Mesa Drivers Installation.

To verify that the Mesa Drivers are installed and working correctly on your Ubuntu 22.04 LTS system, you can run the following command in the terminal:

glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"

If Mesa is installed correctly, you should see output similar to the following:

OpenGL version string: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 22.3.6

If you encounter a black screen after installing Mesa Drivers, try switching to a different terminal using the “Ctrl+Alt+F1” shortcut. Then, uninstall the Mesa Drivers using the following command:

sudo apt remove mesa-utils

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Mesa drivers. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Mesa drivers 3D graphics applications on the Ubuntu system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Mesa website.