How to get library: OpenGL 3.1 and GLUT 3 on Ubuntu 12.04

Question

I'm taking a class in OpenGL. Everything must be compiled and run on a machine that has the OpenGL 3.1 and GLUT 3 library, so I need to make sure that is what I have.

I have a fresh copy of Ubuntu 12.04 installed so nothing extra outside of the basic installation.

Any help with setting me up?

Solution

Since you wrote that you're taking an OpenGL course, I'll assume that you need the development files. Then try simply this:

sudo apt-get install freeglut3-dev

The OpenGL development files should be installed as a dependency of GLUT (the corresponding (virtual) package is gl-dev and one possible package is libgl1-mesa-dev).

Regarding the version of OpenGL this will get you, it will depend on both your hardware and the software drivers installed on your machine. Use glxinfo (from the mesa-utils package) to find out: the supported version should be in the OpenGL version string.

Comments

[beasts]

Fantastic, I can open the demo file my Prof sent out. Many thanks! It would seem I have gl version 1.3, so you say this is driver related, so a driver update would change this?