Installing Proprietary Video Drivers on GNU/Linux

Harmony requires that the official (proprietary) drivers for your video card are installed in order to properly use OpenGL to preview your artwork and animation. However, CentOS and Red Hat Entreprise Linux come with a free and open source adaptation of the driver for your graphic card, with which Harmony is likely to encounter issues.

Some video drivers come as application packages that are already made to install on your system without a hassle. In this case, all you need to do is obtain the driver from your video card chipset manufacturer and follow the installation instructions. Some other video drivers are distributed as scripts that build the drivers into kernel modules. These are more complicated to install and this topic will break down the process, which consists of the five following steps:

  1. Obtain the official video driver from your video card chipset manufacturer's website.
  2. Install the utilities required to build the video driver as a kernel module.
  3. Disable the default video driver bundled with your operating system.
  4. Launch GNU/Linux in terminal mode.
  5. Run the official video driver's installation script.