glxheads

glxheads

glxheads is a simple OpenGL program designed to demonstrate and test the capabilities of multi-display or multi-X screen configurations. It displays a set of gears on each available X screen, spinning in synchronization.

Primarily used for troubleshooting and verifying OpenGL rendering across multiple monitors or X server instances, glxheads helps ensure that the graphics drivers and display setups are correctly configured. It relies on the GLX (OpenGL Extension to the X Window System) extension for OpenGL context creation and rendering.

The number of gears displayed is dependent on your configuration and the program displays rendering information in the title bar of each window. It is a lightweight visual check to quickly assess multi-screen rendering functionality.

glxheads' performance and stability depend heavily on the underlying OpenGL driver implementation and the configuration of the X server. If the display is not configured correctly, `glxheads` might run into issues or produce misleading output.

This command doesn't have any available arguments. `glxheads` automatically utilizes any available X-screens.

Run `glxheads` from the command line in an X session. If the X server is properly configured, it will create a window with gears on each available screen. Closing one of the windows created by `glxheads` will close the application.

glxheads has been available for a very long time, dating back to the early days of OpenGL on Linux. It served as a simple test utility for verifying basic multi-monitor OpenGL rendering when such configurations were less common and more prone to driver-related problems. Its simplicity makes it useful for quick diagnostic tests.

glxinfo(1)