Running Vulkan Samples

Direct-to-display WSI, Wayland, and X11/XCB are the supported backends for the Vulkan samples.
When running Vulkan samples, you may need to temporarily disable other window systems. For example, with X11 installations, execute these commands:
sudo service gdm3 stop
 
<run sample>
 
sudo service gdm3 start
There are two Vulkan sample applications in the SDK, vkfish and vkcube, located at:
/home/nvidia/drive-t186ref-linux/samples/vulkan/<sample>

Running vkfish

vkfish is a modified version of the NVIDIA threaded rendering Vulkan sample available at:
It has been modified to use the direct-to-display WSI and Wayland platforms, and the interface has been stripped for simplification.
To run vkfish with direct-to-display:
1. Disable other window systems.
2. Execute the following commands:
cd /home/nvidia/drive-t186ref-linux/samples/vulkan/vkfish/direct-to-display
 
./vkfish
3. Restart window systems, if necessary.
To run vkfish with Wayland:
1. Disable other window systems.
2. Start Weston Wayland:
mkdir /tmp/xdg
 
chmod 700 /tmp/xdg
 
export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp/xdg
 
weston-launch&
3. Execute the following commands:
cd /home/nvidia/drive-t186ref-linux/samples/vulkan/vkfish/wayland
 
./vkfish
vkfish does not support command-line arguments and runs forever by default.

Running vcube

vkcube is a modified version of the LunarG Vulkan cube demonstration available at:
It has been modified to use the direct-to-display WSI and Wayland platforms.
To run vkcube with direct-to-display:
1. Disable other window systems.
2. Execute the following commands:
cd /home/nvidia/drive-t186ref-linux/samples/vulkan/vkcube/direct-to-display
 
./vkcube
3. Restart window systems, if necessary.
The sample may be run with --c <framecount> to render a certain number of frames. If started without arguments, the app will run forever.
To run vkcube with Wayland:
1. Disable other window systems.
2. Start Weston Wayland:
weston-launch&
3. Execute the following commands:
cd /home/nvidia/drive-t186ref-linux/samples/vulkan/vkcube/wayland
 
./vkcube
The sample may be run with --c <framecount> to render a certain number of frames. If started without arguments, the app will run forever.
To run vkcube with x11:
1. Disable other window systems.
2. Start x11:
export DISPLAY=:0.0
 
sudo -b X -ac -noreset -nolisten tcp
3. Execute the following commands:
cd /home/nvidia/drive-t186ref-linux/samples/vulkan/vkcube/x11
 
./vkcube
The sample may be run with --c <framecount> to render a certain number of frames. If started without arguments, the app will run forever.