volt-gui

My AMD Adrenaline / NVIDIA Settings Linux Alternative

A graphical interface for configuring GPU environment variables and performance settings for Linux gaming. Initially made for personal use, now open-sourced so others can benefit from it too.

Table of Contents

• What you can do?
• Build/Test Requirements
• Installation
• Testing volt-gui
• How to use volt-gui
• How to use the volt script
• Render Selector explained
• Technical References
• Contributing

What you can do?:

GPU Configuration:

• Mesa Drivers: Configure Mesa Drivers specific environment variables.
• NVIDIA Drivers: Configure NVIDIA Proprietary Drivers specific environment variables.
• Dynamic Render Selection: Select renderers for both OpenGL and Vulkan applications. The program dynamically sets the required environment variables depending on your GPU.
• Configure various MangoHud options.
• Configure Gamescope compositing window manager settings.
• Configure LSFG frame generation settings.
• Configure Proton and Wine environment variables for Steam gaming, including DXVK, synchronization, upscaling (FSR4, DLSS, XeSS), NVIDIA libraries, Wayland support, and audio configuration.
• All GPU settings are automatically added to the volt script.

Add custom launch options to the volt script:

These will be passed to the executed program. Example:

gamemoderun

Options:

• Configure settings specific to the volt-gui program itself.

Create or Delete Profiles:

• Each profile has its own set of configurations, which can be applied through the program or system tray.

Build/Test Requirements:

• Linux operating system
• Python 3.9 or higher
• Pip
• The python3-venv package is required on Debian/Debian based distros.
• bash
• make
• coreutils
• shasum (for dependency hash checking)

Additional Requirements for Building with Nuitka:

• C/C++ Compiler
• patchelf
• ccache (optional, for optimizing compiling times)

Additional Requirements for Creating AppImage:

• fuse or fuse3
• wget

Additional requirements for some Options:

If this software is not provided, its options will be locked.

• mangohud in the case you want to make use of the MangoHud Settings. Both the native or the Flatpak version satisfy the dependency.
• gamescope in the case you want to make use of the Gamescope Settings.
• lsfg in the case you want to make use of the LSFG Frame Gen Settings. Both the native or the Flatpak version satisfy the dependency.
• glxinfo is required to use the OpenGL Render Selector.
• vulkaninfo and the vulkan mesa layer are required to use the Vulkan Render Selector.

Installation:

Quick Install:

1. Build the application using one of the available targets:

   Using PyInstaller:

   make pyinstaller

   Using Nuitka:

   make nuitka

   Note: Both use a Python virtual environment to avoid system wide package installation using pip.

2. Optionally create an AppImage:

   make appimage

3. Install the application system wide:

   make install

   This will:

   • Copy the executable to /usr/local/bin/
   • Create a desktop entry at /usr/share/applications/volt-gui.desktop

Full Release Build:

To build all release artifacts (PyInstaller and Nuitka builds with their AppImages):

make release

Artifacts will be placed in the releases/ directory.

Removal:

To uninstall volt-gui:

make remove

This will:

• Remove volt-gui, volt, and volt-helper from /usr/local/bin/
• Remove the desktop entry /usr/share/applications/volt-gui.desktop

Clean Build Artifacts:

make clean

Testing volt-gui:

In the case you want to contribute to the project you can use the provided make target to test the changes you made. This will create a Python virtual environment if one does not already exist, install dependencies, and run the program:

make test

Note

Use make clean to remove the virtual environment and all build artifacts. The py_env folder should be deleted if it becomes corrupted, or if it was created with your system python, and you want to use a python version that is inside a distrobox box, or vice versa.

How to use volt-gui:

Simply launch volt-gui from your application menu or run volt-gui from the terminal.

How to use the volt script:

The GPU, Proton, and Launch Options settings are saved on the volt script. Here are some examples of its usage:

Native Programs:

When using the terminal or a custom desktop entry:

volt glxgears

When using a Launcher to play your game, you can just add it to the game launch options, like this:

Steam (Native):

volt %command%

Lutris (Native):

volt

Flatpak:

When using the terminal or a custom desktop entry:

volt flatpak run net.pcsx2.PCSX2

Render Selector explained:

• Select OpenGL Renderer Selects the GPU/Renderer that will be used to render OpenGL programs. Those GPUs/Renderers are obtained through glxinfo.
• Select Vulkan Renderer Selects the GPU/Renderer that will be used to render Vulkan programs. Those GPUs/Renderers are obtained through vulkaninfo, also for this to work on some distros you might need to install some additional dependencies like vulkan-mesa-layers on Arch Linux. More info is provided on the Welcome Window that opens once you open volt-gui.

Technical References:

Based on documentation and references from:

• MangoHud Github - Readme
• Gamescope Github
• lsfg-vk Github - Readme
• lsfg-vk Github - Wiki
• Mesa Documentation - Environment Variables
• FreeDesktop - Dri Configuration Options
• NVIDIA Drivers - Documentation
• Proton-CachyOS Github
• Additionally, sometimes i had to read code from Open Source projects to check how some options work.

Contributing:

Contributions are welcome. Please ensure compatibility with supported Python versions and follow the existing code structure. Read: Build/Test Requirements, Installation, and Testing volt-gui before contributing.