OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is my favorite Linux distribution and Blender 3D is my passion.
Over the last 20+ years, I’ve spent countless hours creating 3D renders but lately, additional steps must be taken in order to take advantage of the faster GPU render times.
By default, Blender uses the CPU to render which produces the same result but with increased render times. Usually that wouldn’t be so bad but considering that one renders scenes hundreds to times before everything is perfect, it makes a difference. So let’s look at how we can get Blender installed on OpenSUSE and avoid that dreadful “No compatible Cuda cores found…” error message.
From this point on, I assume that you have a recent NVIDIA GFX card.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Blender 3D the easy way
Installing Blender from the OpenSUSE software repositories installs Blender just fine but because of some issues, I can never configure Blender to use the GFX processor to render my scene.
Thanks to Flatpak, the solution to this problem is easy.
Instead of installing Blender from the repositories, I simply go to flatpak.org and after reading the instructions, I issue the following command via the Linux terminal:
sudo zypper install flatpak
Next, I add the flatpak repository:
flatpak remote-add –if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
and then I restart my computer.
After that, I open the Blender flatpak page with Firefox and install blender with this command:
flatpak install flathub org.blender.Blender
Finally, I can start Blender with this command:
flatpak run org.blender.Blender
Because I use OpenSUSE KDE, running Blender generates a menu entry and once it’s up an running, I pin Blender to the Dock so that I can quickly open it when ever I want to model something.
Setting up Blender to use CUDA render cores
Regardless of which operating system one uses, Blender will not automatically use the GFX processor for rendering. To configure the final step, go to Preferences > System Settings and click trough the four tab options. I assume that you are a seasoned Blender user and know how to configure Blender for optimum performance.
Why I wrote this article
A few months ago, I have switched from OpenSUSE to other distributions hoping that I would find one that can easily deal with the “No compatible Cuda cores found” error message. Ubuntu makes installing Blender easy but Gnome, while nice, is not my thing. Previously, I’ve used XFCE but after trying KDE, I was hooked. So to only thing I needed to sort out was Blender and if you searched for help than you know that there aren’t many out there. To make matters worse, search results that include OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Blender Cuda are often too old to be of use.
Tip! When installing OpenSUSE, I select the “Software” link and uncheck the Office software, Kmail, Games and a few other things to keep the install minimal. This way, I get a lean and mean rendering machine running on a recent kernel with the stability that only OpenSUSE offers.
In closing I should state that I have been using Linux since 1999 (or 1998?) and when I buy or build a new computer, I do so with hardware compatibility in mind. My main 3D workstation runs Blender, FreeCAD, Gimp, Cura and a few other small apps. For everything else, I use different computers. Over the years, segregating the software has given me a much improved work flow and I only use one powerful NVIDIA card. All other computers use the built-in Intel GFX chip which works amazingly well for everything else I do.