Gram on Linux

Distro Packages

Gram provides prebuilt .deb and .rpm packages as release assets which can be downloaded here. Installation depends on your distro:

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt install ./path/to/gram_${version}-${revision}_${arch}.deb

Requires Debian 13 (Trixie)/Ubuntu 24.04 (noble) or later.

Fedora/RHEL/Rocky/Alma

sudo dnf install ./path/to/gram_${version}-${revision}_${arch}.rpm

Requires Fedora 42/RHEL 10.1/Rocky 10.1/Alma 10.1 or later.

OpenSUSE

sudo zypper install ./path/to/gram_${version}-${revision}_${arch}.rpm

Requires Leap 16 (or Tumbleweed/Slowroll) or later.

Arch

There are two packages published on the AUR:

These are community efforts and may or may not be up-to-date. If you install packages from the AUR, it is your responsibility to verify their integrity yourself.

Flatpak

Gram provides a prebuilt flatpak as a release asset. It can be downloaded from here and installed by running:

flatpak install /path/to/app.liten.Gram-x86_64-${version}.flatpak

From Tarball

If there is a tarball available for your architecture at the Gram Codeberg repository, you can follow these instructions:

  1. Download the install.sh script.

  2. Run the script.

    ./install.sh

    This will download latest release of Gram and install Gram to $HOME/.local. To install system-wide, use the --prefix PREFIX argument:

    ./install.sh --prefix /usr/local ./gram-linux-x86_64-1.1.0.tar.gz

From Source

Gram is open source, and you can install from source. See developer notes for instructions.

Troubleshooting

Graphics issues

Gram fails to open windows

Gram requires a GPU to run effectively. Under the hood, it uses Vulkan to communicate with the GPU. If you are seeing problems with performance or Gram fails to load, it is possible that Vulkan is the culprit.

If you see a notification saying Gram failed to open a window: NoSupportedDeviceFound this means that Vulkan cannot find a compatible GPU. Try running vkcube (usually available as part of the vulkaninfo or vulkan-tools package on various distributions) to troubleshoot where the issue is coming from like so:

vkcube

Note: Try running in both X11 and wayland modes by running vkcube -m [x11|wayland]. Some versions of vkcube use vkcube to run in X11 and vkcube-wayland to run in wayland.

This should output a line describing your current graphics setup and show a rotating cube. If this does not work, you should be able to fix it by installing Vulkan compatible GPU drivers, however in some cases there is no Vulkan support yet.

You can find out which graphics card Gram is using by looking in the Gram log (~/.local/share/gram/logs/Gram.log) for Using GPU: ....

If you see errors like ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED or GPU Crashed or ERROR_SURFACE_LOST_KHR then you may be able to work around this by installing different drivers for your GPU, or by selecting a different GPU to run on. (See #14225)

On some systems the file /etc/prime-discrete can be used to enforce the use of a discrete GPU using PRIME. Depending on the details of your setup, you may need to change the contents of this file to "on" (to force discrete graphics) or "off" (to force integrated graphics).

On others, you may be able to the environment variable DRI_PRIME=1 when running Gram to force the use of the discrete GPU.

If you're using an AMD GPU and Gram crashes when selecting long lines, try setting the GRAM_PATH_SAMPLE_COUNT=0 environment variable. (See #26143)

If you're using an AMD GPU, you might get a 'Broken Pipe' error. Try using the RADV or Mesa drivers. (See #13880)

If you are using amdvlk, the default open-source AMD graphics driver, you may find that Gram consistently fails to launch. This is a known issue for some users, for example on Omarchy (see issue #28851). To fix this, you will need to use a different driver. We recommend removing the amdvlk and lib32-amdvlk packages and installing vulkan-radeon instead (see issue #14141).

For more information, the Arch guide to Vulkan has some good steps that translate well to most distributions.

Forcing Gram to use a specific GPU

There are a few different ways to force Gram to use a specific GPU:

Option A

You can use the GRAM_DEVICE_ID={device_id} environment variable to specify the device ID of the GPU you wish to have Gram use.

You can obtain the device ID of your GPU by running lspci -nn | grep VGA which will output each GPU on one line like:

08:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GA104 [GeForce RTX 3070] [10de:2484] (rev a1)

where the device ID here is 2484. This value is in hexadecimal, so to force Gram to use this specific GPU you would set the environment variable like so:

GRAM_DEVICE_ID=0x2484 gram

Make sure to export the variable if you choose to define it globally in a .bashrc or similar.

Option B

If you are using Mesa, you can run MESA_VK_DEVICE_SELECT=list gram --foreground to get a list of available GPUs and then export MESA_VK_DEVICE_SELECT=xxxx:yyyy to choose a specific device. Furthermore, you can fallback to xwayland with an additional export of WAYLAND_DISPLAY="".

Option C

Using vkdevicechooser.

Generating debug reports

Passing the --system-specs flag to Gram like

gram --system-specs

will print the system specs to the terminal.

The editor log is usually located at ~/.local/share/gram/logs/Gram.log.

To generate a clean log file for debugging graphics issues, run:

truncate -s 0 ~/.local/share/gram/logs/Gram.log # Clear the log file
GRAM_LOG=wgpu=info gram .
cat ~/.local/share/gram/logs/Gram.log
# copy the output

Or, if you have the Gram cli setup, you can do

GRAM_LOG=wgpu=info /path/to/gram/cli --foreground .
# copy the output

Forcing X11 scale factor

On X11 systems, Gram automatically detects the appropriate scale factor for high-DPI displays. The scale factor is determined using the following priority order:

  1. GPUI_X11_SCALE_FACTOR environment variable (if set)
  2. Xft.dpi from X resources database (xrdb)
  3. Automatic detection via RandR based on monitor resolution and physical size

If you want to customize the scale factor beyond what Gram detects automatically, you have several options:

Check your current scale factor

You can verify if you have Xft.dpi set:

xrdb -query | grep Xft.dpi

If this command returns no output, Gram is using RandR (X11's monitor management extension) to automatically calculate the scale factor based on your monitor's reported resolution and physical dimensions.

Option 1: Set Xft.dpi (X Resources Database)

Xft.dpi is a standard X11 setting that many applications use for consistent font and UI scaling. Setting this ensures Gram scales the same way as other X11 applications that respect this setting.

Edit or create the ~/.Xresources file:

vim ~/.Xresources

Add this line with your desired DPI:

Xft.dpi: 96

Common DPI values:

  • 96 for standard 1x scaling
  • 144 for 1.5x scaling
  • 192 for 2x scaling
  • 288 for 3x scaling

Load the configuration:

xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

Restart Gram for the changes to take effect.

Option 2: Use the GPUI_X11_SCALE_FACTOR environment variable

This Gram-specific environment variable directly sets the scale factor, bypassing all automatic detection.

GPUI_X11_SCALE_FACTOR=1.5 gram

You can use decimal values (e.g., 1.25, 1.5, 2.0) or set GPUI_X11_SCALE_FACTOR=randr to force RandR-based detection even when Xft.dpi is set.

To make this permanent, add it to your shell profile or desktop entry.

Option 3: Adjust system-wide RandR DPI

This changes the reported DPI for your entire X11 session, affecting how RandR calculates scaling for all applications that use it.

Add this to your .xprofile or .xinitrc:

xrandr --dpi 192

Replace 192 with your desired DPI value. This affects the system globally and will be used by Gram's automatic RandR detection when Xft.dpi is not set.

Font rendering parameters

On Linux, the GRAM_FONTS_GAMMA and GRAM_FONTS_GRAYSCALE_ENHANCED_CONTRAST environment variables are read for the values to use for font rendering.

GRAM_FONTS_GAMMA corresponds to getgamma values. Allowed range [1.0, 2.2], other values are clipped. Default: 1.8

GRAM_FONTS_GRAYSCALE_ENHANCED_CONTRAST corresponds to getgrayscaleenhancedcontrast values. Allowed range: [0.0, ..), other values are clipped. Default: 1.0