Fractorium is available only as a 64-bit program, which means it needs a 64-bit operating system to run. For Windows, this means Windows 7 or later. For Linux, this means recent versions of Ubuntu x64, such as Mint.

Although not officially supported, some users have reported success on debian by following these steps:

• When compiling from source, make sure there is no conflicting previously installed version.
• Make sure you fully install it using sudo make install. You may not run it in place.
• You must have OpenCL 1.2 or later installed. At the time of this writing, Mesa/Clover goes to 1.1 only.
• To install OpenCL 1.2 on an OS which does not have it pre-installed, follow these steps:
  • https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm#first-make-sure-your-system-is-up-to-date
  • https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm#add-the-rocm-apt-repository
  • https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm#using-debian-based-rocm-with-upstream-kernel-drivers
  • You may need to sudo apt purge mesa-opencl-icd pocl-opencl-icd to remove unwanted platforms that confuse the OpenCL loader system. Use clinfo from the command line to check for a successful installation. If so, you should see AMD-APP in the Platform Version.

Using the GPU to render is only supported on GCN or later AMD cards and Fermi or later Nvidia cards. If you do not have one of these, you can still run the program, but all processing will be done on the CPU. While not as fast as using a GPU, the CPU is still reasonably fast.

Intel HD grahics are not supported as a GPU device.

Fractorium makes use of special features on your graphics card, so before installing you need to ensure your drivers are up to date.

AMD and Nvidia users

Before installing Fractorium, go to the website for your graphics card manufacturer, download and install the latest drivers.

Non-AMD or Nvidia users

Intel makes a dummy driver for systems without sufficient hardware which is needed for the program to run.

If you’ve already installed the latest drivers and still get a message saying that OpenCL.dll is missing from your system, it means your hardware is unsupported. In that case, download and install one of the top two drivers on this page, depending on your OS.

Install Fractorium using the installer which will place all files needed to run in C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Fractorium

In addition to the executable, the palette file, settings file and a sample theme file all reside here.

Run the program from the shortcut created on the desktop.

The default configuration on the first run is to use the CPU. If it starts up with no errors and shows a randomly generated flame in the main window, then installation was successful.

Open the Options dialog to see if any available GPU hardware is listed. If so, check Use OpenCL and Shared Texture and select the GPUs you want to use from the list by checking Use. You must set the one connected to the display as the primary. Do not use an iGPU if one is present, they are unsupported. Also do not combine devices using a CPU and GPU. It offers no performance gain and is not supported. So run with one or the other.

Click Ok to accept the new settings and dismiss the dialog.

After a short pause, if the render completes without any warnings then your GPU is of sufficient capability to be used for rendering. Restart the program to ensure these settings save.

If any errors were encountered, try again, but uncheck Shared Texture. Click Ok to accept the new settings and dismiss the dialog.

If any errors were encountered, then you must only use the CPU.