I have a Via Unichrome Pro K8(M/N)800 that until the release of the modular Xorg, never had hardware acceleration. With drivers from the openChrome project, I can now have direct rendering & can play DVD's in full screen.

The problem is with many openGL screensavers & games. If they don't lock the system up instantly, they will after a short period. This is a complete lockup, where the only resolution is to hold in the power button.

My query is about whether anyone has successfully overcome this problem? I haven't delved too deeply into the matter since reading this from the openChrome site:

Absolutely anything that can be offered will be greatly appreciated

Tony.

If you don't load the "dri" module you won't have 3d accelaration through the driver. X will be forced to use Mesa indirect rendering, which won't freeze your system(unless you have other problems).

Cheers!

Yes, that'll stop the lockups, just everything will be left so slow that it'll be unusable.

I've not been using GL screensavers or playing games. That's no problem to me but I'm giving this laptop to my mother next month. She's a bit of a technophobe & I don't want to tell her not to do certain things or cripple its abilities further.

Tony.

Doesn't *any* OpenGL stuff freeze X? If that is so, you *want* to use Mesa(even though it is slow) for OpenGL, so it won't freeze up. Also, disabling OpenGL won't harm your ability to play Fullscreen movies any.

No, screensavers like GLtext & GLmatrix are OK, it's only the more complex ones (half of them). All games crash at some point (even tuxracer), for example I can play the first level of Quake2 fine, but it crashes at the same point every time in the second (when the bridge is blown up). So it doesn't crash with really simple stuff, just the simple stuff Is compositing done via openGL? if so, that's ok (though slow).

Your help is appreciated but this does not fix the issue, it simply avoids it. I agree that your suggestion is fine for general 2D desktop use, but it completely cripples all 3D.

I'm really after a fix, can you help?

Tony.

Oh, I see what you mean, you want to disable OpenGL for some stuff....sorry.

No, I can't really help with disabling it in some instances, somebody else would have to help with that. I couldn't even get 3D acceleration working at all with my K8M800 chip.

DistroWatch.org has announced an iso available for Zenwalk 4.4.1. This addresses bug fixes. It may or may not include YOUR request for 3D accereration.

4.4.1 does not resolve the issue (and it's not distro specific), however the vesa driver in 4.4.x is excellent, almost matching the openchrome performance, without the openGL crashes