Choosing the right OpenGL driver
 

I have Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop. Recently I tried to use a graphical software VMD to view some molecular dynamics simulations. It doesn't render points properly, when contacted the VMD forum they think it has to do with either GPU or choosing the right driver.

lshw gives

description: VGA compatible controller
product: Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 0c
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0

My question is how do I know which graphics driver I am using and whether it is the best choice or not?

Well look at your xorg.conf file that whould tell you what driver it is using it might say something like vesa, or intel, intel is the proprietary driver for your integrated graphics card. You could always try to download and install the latest from their repository for their driver, and you might also want to look at what options are turned on for openGL it may not be the wrong driver, but possibly the wrong options.

First of all thanks for your reply.

cat xorg.conf produces

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

I couldn't figure out how to extract graphics driver info from this. After googling for a while I found out that "lsmod | grep drm" should be able to tell me what driver it is and the out put of the command is

drm 82452 3 i915
agpgart 34760 3 drm,intel_agp

I assume that it is Intel915 driver. Am I right?

In another place it was suggested find the info in the following way

System > Administration > Hardware Drivers

which says "No proprietary drivers are in use on this system".

What do I make out of these two outcomes?

Thanks

I would say it looks like you may be running an older version of the intel driver try specifying in the Device section

And make sure you have the intel xorg driver installed

after doing those things restart the X-server or reboot the system and see what happens.