VMD-L Mailing List

From: Benjamin Bouvier (benjamin.bouvier_at_ibcp.fr)
Date: Mon Oct 20 2008 - 06:05:26 CDT

Hi Nathan,

Mesa is a software implementation of OpenGL that runs on your CPU instead
of your GPU, hence the slow performance.
To use the (very limited) 3D acceleration features of the 945GM chipset
(like you did under Windows), you could try installing the Intel
proprietary drivers from here:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/detail_desc.aspx?agr=N&ProductID=2301&DwnldID=9722&strOss=39&OSFullName=Linux*&lang=eng

AFAIK, GLSL (OpenGL 2.0) is not mandatory to run VMD with hardware
acceleration.

Cheers,

Benjamin.

On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:06:35 +0200, <nbabcock_at_qis.ucalgary.ca> wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
> I had previously been using VMD under Windows, and it worked wonderfully.
> I recently threw off the Microsoft shackles (hooray!), and I am now
> running VMD on the exact same hardware under Ubuntu Linux 8.04 (Xfce
> desktop).
>
> I find VMD performance is noticeably worse under Linux. When rotating or
> translating a molecule the motion is choppy, whereas before it was
> perfectly smooth.
>
> The hardware itself is an Intel Centrino Duo, with the graphics card:
> Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945GM 20061017 x86/MMX/SSE2
>
> I don't believe this card supports GLSL (if anyone can confirm this for
> me, please do), but as I said, it still worked marvelously under Windows.
>
> Any advice for bringing Linux performance up to speed with Windows on
> this
> hardware would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Cheerio,
> Nathan Babcock
> Institute for Quantum Information Science
> University of Calgary
>
>
>