VMD-L Mailing List

From: Axel Kohlmeyer (akohlmey_at_gmail.com)
Date: Thu Nov 12 2009 - 12:09:16 CST

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 12:17 PM, Robert Meklemburg <revbobmek_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey everyone,
> I recently upgraded my linux box to Karmic Koala (the newest ubuntu). The
> issue I am having is that now the new cartoon representation will not
> display at all. The cartoon representation works fine, but the new cartoon
> one is actually much more useful for what we are trying to look at. I have

if you don't need interactive display, you can always set up your visualization
in cartoon and then switch to NewCartoon and render with TachyonInternal.

> tried vmd 1.8.7 and 1.8.6 with no luck. My only guess is that it is a driver
> issue...but haven't been able to figure out which driver would be a better
> choice. Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

if it is a driver issue (and i agree that it is very likely,
_particularly_ for a
very new and very recently released distribution with many new features),
then this is the wrong place to get help. you have to tell the driver developers
that it does not work properly for you and give them examples how to reproduce
it easily.

> Here is the video card I am using. I do not know how to check the driver
> version, though.
> VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV516 [Radeon X1300/X1550
> Series]

have a look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log
if you report your problems to the driver developers/maintainers, check if there
are special bug reporting tools or scripts that gather the required information
for them to upload with the bug report.

in general, the current x11 drivers are in a pretty bad shape with respect to
OpenGL programs, since there is a major rewrite of the lowlevel infrastructure
going on and developers seem to be much more concerned to have composite
effects working rather than implementing the OpenGL standard correctly.

it would be worse if you had intel graphics in your machine...

cheers,
   axel.
> Thanks,
> Rob Meklemburg
> Dept. of Biophysics and Physiology
> Case Western Reserve University 

-- 
Dr. Axel Kohlmeyer    akohlmey_at_gmail.com
Institute for Computational Molecular Science
College of Science and Technology
Temple University, Philadelphia PA, USA.