Graphics Problem With Google Earth -

[doctormann]

Hi

I've been running GE 5.2 under WinXP with no issues. I've recently been looking at Linux Mint 9 (Isadora) as an alternative to Windows but I can't get GE to run properly under Mint. Specifically, any text boxes just appear as white rectangles with no content.

My system is a bit of a dinosaur and I suspect that the problem is caused by my graphics adapter not being up to the job. It's an S3 ProSavage DDR and is integrated into the main board rather than being a separate card. It does support 3-D under Windows and if I try the 'spinning gears' display in Mint this works OK. Trying to enable any Compiz settings, however, does not work as 3-D rendering is apparently restricted to 512x512, even though 3-D 1024x768 works perfectly under XP.

The System processor is a P4 2.4GHz

RAM is 1GB DDR

Open GL Renderer (under Linux) is Mesa DRI ProSavageDDR 20061110 X86/MMX/SSe2

2 x 120GB HDDs. HDD0 is partitioned 50-50 with XP on the boot partition and data on the other. HDD1 is also partitioned and contains the Linux system and its swap file plus a 60GB NTFS partition that I use for backup. I'm running a dual boot with GRUB written into the MBR on the HDD0 active partition.

I've trawled the Linux forums and have found that other people have found this problem with GE and Linux. No-one seems to have come up with an answer though. I wanted to try updating the relevant driver but Linux doesn't seem to find any proprietary drivers for my system - none at all, not just the graphics driver.

I'm not hopeful of a solution, other than maybe a better graphics card or, better still, a whole new box but does anyone out there have any suggestions that I might try?

Thanks,

DM

[siamect]

A free driver never get any better that the information it is based on, if S3 doesn't give all the documentation needed, then there is no way of making a free driver properly, it will be based on guessworks and reverse engineering... a slight change in hw versions can result in a problem...

I'm running GE on a machine with Intel 945 chip-set and there was a problem in the beginning. Now it works fine including running it in combination with with rendered desktop effects.

Martin