Google Earth

[Brian Gaynor]

On Thu, 2008-01-10 at 16:11 -0700, Karl Larsen wrote:
> Sjoerd Mullender wrote:
> > On 2008-01-10 22:14, Chris Jones wrote:
> >>
> >>>    This is hard to explain, but in a non-root terminal I put glxinfo 
> >>> | grep direct and my screen went blank, much like it does with 
> >>> google earth, and after a few seconds I had to reboot from init 
> >>> level 3!
> >>>
> >>>    It appears glxinfo is not working right on my F8.
> >>
> >> Hate to tell you, but if running glxinfo causes your machine to drop 
> >> to init 3 (i.e. X dies) then your system is terminally unwell. This 
> >> is not normal.
> >>
> >> If I recall correctly you have installed the nvidia driver yourself, 
> >> using the nvidia installer ? I would suggest this is screwed up.
> >
> > I have seen this happen.  The problem was, the nVidia GL library was 
> > overwritten by the system GL library causing a fatal (for X) 
> > incompatibility as soon as GL was touched by the X server (e.g. when 
> > running googleearth of glxinfo).  This can happen when the Fedora GL 
> > library is upgraded or reinstalled after the nVidia driver was 
> > installed.  This can happen when you use the nVidia installer, but not 
> > when you use a packaged RPM (I recommend freshrpms.net since it does 
> > not need to be updated when there is a kernel update).
> >
>     Since A. I just got a new kernel in F7 as we write, and B. I can't 
> can't get anything from freshrpms.net because I do not know how to. C. 
> would a rpm there work on F7?
> 
> Karl

>From the freshrpms.net home page:

"The easiest way to install freshrpms.net packages is to click here from
within firefox, choose to open with Software Installer (the default)
then go to Add/Remove Software from the main menu, where new
applications will be available in the list."

Doesn't get much easier than that. I'm a big fan of the DKMS nvidia
module if you find you have to have the closed source driver.

- Brian