On Mon, 15 Apr 2002, Dougie/Mum wrote:
I have a 64MB Geforce2 Pro graphics card and 256MB RAM with an AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz processor. OpenGL is superfast in Windows, but in Linux everything that uses it is very slow (Tuxracer 0.61 is less than 2fps, GLTron is rather slow when you are near a wall [15fps] and so is ArmageTron). My OS is Mandrake 8.1. Maybe it'll be better in 8.2... Anyway, does somebody know how to fix this?
OK there is some good news and bad news, you are most likely not using the accelerated NVIDIA drivers so you are getting slow performance. Now you can grab the .rpm files for Mandrake from http://www.nvidia.com BUT some people have reported problems with them, and they are *NOT* free software they are closed source binary only drivers, which means you are making a choice that is removing some of your freedom when you use them.
You have a choice, you can try getting the updated drivers and installing them but you risk making your system very unstable, different people report different things. Personally I have never had a problem with NVIDIAs drivers, and I was using them when NVIDIA didn't even support them and they were really bad. Although my experience is by no means indicative of what you will find.
BTW I just grabbed Tuxracer and on my Athlon XP1700+ and Geforce 2 GTS it looks fantastic and I was getting at least 30fps, and blimey linux games are getting good now!
Adam