I just installed Blender 2.44 on a Debian 4.0 Linux system. I opened it up and the interface is really distorted.
Blender uses OpenGL, right? That’s the only thing I could think of, but I wouldn’t know how to fix it.
Click on the thumbnail for a full-size image.
Thanks a lot for any help I recieve!
Matt
let me just take a wild stab in the dark here…<<draws knife…covers eyes…>> ATI video card?
Lol, sorry, I should’ve told you. Yes, it’s an Ati Radeon 7000 64 mb. …don’t laugh, I’m upgrading soon.
then get an nvidia card and your problems will be gone.
Haha, some things really are predictable
If it comforts you, i don’t think anyone ever had much success with those Radeon 7xxx, Radeon IGP or even older cards.
While it doesn’t seem to be that catastrophic with recent ATI - pardon - AMD cards, i also can only say that nVidia still seems to be the safe bet for Linux, had no major problems with 4 different GeForce generation now (2 GTS, 4 MX, 6600 and currently 7600 GT)
It’s not a Linux problem alone, same on windows…
(And, btw, last time I tried the installation of the Nvidia drivers under Linux wasn’t very pleasant, too; but it worked. And had to be redone with every kernel update… 
)
That’s my plan. However this same video card worked fine with Blender on an old windows 98 computer… Also, a few days ago I had Debian stable with Blender 2.42a installed, and it worked fine. My problems arose when I installed a more recent version of Debian, and Blender 2.44. Is there any special Linux drivers that I can install for Ati radeon cards?
ati cant make good drivers, sad but true, though hopes are high for the futureous open-source-drivers release(or have any been released?) though they most likely after that release would still need a good deal of ‘3-rd party’ hackin’ 
Wasn’t that cancelled and replaced by some “community process” or such?
Ok, but how come it worked on Debian stable with Blender 2.42a?
Stumped? So am I…
If it is a desktop system, buy a different (non-ATI) graphics card. You may try to fiddle with different drivers and settings, but for me that wouldn’t be worth the hassle.
If it is a laptop: Save for a new one without ATI.
Does 2.42a still work?
Either some OpenGL stuff in Blender changed, or the old ATI drivers indeed worked better with your card…if you used hardware OpenGL at all.
if you have some Anti Alias modes enabled it will give you funky results…
on my system I can only have AA on 2x and 4x… 2xq,4xs and 8Xs all will give me serious problems…
every things from blurring the unfocused tool panel to totally crashing upon loading.
at work I cannot have ANY AA enabled or it locks up the system in linux.
in windows it only lets me use 2x as well.
I agree with everyone else…
If you want to play in linux, you should really conciter getting yourself a modern Nvidia based card. It will save you a lot of grief in the future.
Thanks, I will try 2.42a.
Also, do you know how to change the AA settings in linux?
Blender 2.42a was distorted also. I found the Ati driver in the synaptic package manager, and I’m going to replace it with an older version to see if that helps.
The older driver did not work. It must be something else…
??
Maby the driver was built for windows and the Linux one is a crappy port. That could make it a more stable driver under windows.
No, you couldn’t install these drivers under windows, they’re in the Debian Linux repository.
I can’t figure it out. I think I’ll just wait until I build my computer. Hopefully in a couple of weeks. I’m going to get a Nvidia card.
If anyone has any more suggestions, I’d be glad to listen.:eyebrowlift:
What is your ati driver version? (type glxinfo in the console to know). I noticed HUGE improvements with last 2 versions (8.36 or higher). I also had all kind of screen artifacts and misbehaviours with opengl apps (blender, games, etc…) but since 8.36 they are (almost) all disappearing. It’s quite impressive what the ati linux team is doing… The progresses are very big.
If debian is like ubuntu, the driver that comes from official repositories is always a couple of versions late. I always use the drivers from the ati site. It’s a bit of pain to install but really worth it. Now blender behaves like a charm…