Google Earth locks up system

[Kevin J. Cummings]

On 12/21/2009 10:53 AM, Steven Stern wrote:
> Since I'm not sure when, Google Earth completely locks up my system,
> requiring a power cycle to restart.  I see the splash screen, the it
> starts to display a tip-of-the-day, then plonk. System locked.
> 
> I have an old ATI card
> 
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60
> [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]
> 01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV370 [Radeon X300SE]
> 
> using the standard radeon driver.
> 
> There are no messages regarding the crash/lock in /var/log/messages. The
> crash does not seem to be related to compiz.

The crash is well known, and has been around for a long time (since at
least FC6).  AFAIK, there are no plans to fix it.  You could try the
radeonhd driver or run one of the ATI proprietary drivers (fglrx or
catalyst, but I never had any luck with them, and I'm not sure if they
work with F12 yet or not).  GoogleEarth really wants to use your cards
3D support and for ATI it is broken.  The result is a hard lockup of
your X session/keyboard/mouse/system.  Your system is borked.  You can't
even ssh into it.

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)