LinLog

It looks like I need a new video card.

For a while now, I've been having a problem getting Tuxracer to work. It's important to note here that I'm talking about the "deluxe" version of Tuxracer - the one that was sold commercially by Sunspire Studios for a few years. This is the version that they claimed they were going to open-source after they had made their money, but didn't. And since it seems that Sunspire is now out of business, they probably never will.

Anyway, a few years ago, I shelled out the $15 for a copy of Tuxracer Deluxe. It's considerably better than the free version, and was well worth the price. However, at some point it stopped working.

I think it was the change from XFree96 to X.org that broke it, but I'm not sure. All I know is that, somewhere along the line, the game got unplayably slow, despite the fact that direct rendering appeared to be working properly. It was more or less OK up until I started a race, but at that point, the video slowed down to, let's say, 1 frame every 20 or 30 seconds.

I figured that the game was broken on new software, but every now and then I get the urge to try it out. I never had any success on my machine with the el cheapo 16MB Rage 128 card. Today, however, I decieded to give it a try on Sarah's Xandros box with the 64MB Radeon 7000 card. And you know what? It worked flawlessly. Apparently it's just the X.org Rage 128 driver that's broken. Oh well. On the up side, I can get a Radeon 7000 for around $30.