[vtkusers] vtk impressions / linux problem and solution

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

hi,

>>>>> "Michael" == Michael Zawrotny <zawrotny at mailer.sb.fsu.edu> writes:

    Michael> However, I ran into one problem that was very nearly a
    Michael> show-stopper for me.  When I tried to run demos from
    Michael> either the pre-compiled 3.2 from your web site or after
    Michael> compiling it from the source, I always got a segmentation
    Michael> violation.  This was on two of my Linux boxes, one
    Michael> running RedHat 7.0, the other Slackware 7.1.  In both
    Michael> cases, the solution for me was to remove mesa and install
    Michael> the SGI open source openGL noted below.

    Michael> http://siddiqi.webjump.com/sgi-opengl-1.2.1-1.i386.rpm

    Michael> I'm not complaining about the software.  You are
    Michael> providing a package that is large, complicated, and
    Michael> specialized, for which I am quite appreciative.  The
    Michael> reason that I am telling you about this issue is so that
    Michael> you can be aware of it and take whatever steps you deem
    Michael> appropriate to mitigate the problem.

I understand that you are trying to help but I have a few things to
say.  First, this problem is pretty common and a quick search on the
list should tell you that quite a few folks have experienced such
problems.  Some of the users have succeeded in getting it to work.
Secondly, Red Hat is really to blame for shipping with incompatible
software.  I think Red Hat provides a set of updates that fix most of
these problems.  

Kitware does provide rpms and I guess that they are built under Red
Hat 5.2.  Maybe we need to get a more up to date machine building the
nightly RPMS?  We are also trying to get VTK packaged for Debian.
Maitland Bottoms has already uploaded a set of VTK packages into the
unstable tree.  Admittedly these are a bit incomplete but hopefully in
a few weeks we (Maitland and me) will polish things up so VTK works
out of the box under Debian.  If things go well we may see VTK in
woody. :)

prabhu