[Chimera-users] Help about install Chimera

[Greg Couch]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009, Fang, Shunming (NIH/NIDDK) [C] wrote:

> Hello, There, I just install the latest version of Chimera in my Fedora 
> 11 machine. When I tested it after I installed it, it just show 
> segmentation fault. I don't know why. The chimera version is 
> chimera-1.3-linux.exe (32bit). my mahchine is 64bit. When I install this 
> 32bit chimera, I also install all package it required. I really 
> appreciate your help, Shunming

Two things:

32-bit verus 64-bit builds of chimera:

 	As you noticed, the new 64-bit distributions of Linux do not 
include, by default, many of the 32-bit packages needed to run chimera. 
Since the list, and names, of missing packages varies by Linux 
distribution, we're going to drop the suggestion that people run the 
32-bit version to save memory.  It's not worth the trouble for most users.

Fedora 11:

 	If chimera is going to work at all, you need to use a daily build 
or the latest snapshot.  However, it still might not work.

 	Fedora 11 significantly altered how OpenGL (3D graphics) 
acceleration is incorporated into the kernel and by default uses 
open-source drivers for the various graphics cards and chipsets.  While 
this is an overall improvement, there are lots of rough edges.  For 
instance, if you have an ATI graphics card, the chimera daily build works 
with the default driver, but ATI's driver fails to install (it is 
documented to only be tested on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SuSE, and 
Ubuntu, not Fedora).  And if you have a NVidia graphics card, the 
open-source driver crashes chimera when you try to show a surface or 
ribbons (and ribbons are the new chimera default), but the closed source 
version from NVidia works great.  I don't know about Intel graphics 
options, but I do know that one of the primary reasons that the Fedora 
11 changes were made were to speed up Intel graphics performance, so if it 
works, it will be faster :-).

Bottom line:

 	If you want to use chimera, you're better off staying away from 
bleeding edge Linux distributions like Fedora 11.  But it can work if you 
try hard enough.

 	Good luck,

 	Greg