[Chimera-users] mouse selection not working

[Greg Couch]

On Thu, 1 Oct 2009, lorenzo wrote:

> Hi everybody,
> I just installed chimera-1.3-linux.exe on an atom netbook. The OS is
> ubuntu 9.04. My problem is that the mouse selection tool does not work.
> To complete the scenario I add a few details
> 1) I don't have the green outline and setting Fill mode for selection
> highlighting in Preferences does not work around the problem (probably
> just a screen setting problem).
> 2) Other forms of selections work. For example by Select -> Chemistry ->
> Element -> H and then by Actions -> Atoms/Bonds -> Delete I can delete
> hydrogens.
> 3) I cannot delete anything that I select by ctrl + mouse left button.
> 4) libgl1-mesa-glx and libgl1-mesa-dri are installed.
>
> Thanks for your attention
>
>      Lorenzo Bongini

I'm pleasantly surprised to hear that chimera 1.3 works at all on ubuntu
9.04.  Many of the recent Linux distributions have altered their setup
enough to break chimera, so that is very good news.  For those other linux
distributions, the chimera daily build will be better.

But, the fact that the mouse selection tool does not work strongly
suggests that there is a bug in the one of the mesa (OpenGL) packages.
And since you're using ubuntu, you should file a bug report with them, so
it will get fixed and then, at some later date, the fix will show up in an
ubuntu update (e.g., the upcoming ubuntu 9.10).  Feel free to list me as
a technical contact.

As an aside, mesa is undergoing huge internal changes right now, partially
to improve the performance on low-end systems, so recent versions of Linux
are especially prone to OpenGL/mesa bugs.  If you have an ATI or NVidia
chipset in your computer, you will probably be better off installing the
closed-source driver from the respective vendor.

      -- Greg