Comment 19 for bug 81858

Dr. Gilbert:

I am not too familiar with the capabilities/performance of fglrx in terms of how it renders multiple stacked alpha channels, but perhaps my calling it "3D acceleration" is conflating 3D graphics with alpha transparency. Maybe the problem is not with the lack of 3D acceleration per se, but rather most systems without functioning 3D graphics tend to also have issues with rendering alpha channels. Maybe it is the case that the fglrx driver handles 3D fine but chokes on alpha rendering.

For what it's worth, testing with both Windows XP and many distributions of Linux, four different computers, all with nvidia graphics cards, in all cases the problem was reproducible and installing the proprietary "nvidia" driver rather than the open-source "nv" driver fixed the problem immediately.