I just installed Mathematica on my laptop. I use Linux Mint 17. My problem is that I cannot see any 3D graphics. Or more precisely, when I open the Plot3D reference page, I can see the 3D graphs, but when I run the codes myself, the graphs disappear. On the other hand, in the advanced Manipulate functionality tutorial I don’t even see the original 3D graphs, just a blank screen of the correct size. 2D graphics work fine. As I understand, I probably have to do something with the video drivers, but if you could direct me to some detailed directions, it would be helpful.
Thanks, Ferenc
Running Mathematica with the following options will work around the
problem in many instances:
mathematica -mesa -defaultvisual
If this works, then the problem is with 3D hardware acceleration.
If your computer uses a NVIDIA graphics card, try running Mathematica
with the following command:
$ env MATHEMATICA_GL_FBO=1 mathematica
Or similar for your shell.
If this works, you can try adding this environment variable to the
bashrc/cshrc/whatever. You may also wish to try upgrading the video
driver(s) or changing video driver from a closed-source version to the
open-source version, or vice versa.
If you are running multiple monitors, check /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
There is a known driver issue when “xinerama” is enabled. If you are
using an NVIDIA graphic card, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (which switches to the
terminal), kill X (usually by running /etc/init.d/gdm stop, where “gdm”
could be “xdm”, “slim”, or “xdm”, depending on the distribution),
then run the following:
restart the display manager (something like /etc/init.d/gdm start).
This will have only one screen configured.
run the nvidia-settings command as root and
set up the second screen using “TwinView”,
then save the changes to the Xorg configuration file.
Note:
The -mesa option causes the Mathematica graphics system to use a
software version of OpenGL, instead of a hardware-accelerated version
of OpenGL. This will significantly slow down both complex 2D graphics
and most 3D graphics.