Tips for running games with Mesa

This thread is meant to help users using the free OpenGL implementation Mesa, as well as presumably a free graphics driver.

A few general tips (if you need more in-depth help please post):
1. Most free software games will work with Mesa.
2. If the game was released before 2004 it will most likely work well with Mesa.
3. Some newer games can still be playable at reduced graphics settings.
4. Indie games by their very nature are more likely to work on Mesa than more commercial titles.
5. KMS is on by default on most configurations, you can turn it off if it is affecting your performance.
6. Please make sure you are using the most recent stable Mesa release (currently 7.8.1, should be 7.9 soon).

I can not stress the last part strongly enough. Mesa is developing at a very quick rate and many new options are becoming available for those who choose to us it, especially as there has been an increased amount of support recently from commercial vendors such as Red Hat and Novell, as well as hardware manufactures such as ATI and Intel. By using the latest version you can guarantee you have the latest performance and compatibility updates as well as allowing you to use it on an ever expanding range of graphics cards. Fedora even allows users to play around with experimental code through the use of the "mesa-dri-drivers-experimental" package.

You can verify that you are using Mesa using the following command:
[hamish@griffindor ~]$ glxinfo |grep -i "(render|opengl)"
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R600 (RV630 9589) 20090101  TCL
OpenGL version string: 2.0 Mesa 7.8.1
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.10
OpenGL extensions:
[hamish@griffindor ~]$ 

If you use graphics cards from ATI or Nvidia that are supported by their binary blob drivers, you can also use them to gain increased performance and compatibility with more intense 3D games and other applications. There are drawbacks to this however, as there are inherit problems with a binary blob driver in that it fairly quickly slips behind the development pace of both the Kernel and X Server. If you wish to experiment with these blobs on a static system, I suggest trying the SuperGamer Live-DVD distribution. It has an intuitive driver installation interface and I have used it successfully on both ATI and Nvidia cards.