I tried the workaround from wilniuk, and it works here. Even under XGL, with which I am just experimenting here.

I didn't figure it out myself, as there where other problems at the same time: my x600 3D _hardware_ was broken (as I finally found out ..), and 2D had display failures too.
I then just did not try GE it with older ATI Drivers and the new x1600 again, even if I tried to get rid of all other prolems with a rollback from drivers version to version with the old x600.

So - definitely - all works fine unti ATI drivers 8.27.10.

ATIs libGL.so.1.2 from 8.28.8 up to the actual 8.31.5 don't work with GE. They _do_ with bzflag, etc, even when running under XGL! The apps only state (of course ;-)) that DRI is missing, but the framerate is sufficient.

Thank You all, and mainly wilniuk!

Joe