Minecraft Forums

I've done some searching through the forums before posting, and I think my problem may be a bit different from the dozens of other threads with a similar title...

Basically, I'm wanting to try out Minecraft a bit, so I try to click on the 'single player' link on the minecraft.net forum. It looks like it downloads just fine, but then I get a brief (less than a second) flash of the 'minecraft' page, then everything goes blank.

I downloaded the minecraft.jar file, and while i can't login (User Not Premium), it seem to run okay, so I doubt it's the java version error that most people seem to have.

Specs:

OS: Ubuntu 10.10 with GNOME 2.32 for the GUI
Java version: Version 6
Browser: Firefox and Chromium (Google Chrome clone)

I've seen some Let's Play videos, and I think it looks really cool, but I'd really like to try it out before putting the money down for the game. Also, I'm a bit concerned that if I do buy the game, this same error will keep me from being able to play it, making my purchase a complete waste.

Any ideas on what the problem might be?

Quote from epikal »

Two things to check are graphics card drivers, specifically whether you are getting 3d acceleration.
Confirm this or post the output of :

lspci | grep VGA && glxinfo | grep ing

(You may need to install glxinfo)

Also the Ubuntu default Java (OpenJDK) doesn't work with Minecraft in the browser, only the standalone client. Or at least this was the case a few months ago when I last tried it, the fix being to install Sun (Oracle) Java & it;s plugin.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Java

Okay, here's the return of that code line:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G96 [GeForce 9400 GT] (rev a1)
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.4
    GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, 
client glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
client glx version string: 1.4
    GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_SGI_video_sync, 
    GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, 
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce 9400 GT/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW!
OpenGL version string: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 260.19.06
OpenGL shading language version string: 3.30 NVIDIA via Cg compiler
    GL_ARB_half_float_pixel, GL_ARB_half_float_vertex, GL_ARB_imaging, 
    GL_ARB_provoking_vertex, GL_ARB_robustness, GL_ARB_sampler_objects, 
    GL_ARB_shader_bit_encoding, GL_ARB_shader_objects, 
    GL_ARB_shading_language_100, GL_ARB_shadow, GL_ARB_sync, 
    GL_EXT_point_parameters, GL_EXT_provoking_vertex, GL_EXT_rescale_normal, 

And I did install the Sun Java 6.24, but I'm having troubles trying to install the plugin. Apparently, it keeps wanting to install TeaTime instead, which may be the root cause of the problem.

EDIT: D'oh, I feel all kinds of newbish. I had installed Java. I did not run ''sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun" to make it the 'default'. Now everything is running fine!

Thanks for the tip about JDK not working.