found it: Ubuntu/ Xorg is the culprit (partly?).

in the 'default' situation at start-up Xorg first recognizes the Intel810 and loads the Intel-driver, but after that concludes that it wants a VESA driver.

when i made a xorg.conf to change the amount of VideoRam, the loading of the VESA driver was gone, but in GEM my pictures were completely white, only the background color was visible. where outside GEM everything looked normal.

this was finally solved by defining a Depth in Xorg.conf. probably the lack of this parameter made GEM say: using 8 color bits.

rolf

in case somebody is confronted by this same problem my Xorg.conf is hereby included.

Section "Device" Identifier "imonitor" Driver "intel" VideoRam 16384 EndSection

Section "Monitor" Identifier "Generic Monitor" EndSection

Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Device "imonitor" Monitor "Generic Monitor" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1024x768" "800x600" EndSubSection EndSection