there is the openchrome project which provides opensource-drivers for the via chipsets (http://www.openchrome.org/). they know about these problems but developement seems quite slow over there.
-- computer freezes with some applications using 3D https://launchpad.net/bugs/43154 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs