So, there are two bugs here - an underlying bug in the 3D drivers which seem to be crashing in glGetString while we have a valid GL context - and that netbook-launcher is not catching the bad state from Clutter - clutter is failing to create valid stages & actors, but netbook-launcher is proceeding merrily on.
So, there are two bugs here - an underlying bug in the 3D drivers which seem to be crashing in glGetString while we have a valid GL context - and that netbook-launcher is not catching the bad state from Clutter - clutter is failing to create valid stages & actors, but netbook-launcher is proceeding merrily on.