Since none of the other opengl applications seem to have problems, I think this is a bug in spiftacity. Status set to "Needs Info" and assigned to the maintainer of the spiftacity package for now. Let's see what Matthew has to say about this.
** Changed in: xserver-xorg-video-via (Ubuntu) Sourcepackagename: xserver-xorg-video-via => spiftacity Assignee: Ubuntu X SWAT => Matthew Garrett Status: Confirmed => Needs Info -- VIA Unichrome - starting spiftacity freezes X server https://launchpad.net/bugs/33929 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs