how do you check to see if your cinnamon desktop is running with 3D acceleration (i.e. not "software rendering")?

pre-req:

• [if you are using a VM] in virtualbox for your VM make sure you have 3d-acceleration marked as enabled (check box is checked)
• [if you are using a VM] in virtualbox make sure you have >= 12-16MB video memory

method 1:

• at the GUI login make sure to click the cog before entering your password and hitting the keyboard enter key --> select cinnamon (not the one that says "software rendering")
• when your screen displays the desktop make sure there isn't any dialog that says something about "runnging software rendering"

method 2:

on the command line run glxinfo|grep Accel and it should say yes

method 3:

• on the command line run glxinfo|grep render and look for "OpenGL renderer"

final check:

• run glxgears and make sure it reports >50 frames per second

disclaimer

i'm no expert on this but i wanted to share to help everyone out. i got this info mostly from: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1077320-start-0.html

if you are running a vncserver i don't think vnc can do 3D acceleration

• like the section says: if you are running a vncserver i don't think vnc can do 3D acceleration
• the third-party sources I read seem to indicate that VNC can't do 3D acceleration: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=174563 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1048527
• if you are running a virtualbox VM you can double click the VM to open the VM through the GUI and get 3D acceleration (or if you have a license for the non-free extension pack you can run a remote-desktop instead of a vncserver and get better performance but make sure you have a purchased license for the extension pack. lastly there is probably a way to run your own remote-desktop server like vncserver but i don't know how to do that.)