I installed ubuntu 11.04 (natty) as a fast solution for the problems I found with 11.10 and in this version I found problems with the drivers of the graphics card to be able to run gazebo and rviz. I found the next error when trying to run gazebo:

Xlib: extension “GLX” missing on display “:0.0″.
Insufficient GL support

To solve the problem it’s enough to install Bumblebee following the instructions of: https://launchpad.net/~bumblebee/+archive/stable

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bumblebee

sudo usermod -a -G bumblebee $USER

Reboot and to try if it works they recommend running for 30s: glxspheres
Then compare it with optirun running: optirun glxspheres

In my case I can see how I go from 10fps to 31fps!

When running gazebo without optirun I found the following error:
XRequest.137: BadDrawable (invalid Pixmap or Window parameter) 0×4400002

But using optirun this error does not show up. And we win some fps.

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