The ice roids seem to be not rendering correctly, they tend to render in single colours like pink, red, blue, black etc. Any assistance would be appreciated.

My system setup is as follows:
Fedora Core 16
Radeon HD 6870 with FGLRX driver
AMD Penom II x6

Excerpt from config.ini
[refgl]
version=3
illummap=1
envmap=1
bumpmap=1
tc=0
aa_mode=1
minfilter=9987
maxfilter=34046
specular=1
windowmode=1
textureresolution=-1
texturequality=32
gamma=8
def_freq=0
tfactor_hack=0
doshaders=0
shaderversion=0
xf86vidmode=1
dovertexbuffers=1
doindexbuffers=1
do_compiled_vertex_array=1
do_env_combine=1
do_extensions=1
vbl=0
normalizenormalmaps=0

[Vendetta]
version=3
maxframerate=120
sensorsort=4
firsttime=0
reset_fov_hud=1
showlogoffconfirmation=1
AudioDriver=ALSA driver
VideoDriver=OpenGL Reference GKGL driver
xres=1600
yres=900
bpp=24
cache_resources=0
showsellallconfirmation=1
ptt=1
voicechatagc=1
voicechatVAD=0
enablevoicechat=1
soundduckinglevel=0.25
voicechatVolume=110
enabledeviceselection=1
playbackmode=PulseAudio
playbackdevice=ts3.pa.dummy.playbackdefault
capturemode=PulseAudio
capturedevice=ts3.pa.dummy.capturedefault

[Mouse]
xaxisinvert=0
yaxisinvert=0
sensitivity=6
mlook=0

[Accel]
xaxisinvert=0
yaxisinvert=0
zaxisinvert=0
sensitivity=100
centerangle=2

[targetless]
sort=distance
listmax=30
roidmax=10
fontscale=50
pindamage=ON
showself=ON
showselfcenter=OFF
showtargetcenter=ON
selfframe=OFF
pinframe=ON
listframe=OFF
scanall=ON
factiontype=bar
oresort=Heliocene
showpvp=ON
showpve=ON
showcaps=ON
showbomb=ON
showships=ON
showore=ON

[MAID]
MAID.settings.jettison=ON
MAID.settings.exclusiveMode=OFF
MAID.settings.combatMode=OFF
MAID.settings.tempNotify=ON
MAID.settings.tempSafety=OFF
MAID.settings.tempMax=100
MAID.settings.sound=OFF

I have the exact same problem, everything in the game looks fine on max settings apart from the ice roids are different colors.

I ignored it at first because I thought it was the old intel graphics hates OpenGL problem, (they do the bare minimum to pass the compatable with OpenGL test) but if you have ATI that blows my theory out the water.

I've seen this problem on all of the Mesa GL-based drivers, including the open source 'radeon' driver. Are you sure you're using fglrx and not the open source 'radeon' driver?

Try changing these lines:

doshaders=1
shaderversion=2

It's a standard problem for AMD+Linux users. I always used the ATI/AMD drivers off their site to fix this issue. If your card is listed there I'd recommend trying it.

Im now chooseing between not playing games until I buy a desktop computer with NVIDIA (the linux driver uses there own grpahics stack, its the best) or going back to Windows (not used for 3 years).

After some research it seems the linux driver for Intel only supports OpenGL up to shader version 1.5, while the Windows driver supports up to version 3.

Ahh, the wonders of open source software.

People have had this problem with nvidia cards too.

For some reason, VO sometimes doesn't detect that it can use texture compression, so it disables all shaders, even though the drivers (at least 'radeon' does) support shaders? Then it just fills in the ice roids with whatever color. On my laptop (intel) it's usually black, red, or green.

I use the 'fglrx' driver with my box at home and it works perfectly. No visual artifacts or performance problems whatsoever, but that's not always an option, say if your video card is older than the Radeon HD2xxx series.

^^^ Correct. If you're using a really old card, then perhaps getting something newer might be an easier and cheaper option for you than buying windows or building a new desktop.

The proprietary drivers always worked better for me than the open source stuff.

The open source ones work better with things like RandR, elaborate multi-head setups, and kernel modesetting/framebuffer consoles.

Why replace hardware that still works fine because of a software bug?

Linux is really picky about versioning.......