On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:50:59 +0530, Karol Babioch
Unless this is something specific to Arch, I'm pretty much in doubt that anyone can sort this out for you here. The graphics stack is quite complex, so there are a lot of places were things could go wrong. You are probably best off by resolving these kind of issues upstream (see [2]), where people know what to look for.
yes, i'm aware of that. was just hoping that others might have had similar experience and know where to look, or that i'm overlooking something obvious that could be pointed out. i'll take it to the GIMP users list next, and install openSUSE on bare metal again, to see if that's different. it's certainly something to do with the grapchics stack which, as you point out, is a complex thing :( thanks for your reply, -- phani.