[kernelOfTruth]

the strange thing is that your hardware should support openGL 3.0/3.1:

GeForce 8600M GS rev 161

but still is affected

You need one of the following graphics cards to get access to the OpenGL 3.1 and GLSL 1.40 functionality:
Desktop

* Quadro FX 370, 570, 1700, 3700, 4600, 4700x2, 4800, 5600, 5800, Quadro VX200, Quadro CX
* GeForce 8000 series or higher; Geforce G100, GT120, 130, GTS 150, Geforce GTS 250, GeForce GTX 260, 280, 285 and 295, any ION based products.

Notebook

* Quadro FX 360M, 370M, 570M, 770M, 1600M, 1700M, 2700M, 3600M, 3700M
* GeForce 8000 series or higher

so something doesn't seem to work properly with the drivers >180.29


my next graphics card most probably will be an nvidia again but first I'd like to use my 7600GT a little longer (for the next 2-3 kernel releases) and not being forced to buy a newer one just because the current driver releases deprecates it in an strange way

thanks nvidia !