I had the same problem playing Enemy Terrirtory. After a few minutes the game starts to loop. But with ET the solution was to start with +set r_ext_compiled_vertex_array 0 and that solved the problem. Here's the link http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/et/ .

Is there anything simular you can do when playing Vendetta? If not the game at present is unplayable for me =(

From the Bugs forum as well as this one:

In your config.ini file locate the [refgl] section and add:

doshaders=0
dovertexbuffers=0

http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1755&page=1

if that doesn't solve your problem, I can add another option to turn off the compiled_vertex_array extension too.

No It didnt solve my problem. I just tried to play but after a few minutes the game started to loop. So an option to turn off compiled_vertex_array extension sounds like a good solution until Ati fix this error.

Alrighty. I will add that.

By the way, when it crashes, does the bug report program come up? If so, make sure you submit it so I can see if there's something i can have you do in the meantime.

No the bug report program doesnt come up unfortunatly. Ill see if I can see something in the console next time.

Hmmm, I don't want to say this, but can you hexedit the gkgl.so in the drivers dir and look for the string GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array and then overwrite a char in that to something else?
Then run vendetta executable that's in your .vendetta directory directly.
Running Vendetta normally will notice that the gkgl.so is different and then redownload it.

Make sure you get all instances of that string.

See if that solves your problem until I get the flag into the next version of vendetta.