Apologies if this has already been discussed, but I've only just come across this thread...
Is it possible to release two versions of stellarium - one which uses the opengl support in the video drivers, and one that is linked against the Mesa (opengl software renderer) library?
The second one would run for people who are having problems with their native opengl support, the mesa library would do all the opengl stuff and not rely on the video card drivers at all. It might be a little slower for some things but at least it would run and should give the same results.
You could have an option in the config to choose between using Mesa and native opengl.
The mesa website is here:
http://www.mesa3d.org/
cheers, Bird