When I open the clown, select Surface Plot, and then switch to PARALLEL in the View preferences, I only see massively zoomed in pixels. Trying to fit the view to the universe as well as to the selected content does not remedy the situation.

Information about your version of Java - this information is useful for the Fiji developers:

  os.arch => amd64
  os.name => Linux
  os.version => 2.6.32-33-generic
  java.version => 1.7.0
  java.vendor => Oracle Corporation
  java.runtime.name => Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment
  java.runtime.version => 1.7.0-b147
  java.vm.name => Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM
  java.vm.version => 21.0-b17
  java.vm.vendor => Oracle Corporation
  java.vm.info => mixed mode
  java.awt.graphicsenv => sun.awt.X11GraphicsEnvironment
  java.specification.name => Java Platform API Specification
  java.specification.version => 1.7
  sun.cpu.endian => little
  sun.desktop => gnome
  file.separator => /

The up-to-date check says: null

Information relevant to JAVA_HOME related problems:

  JAVA_HOME is set to: /home/schindel/fiji/java/linux-amd64/jdk1.7.0/jre
  fiji.dir => /home/schindel/fiji

Information about the version of each plugin:

  a7d517d98a5457af916919de4c81b28e7af57d79 20110811183049 plugins/3D_Viewer.jar