touchy and tklinuxcnc launch, Axis sim does not, OpenGL/tkinter/tcl issue

Hamster (me) is stepping off wheel and finally asking for help here. I have Debian 9 i386 LinuxCNC 2.7.15 install and getting what I believe starts as a Python error:  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk.Tkinter.py line 209
followed by
tkinter.TclError
and then shutdown.

I read about the lib1gl- - glx and lib1gl - -sxw11 issue in the install notes and tried both, error is the same as above. linuxcnc_debug.txt tells me not much anything I can use really, no idea why file has so little logged info.

I did typical Linux-ee command line stuff, fix broken packages, update from linuxcnc repository. Python version I have is 2.7. Anyone have ideas what to test or what info to check ?

Replace or remove the graphic card.

Hoping there might be another solution than replacing graphics card.

Software rendering was once a good solution, not sure if it works now:
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Troubl...oftware_based_OpenGL
There is another solution above it, but much more involved and risky as it might render the system useless and require a new install.