Plasma 5 frequent screen freezes

[mith]

I have just installed Plasma 5 preview and am experiencing strange problem with it. Basically it works quite nice and fast, but the screen freezes once in every several minutes. What is even more strange is that, however applications are not responding, mouse pointer is still moving and everything unlocks once I press Alt+Tab combination. It also affects playback of video files, whereas there is still sound, video motion stops until I press Alt+Tab. Pretty weird and I have no idea, what is the cause.

My system is Dell XPS laptop, with Core i5, running on Intel graphics.

[Turlu Tu (turlu-tu)]

Precisely the same case here. The Ctrl+Alt+Esc combination also helps. I have Lenovo B470 with Intel graphics.

[mith (lstarba)]

I did some testing and I think it might be related to some issues with Intel Driver. Problems with video playback was solved in SMPlayer (which was also freezing, as I described in previous post) by changing video output to XV (Intel Video Sprite).

Problems with freezing composition were probably also fixed by changing rendering output to OpenGL 3.1 (I was using 2.0 previously) and EGL. It is bit too short since the change to be 100% sure, but for now it seems it works.

[Fabrizio Ruggeri (fabrizio-ruggeri)]

Me too. Even here an Intel graphic driver

[mith (lstarba)]

Can you both check if changing rendering method helps you as well? On my machine it helped.

[Fabrizio Ruggeri (fabrizio-ruggeri)]

Rendering changed from OpenGL2.0 to 3.1. I'll let you know.
Is that what you mean?

[mith (lstarba)]

Yes, exactly. It did the trick for me. Of course it's just workaround until someone will find out, why it's not working properly with OpenGL 2.0, but that's still better than nothing.

[Fabrizio Ruggeri (fabrizio-ruggeri)]

No, here is still freezing with OpenGL3.1

[Gernot Pansy (notz)]

> My system is Dell XPS laptop, with Core i5, running on Intel graphics.

Same hardware, same problem. Also with OpenGL 3.1.

[HaoZhu (jieranyi)]

I have the same issue with my laptop HP ProBook 4331s. However, if I select the rendering to Xrender, it works "fine". The screen looks slightly different with the OpenGL 2.0/3.1.

[mith (lstarba)]

Yeah, Xrender is simplier, so I didn't wan't to use it in place of OpenGL

You should check OpenGL 3.1 + EGL. That's working for me just fine.

[Peter Chibunna (peterchibunna)]

I have the same issue on my Dell Latitude-E6330. It happens till a number of times when you just have to go to tty1 and do a reboot. OR sometimes, after a long time after the freeze, the session forcefully closes and you have to log in again.

[Peter Chibunna (peterchibunna)]

Please how can I change the rendering as most of you are suggesting here. I already went to System Settings->workspace->Desktop behavior.

I didn't see any pointer there. I could use some help here, please.

[Peter Chibunna (peterchibunna)]

sorry, guys I've changed my "rendering backend" to "OpenGL 3.1". System Settings->Hardware->Display & Monitor->Compositor ...

So far no freezes yet.

[Peter Chibunna (peterchibunna)]

I have tried with the rendering backend to XRender also, although the frequency reduced, it still freezes.

[Radmar (radmar10)]

I confirm the issue for Dell Latitude E-6520 with OpenGL 2.0 and GLX.
I'll try OpenGL 3.1 and EGL

[Lovesh (lovesh-bond)]

I faced the same issue on a Dell Inspiron 14 N4050 but the freezes became less frequent after i switched to OpenGL 3.1 but in a couple of days my system became so slow that i had to get rid of plasma 5.

[HaoZhu (jieranyi)]

OpenGL 3.1 and EGL works also fine for me.

[Rebel Monk (whoami-h)]

Issue is seen with:

OpenGL 2.0 with GLX or EGL
OpenGL 3.1 with GLX or EGL

Issue is resolved with:

XRender.

[Mike Irons (0cs935kb517wwmwa7m9428da-mail)]

Have this bug too. Very frequent screen freezes, mouse only thing usable, unfrozen with Alt + Tab.
I've been running Plasma 5 for sometime without issue, the problem seemed to appear when I upgraded from 14.04.1 to 14.10.
I'm currently testing 15.04 and the bug is still present.

Will report back when I'm back by the laptop, re: hardware specs and OpenGL version.

[Valorie Zimmerman (valorie-zimmerman)]

This is hitting me too. Some research shows https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=336592 and an accepted patch. Libxext needs packaging and distributing, as I understand it.

[Rick Timmis (rick-timmis)]

I can confirm that I have this same issue as well. I'm having a similar experience to Peter

Quote: "It happens till a number of times when you just have to go to tty1 and do a reboot"

Something that I have noticed is that when the desktop is idle, for a while and then I come back to it it can be frozen. I also noticed that using Google Hangouts, the video freezes, every 5 minutes, and Alt+Tab is required to unfreeze.

My suspicion is that there might be something useful to be had by adjusting the screen locking timeout, and testing this now to see if it might help as a work around.

I should have some time next week, and if Libxext is still outstanding or packaging I'll take a crack at it.

[Jonathan Riddell (jr)]

Martin Graesslin says
"We have an indication that freezes on Intel hardware might be related to the usage of buffer age. Apparently using:
export KWIN_USE_BUFFER_AGE=0; kwin --replace &"

[Jonathan Riddell (jr)]

possible upstream bug:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=338999 "Desktop freezes time to time on plasma 5"

I think the issue with libxext is unrelated, that's just some debugging spamming the .xsession-errors file, I've made a SRU bug 1400730

[Torsten Römer (dode)]

Pressing ALT+TAB allows me to cycle through the windows but does not unfreeze the desktop once it is frozen on a Lenovo L420 with Intel i5 and Intel HD 3000 graphics with a dual-screen setup.

Switching from OpenGL 2.0 to 3.1 did not help with the freezes, but switching to XRender did. Also some animations like fading in/out popups/tooltips is now much smoother. And a lot of other things seem to work properly now, like dialogs correctly being placed on top, applications opening in the primary display and so on.

Also, I had the issue with the giant .xsession-errors file before, which is gone now.

[Torsten Römer (dode)]

I'd like like to correct some statements in my comment:

- Switching to XRender does not have an impact on the placement of dialogs and windows.
- Sometimes the panel freezes, then .xsession-errors still fills up the /home partition. But it happens only every now and then.

[Rick Timmis (rick-timmis)]

Pre-release update sources pulled in plasma 5.1.95 with all its kwin updates. This has corrected the problem for me, and robust testing over the last 24hours has not repeated the issue.

I attached my apt history.log so you can see the full set of packages that were pulled in.

[Ingo Siegert (therealbigear)]

This also affects kubuntu 15.04 with Intel graphics. Switching to xrender did not resolve the problem.
I will test OpenGL 3.1 and egl

[Ingo Siegert (therealbigear)]

Ok. OpenGL 3.1 and egl did not solve the problem.

[Ingo Siegert (therealbigear)]

I could solve the problem by deleting files like:

.cache/plasma-svgelements-default* from $HOME/.cache

The solution is described here:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=338999

[Abhisek Maiti (mail2abhisek-maiti)]

This bug affected my laptop too. My system is Dell Inspiron 14. I'll try OpenGL 3.1 + EGL workaround.

[Petri Haikonen (petri-haikonen)]

This is still an issue in Plasma 5.2.2 and 5.3.2 (latest stable version). Switching to another virtual desktop unfreezes my screen. Disabling compositor seems to fix the problem for me.

My system is Dell E5450 i5-5300U with docking station, two monitors. I'm using Intel graphics, no Bumblebee nor NVIDIA drivers installed. This laptop model has GeForce 830M as well.

[Petri Haikonen (petri-haikonen)]

It seems that using XRender instead of OpenGL also fixes the problem.

[Dave Lozier (dave-lozier)]

None of the suggested work arounds fixed this for me.

Kubuntu 15.04
HP 8710w, Nvidia Quadro FX1600

I just use the laptop for testing so have been suffering through. Maybe 15.10 will be better?

[Panagiotis Papadakos (papadako-u)]

At least for me, it seems that disabling vsync resolves the problem.

[Simon Quigley (tsimonq2)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Kubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Kubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Kubuntu version. If you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running only once:
apport-collect 1384512

and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.