Comment 5 for bug 887933

My panel becomes unresponsive several times an hour and this problem has been with me for several months. Any app that I have open and focused on continues to work fine. Apps that are open but not the focus can be swithed to using Alt-Tab. If I close the app that has focus the image in the taskbar stays. The panel can become responsive again in a minute or two, but sometimes it stays unresponsive.

The keyboard is always responsive. If I use Ctrl+Esc and open ksysmonitor I can rightclick on the Plasma-desktop line and send it the signal "INT". That ALWAYS reactivates the panel and desktop. Since I first noticed the problem in late July or August, the plasma desktop has crashed on my only once. Sending the "INT" always gets the panel going again.

No log shows any indication of any problem with these panel freezes and thaws.

Using Kubuntu 12.04.2
xserver-xorg-video-intel (i915)
Running KDE 4.11.2 from PPA, but previous versions of KDE had the problem.
3.8.0-32-generic #47~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 2 16:19:35 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
but I've used the 3.2, 3.4 and 3.6 kernels. All had the same problem.