Comment 17 for bug 117651

I am having this problem -- just started a couple of days ago on a 4-week old ("semi-fresh") GG 7.10 installation (dual-boots w/ W2K on a Compaq desktop, AMD Athlon CPU, 64MB, 2 IDE disks w/ 2 partitions for Linux and 2 for Windows, ATI Radeon 9250 display adapter). This "random freezes" problem seems, to me, to be a critical bug, impacting Ubuntu availability, reliability and integrity -- It also seems to be showing up in several/various Bug Reports in various descriptions and forms, but these all seem, at the bottom, related.

There is a very extensive Ubuntu Forums thread, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=412125, "feisty fawn freezes ! driving me insane", with well over 800 posts referring directly to this problem. Support/developers may want to "data mine" this thread for additional anecdotal evidence, if not already done so...

This problem "randomly freezes" is pervasive and widespread across multiple hardware (e.g., nvidia *and* ATI/Radeon cards, desktops and laptops, Intel and AMD cpus, etc.), releases (feisty and gutsy, at least -- yes, *many* 7.10 users are currently experiencing the problem), and seems largely independent of what, precisely, the user was doing when the next *random* freeze/hang/lock-up occurs (e.g., compriz, firefox, printing, "typing quickly", or just "mousing around").

Various postings on that thread recommend a wide variety of workarounds and "fixes" for the problem -- judging from that anecdotal evidence, no one thing seems to work, or even to pin-point the problem.

This Bug #117651, together with that Forums thread#412125, all seem also related to Bugs #103400 (compiz freezes x server after screensaver kicks in), #108527 (X freezes when compiz is enabled on ATI cards), and #120347 (xorg hang after longer (12h) idle time), at a minimum -- there may be other bug reports that are directly related, tho' using different words/symptoms to describe the same overall problem.

Shameless admission: I'm a Linux newbie here -- but I do have over 25 years of sw-dev experience on mainframes and mini's (VMS -- yes, probably mostly irrelevant here! ;-) ) -- and it just seems to me that tying awareness of these Bugs (and others?), together with the above-ref'd Forum thread, would be helpful in resolving this critical "random freeze" problem for all of us. Respectfully -- Lorin