Comment 290 for bug 620074

I've tested the second workaround posted by David above (high IO priority of kjournald), and it definitely improves things in my case. My test is very simple: doing normal upgrades under Ubuntu (esp. kernel packages) always make Firefox and even Evolution or the whole desktop freeze for several seconds, up to about 20 sec in some cases. With that workaround, the freezes don't last more than ~1 sec; the desktop experience is not really smooth, but I can work during upgrades.

So I guess we can track down at least a specific issue here, which may be the major one affecting desktop boxes, and which seems to have appeared (maybe in different ways) between 2.6.17 and 2.6.28. I'm using a fairly basic Toshiba Satellite laptop with 512 MB of RAM and a 4200 rd/min HD.

Can anybody confirm that too?