unity --replace crashes/closes some applications (but not all) since 16.04

[RastaPopoulos]

Context : when I start Unity, Compiz takes ~40Mo of RAM. But when I use my computer hours and hours, then it takes more than 100… 150Mo. So since many years, I regularly restart Unity with "unity --replace", and it works : only relaunch the interface, and less RAM.

But since I updated to 16.04, this command completely crashes and closes some of my opened applications. But only some, not all. For example :
- firefox crashes
- thunderbird crashes
- geany crashes
- system monitor crashes
but
- nautilus remains open
- gnome-terminal remains open

I only want to restart the general interface, and it worked perfectly for years.

If I can provide more informations or logs…

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

Confirmed, one data point seems to be that it kills all apps that are launched by unity, i.e. are unity's children? Could be about process groups or cgroups or so.

[Andrea Azzarone (azzar1)]

It seems that they are not unity's children but they all belong to 'compiz' process group.

[Jelle De Loecker (skerit)]

This is very annoying. Unity/compiz seems to have some issues when my displayport monitors disconnect (which happens when they are turned off). I always have to kill compiz, and then most applications are closed.