Comment 8 for bug 318494

About your suggested solution: I don't think the Ubuntu installer nowadays sets anything in xorg.conf during installation. Therefore, it would probably involve a lot of extra work to fix this specific problem in that way. I think there are other ways to blacklist features or set default options for specific cards. Moreover, to do that one needs to be sure that this is a general problem that applies to all users with this chipset. From bug 304871 it seems that most people with 845G don't experience your problem (that bug report describes a different problem). Finally, the Ubuntu developers will have to decide what is the best way to resolve a bug, given all the available information. They know better how Ubuntu works on the inside.

SInce you can log in with ssh (when on ethernet) after the crash, it means the kernel does not crash, but you may still take a look in /var/log/kern.log if there are any messages from the time of the crash.

You've done a pretty good job in providing lots of useful information, so a developer should be able to have a look at it. I'm setting the status to confirmed.

PS: It is possible to test the latest git source code without compiling it yourself. See https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive .