Comment 96 for bug 946899

Perhaps this is a related issue:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/946899

As I noted in the comments for that issue:

This issue impacts me multiple times a week. Sometimes the mouse continues to work but other times the mouse freezes also. I have not yet tried to open a teminal as suggested by bduncan (comment #13) but I am usually able to switch to the first terminal and kill compiz.

My freeze often occurs when switching workspaces. I often have thunderbird and chromium running laterally in desktop 1 and 2 respectively (of four total) and use an external drive on either a laptop or a netbook with an external display attached. The problem exists regardless of the hardware I am using.

When the freeze occurs and I can get to tty1, killing compiz is my work around. I usually use sudo top and find the compiz pid and kill it with signal 3. When I switch back to tty7 the screen will trigger the clearing of the freeze after I switch to it (tty7). Then compiz restarts and after a few moments (perhaps a minute) I am back working with the application which were open. When the freeze occurs and the keyboard becomes unresponsive (unable to switch to tty1) I must do a hard reboot to continue working from a restart.

I have looked into the log files and searched for any instance of compiz logging the freeze. All I have found is the indication I have killed the process. Compiz does not seem to be tied into the apport system for reporting. I expect there are several more users with this problem but the freezes go unreported as users have no idea what to do about it.

Unfortunately these unknown freezes (unknown to development community) will continue until these problems are given priority and addressed. Bottom line is that such freezes are like the blue screen of death and give potential adopters of ubuntu a crummy experience and all the more reason to switch back to something more familiar or "stable".

Compiz has made my user experience a challenging one. To that end I have enjoyed lighter interfaces including crunchbang and trisquel. I have been reluctant to go beyond the 12.04 LTS version as I am concerned my hardware is not up to the task. Compiz IMO provides me an awful experience and these problems give me pause to encourage others to the platform.

I implore those developers with more understanding of the freeze issue to put some heat on this problem and investigate what is going on and fix this. To ignore this further may render any other work on the ubuntu project to be moot if the user experience continues to suffer, IMO. I am happy to contribute what I can to help address this but I do not have deep knowledge of the compiz system.