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So I'm running Ubuntu 22.04, my main browser is Brave which is chromium based but I have replicated this issue successfully in Chrome as well:

  1. Browser runs fine.
  2. Download content - this opens up a window asking where you would like to download.
  3. I save the file, the download window closes.
  4. I'm back on the browser but frozen, I can't click anything. No bookmarks, address bar, tabs etc can be clicked.
  5. I shut down browser and restart and everything is fine.

This happens only after the download box appears.

So far I have tried:

  1. Turn off Sync feature in Brave
  2. Turn off hardware acceleration
  3. Uninstall and reinstall
  4. There was a broken file in the config directory that had to be manually removed according to Brave support, which I did but it did not help.

It happens every time on browsers but I can sometimes replicate the issue on PDF reader applications like Okular or Foxit as well. The condition being that a window has to open in FRONT of the window I'm working on, when the front window is close the original window freezes.

I'm new to linux so if I left anything out please let me know.

cortisolblue
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  • I do not confirm your issue, chromium 100.0.4896.88 runned on xubuntu 22.04. Try to switch from wayland to xorg. – pasman pasmański Apr 14 '22 at 20:19
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    Ubuntu 22.04 doesn't yet exist; it's currently the development release Ubuntu jammy and remains that until it reaches RC state which isn't expected until after 14 April 2022, and isn't on-topic here until release on 21 April 2022. https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/jammy-jellyfish-release-schedule/23906 Please refer https://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic. For support issues with Ubuntu jammy you'll need to use a #ubuntu-next or #ubuntu+1 site (IRC, UF etc) – guiverc Apr 14 '22 at 21:54
  • FYI: I am using chromium & have used google-chrome (I rarely use it) on jammy, but it's still the development release and is in testing only. If you wish to report bugs, firstly thank you for helping test the release, but please see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs and use a #ubuntu+1 site such as IRC, https://ubuntuforums.org/ etc. This site isn't tracked for ubuntu+1 or #ubuntu-next issues – guiverc Apr 14 '22 at 21:55
  • @guiverc thanks I figured this was because I was running a beta distro. I'm still new to all this so appreciate the push in the proper direction. – cortisolblue Apr 15 '22 at 19:38
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    I'm running Ubuntu 22.04 and have exactly the same issue. The same issue also happens in Firefox. – DiveIntoML Apr 23 '22 at 01:03
  • Hello. Just updated today to mate 22.04, so no fresh install, 3 systems. mate 21.10->browser works

    mate 20.04 english->browser works after reboot and after freezing at first reboot.

    mate 20.04 romanian-> any browser freezes. i uninstalled and installed again.. i switched to english and installed languages. no change. when I start the computer an error popup appears asking to report it. This was an ubuntu upgrade from 18.04.

    Should I install a fresh copy or wait for a fix?

     – marius-ciclistu Apr 23 '22 at 20:40
  • I installed a fresh 22.04 and the behavious did not change apart from the error popup. I also tried firefox with try ubuntu. Same freezing is occuring. Strange thing that this is happening only on one of 2 identical laptops. 20.04 runs ok on this laptop from try and from hdd. – marius-ciclistu Apr 24 '22 at 18:20
  • Just finished reinstalling 20.04 +update. Firefox is still freezing. Chromium works. Maybe Mozzila "nailed" this to all ubuntu versions. It says version 99.0

    if I run it from terminal:

    $ firefox I get 4 of each: ATTENTION: default value of option mesa_glthread overridden by environment.

    [2022-04-24T20:25:53Z ERROR mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\u{0}\u{0}" (on youtube)

     – marius-ciclistu Apr 24 '22 at 20:42
  • The issue also seems to occur when trying to upload any files using a file upload form field. The dialog will appear and allow me to select the file to be uploaded, but once I've selected the file and closed the dialog, I can no longer interact with the browser window.

    snap versions of Brave and Chromium seem to avoid this issue. This is unfortunately not a perfect workaround though, since Brave's snap still has some issues, and as a result Brave recommends against using it right now if possible.

     – Andrew Apr 28 '22 at 12:31
  • Solved! See @Lin Sun's answer to this question: Google Chrome freeze uploading a file – Andrew Apr 29 '22 at 12:54
  • @cortisolblue Is your issue solved by https://askubuntu.com/a/1404974/57576 ? If so we may have a duplicate question... – andrew.46 May 03 '22 at 02:47

3 Answers3

29

I experienced the same problem after Ubuntu 22.04 had been released. I had installed during the final week of the beta and upgraded to the release version before discovering the same problem.

After a number of unsuccessful solutions, research revealed this thread: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1970148 . The suggested fix, running sudo apt install xdg-desktop-portal-gnome and restarting the system resolved the problem for me and a number of people who responded to the thread. You might try it if you're still experiencing the problem.

Edit, Nov 2022. Should this not work for you, Stefan's solution below may resolve the issue (turn off hardware acceleration in your chrome based browser, then please give him a tick). FWIW, finding settings can be hard so I open settings then search for hardware acceleration which takes you to this page & you can try turning it off.

enter image description here

John 9631
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    I had the same issue and running the command also worked. Fresh Ubuntu 22 installed. – Herlon Aguiar May 28 '22 at 23:57
  • In my case, this improved the situation (freezes occurs much less frequently) but not completely fixed the issue. – FedFranz Jun 21 '22 at 08:34
  • I have always had this package installed, and I still am seeing this problem, since upgrading to Jammy in May 2022. – elmor Jul 09 '22 at 19:15
  • Your comment and FedFranz's suggest that there is more than one mechanism that can drive this problem. In your situation I'd be tempted to try to purge the package and reinstall it (with the usual cautions about backing everything up). – John 9631 Jul 10 '22 at 01:47
  • i had it already installed and the freezes happen on and on – tymik Jul 31 '22 at 20:57
  • I have this and the install did not help. My system can tolerate firefox or chrome but locks if I try to run both. Sometimes it unlocks after a bit, but then locks up again very soon. – David G. Pickett Aug 15 '22 at 12:58
  • https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/xdg-desktop-portals/17331 – Adam Nov 17 '22 at 13:57
  • I have Ubuntu 22.10 and this didn't help because it was already installed by default. – Kiffin Nov 21 '22 at 19:49
  • Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS this worked – A Feldman Nov 22 '22 at 18:08
  • The solution of Nov 2022 works but this creates other issues (mostly minor like the inability to add visual effects when in a google meet meeting). Does anyone has a any other solution? – Bill May 11 '23 at 09:19
16

I had problems with Chrome - it was working fine on 20.04, but right after the upgrade to 22.04 it started to freeze temporarily, which was very annoying.

The top answer did not solve my problem (I already had the xdg-desktop-portal-gnome package installed and it was the latest version), but the Launchpad link did help. One of the comments suggested disabling hardware acceleration in Chrome settings - I tried it and voila, problem solved.

enter image description here

Stefan Buynov
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    Don't forget to restart Chrome. It also worked for me after buying a new computer and having this annoying problem 1 month ago. – SandroMarques Oct 21 '22 at 11:10
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    This seems to work for me with Ubuntu 22.10, at least so far chrome hasn't crashed in awhile. – Kiffin Nov 21 '22 at 19:49
0

In some cases this issue can be caused by a wrong graphic card driver. This is especially common with some Nvidia cards, for which the official driver are incompatible with newer Linux kernels (see this, for example).

In my case, installing the legacy Nvidia driver from this repo, fixed the issue.

Note that none of the other solutions proposed here worked for me.

FedFranz
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