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I have Ubuntu 16.04 and when I launch some fullscreen aplications, they randomly (at a given moment) freeze my display. I can move the mouse pointer using the mousepad but neither I can't click nor press a key combination to exit the aplication. If I press Alt+F1 (I think), then I go completely into CLI. My question is, if I suspect that this is a bug from one or more of my repositories, how can I detect wich of them is buggy and how to file this bug (under which package)?

Thanks for your patiente, as I am new at this.

Jose Barakat
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    The combination you pressed is not Alt+F1, but Ctrl+Alt+F1. It switches you to a virtual terminal, where you could, e.g., run a new graphic session, or to do anything else. To switch back press Ctrl+Alt+F7 (though the number isn't mandatory; e.g. on Archlinux graphical session is rather …F1). The problem looks to me is either drivers or Unity. To pin it down, try installing another DE, or latest userspace drivers (a note: graphic drivers on Linux are consist of kernel side and userspace, so to check I'd go for DE). – Hi-Angel Aug 16 '16 at 05:21
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    You could also check ~/.xsession-errors and /var/log/Xorg.0.log files for errors (and perhaps dmesg), though in my experience in such cases they didn't mention anything useful, but just for the safe case. – Hi-Angel Aug 16 '16 at 05:22
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    Ah, btw, in your case just for usability you could bind to a button the command xkill, it allows you to press with cursor to a window, and the acc. process would be killed (press Escape to cancel). – Hi-Angel Aug 16 '16 at 05:34
  • Thanks @Hi-Angel , I'll try installing another DE alongside Unity (I think it can be done... like GNOME / Plasma / MATE / Xfce / etc... ) and keep an eye for changes. Right now I'm suspecting from http://ppa.launchpad.net/canonical-x/vulkan/ubuntu , http://ppa.launchpad.net/graphics-drivers/ppa/ubuntu and https://download.01.org/gfx/ubuntu/15.10/main , wich I configured trying to solve graphical issues. Funny thing. – Jose Barakat Aug 16 '16 at 07:06
  • Btw, thanks for that info about log errors and key combinations / binds. I'll definetly try them out. – Jose Barakat Aug 16 '16 at 07:11
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    Installing Gnome is easy, e.g. here's an example (a correction to the answer: you only need to switch to a VT to do …gdm restart. A reboot would work too, of course). And I confused a bit: to cancel xkill it is "right mouse button", not Escape. – Hi-Angel Aug 16 '16 at 07:38

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After some research, and trying to tag my own question with a "freeze" tag which possibly means that this is a bug with a graphic driver, I just found that there are 2 bug reports at Oibaf's "Updated and Optimized Open Graphics Drivers". This bug causes the screen to completly freeze with the exception of the mouse pointer.

Bug Description

During the installation the computer freezes completely except for the mouse pointer. And even that is stuck with whatever shape it happened to have at the time it froze. The steps I have to cause the freeze are run Ubiquity to start the installation open a terminal, run Ubuntu-bug and let it launch Firefox. It will freeze every time then. Even the consoles (ctrl-alt-f1 etc) are unavailable. What kind of information can I collect and how?

Bug #1377878 for Oibaf's repo and Bug #55745 for Xorg Project Team, are related and quite old (reported 2 years and 4 years ago respectively without a fix).

I would suggest, sticking with default Ubuntu drivers, suscribe to #1377878 and wait for a fix.

Jose Barakat
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