10.04.2 LTS desktop on Thinkpad GUI issues

[MakOwner]

When I first installed 10.04 on this laptop, it would boot and the taskbar would be stable and consistent. Now after some time, and many updates to Ubuntu, but with the same taskbar/panel configuration, it appears to be more unstable than when I first loaded it.

Frequently I have to reboot after initial power up because one or more of the widgets in the panel will display with the icon half whited-out. Sometimes its the power icon, sometimes it's the network icon.
Sometimes the Applications menu icon repeats and no power icon will be present on the taskbar. Often the desktop switcher panel be .. for lack of a better word, locked up. The only desktop that you can get to will be the desktop visible immediately after boot.

It's just unstable and annoying as hell.

I thought things were supposed to get more stable over time, not worse?


How do I even troubleshoot this?

[wildmanne39]

When I first installed 10.04 on this laptop, it would boot and the taskbar would be stable and consistent. Now after some time, and many updates to Ubuntu, but with the same taskbar/panel configuration, it appears to be more unstable than when I first loaded it.

Frequently I have to reboot after initial power up because one or more of the widgets in the panel will display with the icon half whited-out. Sometimes its the power icon, sometimes it's the network icon.
Sometimes the Applications menu icon repeats and no power icon will be present on the taskbar. Often the desktop switcher panel be .. for lack of a better word, locked up. The only desktop that you can get to will be the desktop visible immediately after boot.

It's just unstable and annoying as hell.

I thought things were supposed to get more stable over time, not worse?


How do I even troubleshoot this?
Hi first run a disk check by opening disk utility,also in updates do you have prerelease or backport checked? if so you can have problems from getting bleeding edge updates.

[MakOwner]

Hi first run a disk check by opening disk utility,also in updates do you have prerelease or backport checked? if so you can have problems from getting bleeding edge updates.

fsck runs periodcally at boot as determined by number of mounts/elapsed time. No errors on the last run.

The only "non-standard" software I have on this is vmware workstation and the restricted nvidia drivers.

This is frustrating.

[moshuptrail]

I get similar behavior on my Dell 1525 laptop. Often as not the windows have no borders, and sometimes the panel fails to appear totally. Using a ctrl/alt/bkspc I reboot the desktop which fixes all.
This appears to be caused by some kind of "race" condition in the startup that results in parts of the desktop environment hanging. I can see the gnome-panel process in a ps -ef, but it accumulates no cpu cycles. Just sits there.
Have now upgraded (that's debatable) to 11.04. Hated Unity. Am still trying to get "Classic" to work. No windows borders yet.

[MakOwner]

I get similar behavior on my Dell 1525 laptop. Often as not the windows have no borders, and sometimes the panel fails to appear totally. Using a ctrl/alt/bkspc I reboot the desktop which fixes all.
This appears to be caused by some kind of "race" condition in the startup that results in parts of the desktop environment hanging. I can see the gnome-panel process in a ps -ef, but it accumulates no cpu cycles. Just sits there.
Have now upgraded (that's debatable) to 11.04. Hated Unity. Am still trying to get "Classic" to work. No windows borders yet.

Ugh. I have looked at 11.04 and I'm not at all impressed. The parts that aren't broken quite frankly suck in my "stupid-user" opinion. I fail to see why the 10.04 desktop couldn't have been finally fixed, rather than launching off down the path of another broken solution. :confused:

[tgalati4]

If it's a T40,41, or 42 series thinkpad then your graphics chip may be delaminating causing graphical glitches and unstable behavior.

[bettaproger]

If it's a T40,41, or 42 series thinkpad then your graphics chip may be delaminating causing graphical glitches and unstable behavior.

if that is the case, try a different desktop enviroment

[moshuptrail]

I disabled Unity and reverted everything back to the way it was in 10.04 Now I see no difference, except I don't like the style of the cards in FreeCell :)