[Discuss] Ubuntu problems

[Murray Strome]

On 2016-03-02 08:06 PM, Murray Strome wrote:
> 1. Ubuntu "hangs" and becomes unresponsive on my laptop with SSD and 
> must be turned off with the power switch to get it going again.  I 
> thought that I had it working better by moving the Chrome cache to 
> RAM, but while it seems to hang a bit less often it still happens. 
> Also, I have to manually delete the cache, mount the temporary file 
> system in RAM, create a folder in it for the cache, then create a link 
> to it from the Chrome cache in my home directory. The script that 
> contains the instructions to do this does not work. Also, the fstab 
> entry to automatically mount the RAM Disk does not work.
Thanks to everyone at the meeting on Saturday.  It turns out that I 
simply do not have enough RAM in my Netbook to be able to switch my 
Chromium cache to RAM Disk.  Only one or two tabs can be open at a time 
before all the space is used up and it dies.  I am OK on my desktop 
computers where I have lots of RAM, but I am maxed out on the amount of 
RAM I can install on my Notebook (8G).
>
> 2. On my desktop, (which also has SSD, but also regular disk where 
> most of my temporary files are located), after recent updates, I have 
> a very annoying display problem. Basically, when I switch workspaces, 
> whatever was on the one where I was previously working persists and 
> only bits and pieces of the items on the one to which I have switched 
> show up until I click on some empty space. Then it clears up. It is as 
> if the memory for the display is not getting cleared properly. I don' 
> see any errors, but in the X-Diagnostic settings, it has some options 
> that I could try:
>      Disable bootloader graphics (it says that Grub loads the VESA 
> framebuffer driver which could cause issues when switching to a real 
> driver)
>      Disable VESA framebuffer driver (which is loaded early during the 
> boot which could cause issues when switching to a real driver)
>      Disable PAT memory (this pagetable extension can interfere with 
> the memory management of proprietary drivers under some
>                                                 circumstances and 
> cause lagging or failures to allocate video memory. )
I tried disabling each one of these in Kubuntu, and nothing made any 
difference, except that I had a difficult time rebooting after I had 
disabled the boot-loader graphics. I finally did get logged in using 
Icewm, and re-enabled boot-loader graphics. In Icewm (XUbuntu 
equivalent), the windows work OK -- I don't have the persistence problem 
(thanks to Cy for the suggestion). I did like many of the features of 
KUbuntu for what I normally do, but it was too annoying on this computer 
(works fine on another one which uses a different video card -NVIDIA, I 
think).  I especially miss seeing all the applications on all of the 
windows in the bottom toolbar -- but can live without it if I must.
>
> The VGA compatible controller is AMD/ATI Richland [Radeon HD 8570D]
>                                                       Subsystem: 
> ASUSTeK Computer Inc. 8526
>         according to Sysinfo.
>
> Any idea as to the downside of disabling these things, and what I 
> should try first?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Murray