I am using Ubuntu 14.04 on Lenovo Ideapad Y500(Core i7 3630QM, 8GB RAM and nvidia Geforce GT750M with 2GB of memory). This is a relatively fresh Ubuntu installation because I wanted to learn more about the OS.
But the problem is, this fresh installation isn't performing well enough. Sometimes my system just stops responding. Everything stops, even the mouse cursor. Sometimes, it's an application that stops responding, but it bring down the entire operating system. Sometimes if I want, things go back to normal, but that doesn't happen always.
I've noticed some common tasks that trigger this issue. Some of them are,
- opening a new tab on chrome(not chromium),
- while I am on youtube on chrome
- overloading my gpu(i.e. playing games)
- OpenGL applications on heavy to moderate load.
I did some research on this problem, and it looks like the culprit is my proprietary nvidia graphics driver. But I can't go back to Nouveau driver, because I play games extensively. (Note : I don't have any of these problems on Windows. I can load chrome twice as much without any hiccup)
So my questions are,
- When a widely adopted application is misbehaving, how do I counter this? How do I start debugging this application/situation?
- When the OS itself stops responding, how would I start investigating? Does ubuntu has any log to see what it was doing on that time?
I know it sounds a lot like incompatibility between hardware or different software configurations, but how would I pin point the exact problem step by step without beating around the bush?
Thanks in advance.