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Guys this is going to be a long one since I need to describe the problem and subsequent actions in case someone can help. Keep in mind I'm an artist and not a tech guy so while I do know how to keep my computers clean and functional I may need some more casual friendly responses

I had quite the adventure with Ubuntu something I've never seen before that I can only blame on some sort of graphics carddriver problem judging by the behavior.

On a brand new fresh and well set up Ubuntu installation which worked fine since Saturday, today I started getting strange behavior. After boot up everything would be fine, but as soon as I'd open any window/run any program the work area/desktop area of Unity would become unresponsive to mouse interaction but would work fine if navigated with the keyboard.

For example opening Chromium would make it so I couldn't click on anything inside the main window and the cursor wouldn't change shape when hovering over links, text and such however if I were to click the clock area or side bar everything was fine, the desktop(actual desktop) or the active windows tho would be dead to the mouse but not the keyboard. I could still surf the web and everything using the keyboard, tabbing from button to button and so forth.

At first this issue would go away after a minute or so but eventually it became permanent and rebooting didn't fix it, as soon as I'd run a program or open a window it would do this.

I ended up trying to disable OpenGL with the Compiz Config tool which resulted in a complete crash of Unity and Compiz, even after re-enabling OpenGL everything was dead, rebooting would take me to an empty desktop area with a single shortcut i had and every window i'd open would have no title bar no nothing, clearly i killed compiz and unity in one blow by ignoring a few warnings when trying to disable openGL.

So I hit ctrl+alt+f1 and installed gnome desktop


Gnome Desktop is up and running but I suspect the issue to be either my GTX680's drivers which Ubuntu installed on its own or a conflict with compiz of some sort that led to this, I wasn't changing any settings prior to this mind you I just installed the compiz config tool last night with no issues whatsoever. After installing Gnome Desktop it appears even grub changed and went to its default settings and I had it edited just right lol, doesn't matter though as long as it works the way it should, what worries me now is the broken Unity installation and I feel I'm not out of the woods yet and this issue will come back as I feel a bit of a lag with Gnome too.

Gnome desktop feels very cool yet alinen at the same time, in fact it's exactly the kind of cool strange OS feel I was looking for, so it's fun for playing around, however i'd like to have the option to go back to unity for efficiency and regular computer use but that is dead and broken now. If you guys could help me fix unity and avoid the issue I described in the OP would be great, I also fear this issue will repeat itself in gnome too.

I believe the solution would be to disable any and all visual effects, go to a 2d interface since despite the errors and everything dying after disabling open GL the mouse responded. I'd like to know how to restore unity without breaking gnome desktop now and then running it in a completely 2d mode if possible Also what are the chances of this happening in Gnome too and rendering my entire ubuntu install useless?


Computer Specs:

i7 3820 GTX680 2GB 16GB RAM

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I had a similar problem. For no reason the wireless/usb mouse on my laptop started acting strangely - the cursor would move but clicks did not respond.

I found this page on superuser - answer 10 that recommended reinstalling inputattach. That worked for me.

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    It would be great if you could include the essential parts of the article rather than just posting the link.
    – anonymous2
    Jul 15, 2016 at 13:17

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