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I am living with this issue for a long time now. The freezes did not occur before updating to 11.04. Since the update the following happens:

All running applications do not respond for about 11-2 minutes. Meanwhile I can move the mouse and switch tasks with Alt+Tab but clicks or other inputs have no effect. If I listen to my HDD it makes "reading" noises in a rhytmic way with a frequency of about 1 "noise" per second.

My first guess, a broken hdd, did not hold because I testet it on Windows and nothing the like happened. An update of Ubuntu is not an option because my Partition is too small, plus all Ubuntu updates decreased performance in the past.

Happy to hear about hints and tips (:

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Maybe you can try upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10 and see if that works. – Anonymous Nov 4 '11 at 14:47
This question should instead be filed as a bug report, thanks! Instructions here. – Jorge Castro Feb 3 '12 at 1:16

closed as off topic by jrg♦, Marco Ceppi♦ Feb 3 '12 at 1:23

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2 Answers

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Are the problem in unity. The Ubuntu 11.4 have some problem with some nvidia cards.

What graphic card do you use? if you dont know you can check what hardware you are using from a terminal by using the command: lspci the line of your grafic starts with ""VGA compatible controller"

The solution may be to switch to a more compatible graphic driver.

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lspci puts out: 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) – Callahan Nov 4 '11 at 16:16
Ohh, i think we can rule out that problem, how much free space do you have on you hard drive? – Daniel Zippert Nov 5 '11 at 11:55
Nautilus says there are 1.4 GB of disk space free. BTW my swap is about 450 MB if that could mean anything.. – Callahan Nov 5 '11 at 12:09
1.4 have to be enough. are the swap using 450 ? maby you should do a memtest with a live cd? I think the easiest way to solve this problem is to do a fresh install. – Daniel Zippert Nov 5 '11 at 12:32
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Actually, as much as I like Ubuntu I am NOT a fan of the update/upgrade process. I much prefer their clean installs.

Any time you are having a problem you should be checking your log files. /var/log and start reading. You will also need to look at .xsession-errors in your home directory. That will give you a better idea of what is causing your problem. Unlike other operating systems, Linux doesn't have anything to hide and it will generally tell you when it's having a problem and what's causing it.

Drives are stupid cheap these days and you can find step-by-step video directions on how to replace them in almost everything on YouTube or elsewhere on the internet. Drive space, IMHO, has become a non-issuse for anyone with $50 and screw driver.

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In this case not my hdd is the problem (i already got some unpartitioned space) but the gparted program that cannot extend the space of my / partition without throwing errors – Callahan Nov 4 '11 at 16:18

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