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Ubuntu 16.04 LTS running on i5 6200U and standard integrated intel graphics (driver=i915).

I use evince to view a document, I go full-screen, and sometimes (not always) the screen freezes, which means that I can move the mouse but nothing happens by clicking. I press Ctrl + Alt + F1 and reboot the computer from there.

I thought evince was the problem, but the same issue appears with qpdfview, and I guess with other applications as well.

$ ls /var/crash
_usr_bin_evince.1000.crash   _usr_bin_evince.1000.uploaded
_usr_bin_evince.1000.upload  _usr_lib_xorg_Xorg.0.crash

I saw many reports of this issue when googling, but most of them suggested that the problem has been sorted out in Ubuntu 16.04, and I could not find any relevant fix.

Any suggestions?

edit://

Solution:

Created a file named "20-modesetting.conf" under directory /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d with the following content:

Section "Device"
   Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
   Driver      "modesetting"
EndSection
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  • As a workaround, I loaded the modsetting driver instead of the intel i915 one, and I will be testing that configuration for the next few days, and report back.
    – Chim3ra
    May 5, 2017 at 11:03
  • Well, I'll be damned, I have tried fullscreen mode 10-15 times already and there is no issue, and a flickering issue with google-chrome got resolved as well.
    – Chim3ra
    May 5, 2017 at 11:37
  • Hi @Mike, can you please go more into detail what did you do ? I'm asking 'coz I've got the same problem. Sometimes my screen freezes in full-screen mode and only thing I can do is hard-reboot the computer. And doesn't matter if I'm watching a YouTube video or just read some pdf. Please, do share ... (I'm using 16.04.3)
    – Mark Alexa
    Sep 6, 2017 at 9:18
  • Hi @Mark! I created a file named "20-modesetting.conf" under the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d directory with the following: Section "Device" Identifier "Intel Graphics" Driver "modesetting" EndSection
    – Chim3ra
    Sep 7, 2017 at 10:11
  • Ok I followed your steps and will see if it still freezes on full-screen. Thanks for getting back to me btw. I'll let you know. If that works for me I'll suggest you to mark it as an "accepted answer" so you can get some acknowledgement from Ask Ubuntu :)
    – Mark Alexa
    Sep 7, 2017 at 11:23

1 Answer 1

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Create a file named 20-modesetting.conf under the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d directory, with the following content:

Section "Device"
   Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
   Driver      "modesetting"
EndSection

Some people suggest removing the Intel graphics driver entirely (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=606152#c73):

sudo apt-get purge xserver-xorg-video-intel

This will essentially force Ubuntu to use the modesetting driver.

I think it is a more elegant solution to leave the Intel graphics driver as is and just override it with a simple configuration file.

For the moment, the Intel graphics driver is responsible for many problems, such as freezing when in full screen mode and flickering in Google Chrome.

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  • Hey Mike ! Dunno what's going on but can't tick it as 'accepted answer'. I don't have the tick here. I upvoted it at least but kinda weird that your answer can't be ticked. :/
    – Mark Alexa
    Sep 12, 2017 at 13:45

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