Every now and then everything appears to lock up and I can't really do anything. I can move my mouse and it will reflect that on the screen but I can't really do anything else. Sitting long enough it is apparent the clock isn't updating. I can use Ctl-Alt-F1 but I don't really know what to do to make anything responsive. I am using gnome-shell. I don't know if anything similar would happen if I used Unity instead.
Edit: By switching to a text terminal and putting the computer to sleep and bringing it up back I was able to get the GUI terminal to be responsive. I'm still interested in why this could be happening and an easier way to bring it to be responsive after it happens.
Edit the dos: It appears after working with 11.10 for a while that the only time that this occurs is when I'm reading a pdf using evince. If I load evince from the terminal I get this always:
(evince:6963): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: g_object_set_valist: construct property "enable-gestures" for object `EvView' can't be set after construction
Could this have something to do with the computer locking up?