Intrepid has been out for about a week now. Normally the ubuntu upgrades and installations work flawlessly, however when I upgraded to Intrepid there were a few problems. The most profound is what some have called the “Black Screen of Death”. It’s when ubuntu simply freezes up. So it happened that after the upgrade I was hoping to check out some of the new features in Intrepid, as soon as I logged in, Ubuntu just froze up, just a black screen with a mouse pointer that I could move but could not use. Couldn’t switch to virtual consoles, couldn’t restart X, nothing. In the end decided to use the power button to power off the machine.
Despite knowing that a restart seldom fixes an issue in Linux, I was still hoping the it would boot up just fine this time but it was not to be. Again a BLACK SCREEN that won’t allow you to do anything.
Cause
As it turned out, compiz was having issues with Intel onboard graphics on certain motherboards (845 in my case). There has been a bug report for the problem and it was mentioned in the release notes (damn I didnt read it before upgrading)
Solution
Booted up the system again, this time logged into Failsafe Terminal Session. Removed compiz
sudo apt-get remove compiz compiz-core
So no pretty desktop effects and other compiz tricks in Intrepid. Boooo… So sad as they worked perfectly in Gutsy and then Hardy. Hoping for a bug fix to be pushed into updates soon, so that we all will be able to use the compiz goodness once again.
Moral
Read the release notes thoroughly!
PS: Moral is really good.. most of us always miss it
I have this problem too, not a great experience for a first-time user of ubuntu
Nice solution…Ubuntu is horrible..
Great post. I have been a ubuntu user for many years… and just picked up a very old ibm and tried to install ubunto 8.10 with the alternate CD. Turns out your solution worked perfectly and I am back in business! Keep up the good work.
this solution also works on a clean install that doesn’t boot first time – just drop out to shell on boot up (ctrl-alt-f1)
Thank you!
Hey I have black screen on startup, was able to get in by doing a xfix on start up, but after that , what do i do, reinstall drive, then install compiz??? coz i do have compiz installed, its not running, but it is installed??
During my new install, I set the “auto logon” feature. So, my system was quickly booting to the black screen. None of the boot menu options took me to a place where I could enter the fix-it commands.
In order for me to get to get to the shell, I had to hold down CTRL-ALT-F1 during boot. Then, I was able to enter the “sudo” command above, which fixed my problem.
(I’m a complete Ubuntu noob … so I’m just passing this on to other potential Ubuntu noobs)
I’m now running (278) updates … maybe compiz is fixed now? Wondering if using “install” instead of “remove” in that sudo command will bring compiz back after the updates … ?