Cinnamon Freezing Metabug

In an effort to solve issues many users are having, I'm creating this issue to try to keep everything together and easy to manage, and will be closing other reports. Please read through this entirely before actually doing anything.

Please keep this civil and to the point. I'm not interested in commentary, complaints, threats, FUD or anything else unhelpful. I will remove or edit such posts.

If you wish to paste logs - anything more than a line or two, please use a pastebin service. This stuff is much easier to read there, and keeps this issue from becoming enormous.

General

If you are affected by freezes in Cinnamon, I ask that you report the following:

1. What are you doing when it manifests? (nothing, playing on Steam, alt-tabbing, expo, random, etc...
2. How do you resolve it? Reboot, or switch to tty and back again, or...
3. Your cpu type and whether you're running 32- or 64-bit
4. Your gpu type

Testing

Install the following packages - note, these are only if you're running stable cinnamon from the repos (2.4.8) - nightlies already include the fix I'm testing here. As data is collected, I may publish updated packages containing more fixes. Install all level 1, 2, and 3 updates before doing this.

32-bit:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon_2.4.8_i386.deb
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon-dbg_2.4.8_i386.deb
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon-common_2.4.8_all.deb

64 bit:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon_2.4.8_amd64.deb
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon-dbg_2.4.8_amd64.deb
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8201170/cinnamon-common_2.4.8_all.deb

Do not install these using the graphical installer. Instead, download all three packages to a folder, go to that folder in a terminal, and run:

sudo dpkg -i *cinnamon*.deb

Try to reproduce the problem in the default environment. This is to attempt to have everyone test under the same controlled conditions. I'm not condemning 3rd party applets, desklets and extensions, I'm merely trying to get to the core problems. If it turns out there are issues with 3rd party applets, we'll work with those developers if possible, and within Cinnamon, to mitigate them. For now, I'm looking for consistent data.

A fairly simple way to create a temporary test environment is to do the following:

open a terminal:

dconf dump /org/cinnamon/ > mysettings
dconf reset -f /org/cinnamon/

I recommend logging out and back in at this point, before continuing - depending on your system, it may freeze for a moment, or even require a reboot. Make sure you have nothing unsaved before doing this. This is nothing to be alarmed about.

Now, attempt to reproduce the issue.

Once you're done, to restore all your settings:

dconf load /org/cinnamon/ < mysettings

Again, you should log out and back in (Cinnamon may freeze at this point, just as mentioned above, as you're sending a fairly enormous jolt of changes to it at once - again, this is nothing to be concerned with)

Attempt to reproduce once more.

If there is a change in behavior (something in your settings apparently is the cause), I'd ask that you share your 'mysettings' file - please use a pastebin/dpaste service to do so, and share the link.

One last bit of data I'd like, if you've installed those test packages, is one line from your ~/.xsession-errors file:

St-Message: cogl npot texture sizes SUPPORTED

or:

St-Message: cogl npot texture sizes NOT supported

If you wish to revert back to stable packages afterward, you should be able to simply update through the Update Manager.

If you have any questions or issues don't hesitate to voice them, or I can be contacted on Spotchat irc in #linuxmint-dev channel (I'm always there, though not always available - just be patient)

Thank you in advance for all your patience, understanding, and effort.

This is a Cinnamon freezing metabug rather than a scoped code change, and it names no source file or test. Start by following the controlled reproduction steps, including the dconf reset and default environment, then inspect ~/.xsession-errors and collect the requested hardware and behavior details. Done is not defined beyond gathering consistent evidence for the underlying freezes.