At work we have an old computer where the X environment regularly freezes. By freeze I mean there is no local mouse or keyboard access. Yet the underlying OS continues to run. I can SSH into the system or run VNC to access the frozen desktop. With no local keyboard, the user has to perform a hard restart unless I happen to be around to SSH into the system.

The freeze might occur minutes after starting the system or hours after.

I tried disabling DPMS and the screen saver. I ran memtest over a full weekend. We tried different web browsers without hardware acceleration.

The system is running a fully updated Ubuntu MATE 16.04 with an NVIDIA GT218 GeForce 8400 GS video card. The motherboard is an ECS EliteGroup NF650iSLIT-A with 4 GB RAM.

The system has Windows 7 Pro installed on a separate disk. We are dual booting. The Windows 7 system never freezes and hasn't in all the years running only Windows 7.

We started with the nouveau drivers. The system froze. Work requirements pushed us to the proprietary drivers. I have tried both the 340 and 304 series drivers. No change as the desktop regularly freezes. We are using the Ubuntu packages and not the vendor *.run script.

The NVIDIA web site says the 340 drivers are the correct drivers.

The proprietary drivers require using the HWE kernel.

We have another system with the same motherboard but with an NVIDIA NV44 GeForce 6200 TurboCache video card and 6 GB RAM. No freezes ever.

No other system where we use Ubuntu MATE experiences any kind of issue. We are standardized on Ubuntu MATE 16.04 and MATE. Tinkering with other distros or desktop environments would be a huge time sink.

The person who normally uses the computer now has a low opinion of Linux systems and wants to use Windows 7.

Scouring the web for clues has not helped. I have not experienced this kind of instability in a long time. I don't know what else to check. I don't mind crafting a special xorg.conf if necessary, but I have no clue what parameters to test.

Yes the hardware is old, but that is off topic. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks again.

Edit: Add clarification about hardware acceleration.

Edit: There is no on-board video chip.

This is a mesa issue. And if using nouveau drivers you may need to blacklist nvidiafb if it isnt.

If this started with the 16.04 that explains a lot for that card. SystemD got to love it.

Put slackware 14.2 on it and install mate from Willy's repo.

Thats if you do not like the 6 desktop environments that come with slackware.

if Mate has any compositing set to default turn it off.

Please provide details!

From my original post:

We are standardized on Ubuntu MATE 16.04 and MATE. Tinkering with other distros or desktop environments would be a huge time sink.

Perhaps well intentioned, but the suggestion does not help understand the root cause of the problem.

You could try the upstream default DDX. That requires perfect purging of the proprietary NVidia driver. Once that is done, enabling the default DDX can be done in at least two ways:

1. Purge the optional package xserver-xorg-video-nouveau, or
2. Save the following as /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-modeset.conf
   Code:

   Section "Device"
       Identifier "DefaultDevice"
       Driver "modesetting"
   EndSection

For #2 to work it must not have a conflicting driver specification elsewhere in /etc/X11/xorg.conf or in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/. Also, the name of the file isn't important. It could be 33-foo.conf and still work. Same for the Identifier, which would work as "BAZ43" just as well as "DefaultDevice".

I have a slightly different GT218 that works nicely using the modesetting DDX:

Please provide details! NO you google ok. learn linux not ubuntu. you have a bad card get another. or learn why that xorg or wayland with mesa does not work with that old legacy driver.

I'll look. Thanks.

What goes around comes around. I'll remember your reply next you ask for help.

Just an update.

We tried an AMD/ATI Radeon HD 3600. I thought I had found a solution there, but after some days the desktop again froze. Then the card failed.

The solution now is to use Windows.

Linux might be using some hardware functionality that proprietary drivers provided for Windows do not. It still could be a hardware issue that an interior cleaning (including power supply) or different power supply could workaround or solve. Failed electrolytic capacitors in "old" motherboards and particularly the cheap brands in many power supplies can cause fleeting failure that most of the PC survives.

Perhaps.

The system is rock stable on Windows and has been for years. I'm not happy with the decision, but I am the one who decided to revert to Windows. I was spending too much time troubleshooting. The primary user was continually being interrupted by the desktop freezes. From a business perspective the system was becoming a bottomless pit.