Hi, I'm a Linux/Ubuntu newbie.

I've installed Gutsy Gibbon on an Turion65 X2 laptop, coexisting with Vista, but bootloading with GRUB. After setting the screen saver to activate/screen-lock within a minute, I closed the lid. When I re-opened the lid later, I promptly entered the password to unlock. The desktop reappeared, but I noticed that the mouse pointer was missing. While moving the mouse, I could see a faint dimming of icons (apparently when a mouse pointer is hovering) but otherwise nothing could be done using the mouse. I had to shut down via keyboard.

What just happened?

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Best regards.

I can't tell you what happened, but I can offer a suggestion to try if it happens again.
Issue the command 'init 3' to go to runlevel 3, login, then give the command 'init 5' to go back to gui mode. Login to see if you get the mouse cursor back.

If it works, it's just a work-around to use until you solve the problem.

Thanks for the tip, BigRigDriver. I'll keep that in mind, just in case it recurs, but so far it hasn't.

I have a gut feel this could be related to the suspend-to-RAM problem encountered by those moving into the Gutsy version of Ubuntu. When I tried it (by enabling suspend when closing the lid), I discovered that suspend doesn't work either (though, oddly enough, hibernate does work) - and I had to disconnect the batteries to restart. It seems that others going from Feisty to Gutsy were disappointed with this. I hope this will be corrected in upcoming versions. In the meantime, I'll do with hibernate or just plain old shutdown. Having said all that, I'm still keen on learning Linux as much as I can. It's nice to have an alternative to Windows.