Hard Freeze when Using FireFox, Unison-GTK, and some other GTK apps
Hard freezes are unpleasant at best. They also prevent you from tracking the source of the problem. You speculate, based on the "familly" of applications you encounter problems with, and try to obtain some resolution.
At first it was FireFox. I’ve removed it to install Galeon instead. Didn’t help. I left it at that, and started using Konqueror, which worked correctly.
I’ve worked correctly for a while, and one day, when opened Unison-GTK to sync my folders with my desktop, another hard freeze.
Based on few assumptions, I’ve started searching for a solution or some workaround. I’ve encountered this link, which led me to believe the problem is GTK+ 1.0 related. This link, however, is rather old, and seems unrelevant to the cause, as this has started only few weeks ago.
Better defined search lead me to find this Ubunto bug description, which suggested I go back to 16bit colors (which I’ve used just up to a month or so ago).
At first glance, the problem is solved. However, this is no more than some workaround, as I am limited currently to 16bit colors, and because I’m stuck with Radeon Mobility M6 LY, which is the main cause of all this. I hope to dump these buggy cards on my next mobile.
My current xserver-xorg-video-ati package version is 6.5.8.0-1 (debian).