Is this a serious suggestion? I can't even reliably reproduce it. It just happens randomly. The problem could be unity. It could be in compiz. It could be in the nvidia drivers, which I don't even have the source to. Who knows what in that mess causes my system to lock up.

Regardless, I do not have enough loyalty to Ubuntu to do this kind of work. There are a number of open source projects that I am involved with, and if I spend time on this (likely to be fruitless) endeavor, I end up with less time to spend on projects I care about.

My post is purely to vent, and to serve as a warning for those looking to try Ubuntu Desktop. My personal opinion is to try something else. I am.

For anyone who does have the time and inclination to debug this there are some comprehensive docs on the wiki https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Debugging - I've used these steps to get backtraces before so devs can get stuff fixed.