Public bug reported: Since upgrading to 26.10, the system freezes completely and unrecoverably within 1-6 minutes of starting a GNOME (Wayland) graphical session. The freeze affects display, input, and is total enough that I have not been able to recover without a hard power cycle. This has now happened roughly 10 times in under 2 hours of use. No kernel-level evidence of the hang is ever logged (see below), and it reproduces across two different kernel builds, so I believe the fault lies in gnome-shell/mutter 51 beta itself, or its interaction with this GPU, rather than in the kernel or a specific extension.
## System - Hardware: Dell XPS 9320, Intel Raptor Lake-P (i915, device ID a7a0), GuC firmware v70.49.4, HuC firmware v7.9.3 - OS: Ubuntu 26.10 (Stonking Stingray), development branch - gnome-shell: 51~beta-0ubuntu1 - libmutter-51-0: 51~beta-1ubuntu2 - gjs: 1.89.2-2ubuntu2 - Kernels tested (both affected): 7.3.0-5-generic (current devel kernel, built 2026-09-14) and 7.0.0-31-generic (older installed kernel) ## Steps to reproduce 1. Boot normally into the default "Ubuntu" (Wayland) session. 2. Use the desktop normally (session restore relaunches ~10 apps) 3. Within 1-6 minutes, the display and input become completely unresponsive. No recovery possible; requires holding the power button. ## What I've ruled out - **All non-default GNOME Shell extensions**: disabled/uninstalled desktop-icons-ng ([email protected]), burn-my-windows, blur-my-shell, and two custom extensions, all removed, freeze still occurred with none of them active or relaunching. - **Kernel version**: reproduces identically on both 7.3.0-5-generic and 7.0.0-31-generic. - **i915 GuC submission**: added `i915.enable_guc=0` to kernel cmdline (confirmed via dmesg that GuC/HuC firmware loading was skipped this boot) — froze anyway within ~2.5 minutes. - **Hardware/firmware/thermal**: booted with `systemctl set-default multi-user.target` (plain text console, gdm3/gnome-shell/mutter never started) and left the machine idle for 18+ minutes with zero issues. This isolates the fault to the graphical/Wayland session specifically. - **Further confirmation**: installed `xubuntu-desktop` and switched to an XFCE (Xorg, xfwm compositor) session instead of GNOME. This immediately resolved the freezes — the system has been stable under normal daily use since, with no changes to hardware, kernel, or any of the apps/extensions above. This points squarely at gnome-shell/mutter 51 beta itself rather than anything lower in the stack (kernel, GPU firmware, or hardware). ## Log evidence No OOM kill, no machine-check exception, no kernel panic, no hung-task trace (even with `kernel.hung_task_panic=1` set), no i915 GPU-reset event, in any of the ~10 crashed boots. Each crashed boot's journal is found "corrupted or uncleanly shut down" on the next boot, confirming these are true unclean/hard terminations rather than graceful shutdowns. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 26.10 Package: mutter (not installed) ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 7.3.0-5.5-generic 7.3.0-rc3 Uname: Linux 7.3.0-5-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.36.0-0ubuntu1 Architecture: amd64 CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown CurrentDesktop: XFCE Date: Mon Sep 21 13:24:36 2026 InstallationDate: Installed on 2025-08-26 (391 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 25.04 "Plucky Puffin" - Release amd64 (20250415.3) ProcEnviron: LANG=en_US.UTF-8 PATH=(custom, no user) SHELL=/bin/bash TERM=xterm-256color XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set> SourcePackage: mutter UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to stonking on 2026-09-19 (2 days ago) ** Affects: mutter (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Tags: amd64 apport-bug stonking -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2167843 Title: Since upgrading to 26.10, the system freezes completely and unrecoverably within 1-6 minutes of starting a GNOME (Wayland) graphical session. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mutter/+bug/2167843/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
