Ubuntu 8.10 freezes after login screen

I’ve got this Compaq Evo D51S with integrated Intel graphics and I figured I’d throw Ubuntu 8.10 on it and mess around a bit with the desktop side of Ubuntu since all I’ve used lately is their server release.

I installed 8.10 on this PC like 3 times and once the install was finished and the PC would reboot, I would login at the login screen and after accepting my username and password, it looked like it was going to proceed to the desktop but it was just hang there with a black background. Couldn’t do anything, no keyboard combinations worked, nothing. I even tried installing with pci=noacpi since I had to do that with an older HP server, but that didn’t make any difference.

Finally a little googling led me to a blog describing the exact situation with a solution. Ubuntu 8.10 freezes after login screen indicates the problem is with the compiz package not playing nice with the integrated Intel graphics card. The steps to remedy this are:

1. Reboot and quickly hit ESC at the Grub boot prompt
2. Choose recovery mode
3. At the menu, choose “root – drop to root shell prompt”
4. apt-get remove compiz
5. apt-get remove compiz-core
6. exit
7. Resume normal boot
8. At the login screen, login as normal. The desktop should finally display and you are now good to go!

Enjoy.

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