Ubuntu Console Locking Up

While I keep going back to Linux as my primary workstation operating system, all is not always rosy in Linux Land. Case in point; when I returned to work, my workstation's console was locked up.

I've been having that happen to me over the weekends for reasons I haven't figured out; the console is simply completely locked when I get into the office in the morning. Keyboard is dead. Display is frozen.

Hasn't happened on my home system, so I wonder if it's the graphics card...the system at work is an Intel chipset, and I recall there are some rumblings about it being crappy. The weird part is that I can secure shell into the computer and kill GDM in order to regain control of the computer. It kills my logged in session but at least I don't have to reboot. Indeed, I have no idea how long the system was locked up since I've been using the computer remotely using a VPN and secure shell without any indication that there was a problem.

These little quirks and annoyances are usually just that; minor annoyances. But they detract from the user experience. Get enough minor annoyances and soon the user begins to see a minor annoyance as a major annoyance. Then they get disgruntled, and worse, they start to spread the word about how crappy these "non-standard" Windows alternatives are.

I recently upgraded the system to Jaunty Jackalope, 9.04. I'm hoping that'll cure that lockup quirk; few more days and I'll find out...