Check your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file, see what graphics you're running.  
The compositor sounds broken, and might just need a different solution 
(ie. changing nouveau to nvidia blob).  Compositors break grandly with 
nouveau still, and yours sounds quite broken for some reason.

I tried mint debian, nothing but issues with graphics and my ati, but 
might be better now that ati/mesa works better to abandon the 
proprietary amd blob, ended up back at ubuntu afterwards once I 
discovered the mini.iso installers to avoid desktop installer issues.

Try kde, apt-get install kubuntu-desktop.  If nothing else I like their 
grub bootsplash better in black, and kwin has generally been a much 
better compositor.

-mb


On 06/18/2016 06:00 PM, Tom Roche wrote:
> Dennis McClellan[1]
>>> My problem with [Unity][2] is the frozen gray screen. It doesn't matter what program or website I'm on, I get the gray frozen screen, not always, but often.
> Have you tried booting the troublesome device from Ubuntu on live media (e.g., LiveUSB)? That would help determine whether your device is having problems with a stock Ubuntu or with something else on your specific configuration. FWIW, I don't buy anything computational anymore unless either (1) it has a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee (and I see reason to believe the vendor follows through), or (2) I've been able to {boot the box, test core functions} from my current distro of choice, which is currently Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE2)[3].
>
> Keith Smith[4]
>> Note that Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu
> Umm ... that depends ...
>
> 1. ... on what you mean by "Mint." Mint the project (i.e., linuxmint.com) provides multiple editions[5], of which the two main ones are have different package bases, which are helpfully referred to as Debian-based (i.e., LMDE) and Ubuntu-based (aka "classic Mint"). Of course, the package base of Ubuntu is also Debian, but Canonical's PPA system[6] is a major addition.
>
> 2. ... on what you mean by "derivative." Clement Lefebvre (pause to bow in his general direction) and team are quite opinionated and more than willing to remove/substitute even major bits of Ubuntu, notably Unity[2].
>
> HTH, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com>
>
> [1]: http://lists.phxlinux.org/lurker/message/20160618.171406.d7b0efb6.en.html
> [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(user_interface)
> [3]: https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php
> [4]: http://lists.phxlinux.org/lurker/message/20160618.220622.5f8344d0.en.html
> [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint#Editions
> [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Package_Archive
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