Bug#702809: gnome-shell: gnome randomly freezes

[Mar Mel]

FWIW, I filed bug reports regarding this issue back in December against both 
the binary nVidia driver and the nouveau package (bugs #696554 and #696360). I 
ended up chasing this for a few weeks, working with the upstream nouveau devs 
via IRC. I built dozens of kernels (ranging from the Debian 3.2.0-4, several 
from the vanilla upstream 3.4.x long-term stable series, and up to the nouveau 
git master) attempting to bisect the problem, but never found a working kernel 
which did not exhibit the freezing issue in gnome-shell.

This, or a similar issue, is currently being discussed on the Debian forums: 
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=100041

As the freezing is affecting users of all 3 major graphics chipsets, I am 
beginning to think this issue is video-device-agnostic and likely specific to 
gnome-shell itself, perhaps a problem with compositing.