I assume by "dies" you mean "stops updating screen content"?
Otherwise please attach the backtrace ;-P

Other than this, the regular "GPU/driver/mesa version?" question... :-)
Do you use kms?

Mesa Version & ATI Drivers:

media-libs/mesa-7.9
x11-apps/mesa-progs-7.7
x11-drivers/ati-drivers-10.10

Sorry , dies means it stopped updating screens , besides all khotkeys still works , e.g a konsole on workspace_1 , dolphin on workspace_2 , switching from workspace 1 to workspace 2 will make my mouse cursor changes , so i could guess that it could be problem with kwins , not sure.

- "Do you use kms?"
- Tried whether toggling it ("nomodeset" or "radeon.modeset=0" at grub kernel parameters to disable it) helps?

Adding both nomodeset and radeon.modeset=0 at grub doesn't help.
( I did actually enabled that in kernel configuration , disabled it now )

What is kms ?

Oops , sorry man , i got double entries inside grub for my kernel , i did put it to the second , which is not tested for disabling mode set , i tried for a few times , and seems that this bug disappears.

(In reply to comment #4)
> What is kms ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode-setting

and either this "nomodeset" or "radeon.modeset=0" (in the radeon case, depending on GPU and kernel version) turns it off ;-)

and for the moment having, a kms-disabled next to a kms-enabled grub entry to me sounds like a very sane strategy every "enduser" distro should give a try :-P

Re-opening this bug , today i installed kdm , switched to virtual terminal , and i lowered my laptop screen ( kde locks screen automatically ) , when i get back to my laptop , switched back to KDE , typed in my password , it dies as before , wired.

checked /proc/cmdline:
nomodeset radeon.modeset=0

should be a different bug (while same result) - what kind of "locker" do you use (maybe some GL effect? what if you just blank the screen?)

locker is kde's implementations , (kdepasswdd ?) disabling screensaver with pure blank screen doesn't help , still dies.

If i disable all effects before those actions ( Pressing CTRL_ALT_F12 before swithcing to ttys ) , it won't be a problem.

(NOTE: kde 4.5.3 seems not related to this bug , not sure , could try checkout code changes on it ? )

could you please explain what "dies" means?

When it dies , screen stopped updating , actually mouse cursor was the *only* item survives , means when i switch workspace with my customed khotkeys , i could see it changes , but screen kept no change at all , dead.

ok thanks for clarifying this. There is not much we can do about it when switching vt's. In general I always try to remember turning off compositing before switching to a vt.

That's also my solution for the while.

the open one quite sounds like #241402 related (just that mesa is too new)

@Aaron
do you also get those freezes when changing kwin related settings (like de/activate an effect)

Guess not , i've only tried to set up window behavior for some specific application that don't need transparent effects , and other desktop effect configurations like window switching method.

Didn't do much test , but (search for kwin in systemsettings and do tests base on the entries found) at lease everything inside "Workspace Appearance" has no problem at present.

Activate / Deactivate desktop effects seems to be fine.

Also i've noticed a new problem with plasma , if i launch startkde from terminal and ( you know it's slow loading ) , and i wonna run another command , so i switch to vty , yeah , it's quick switch , so kded is still not ready (from ksplash current image) , and when command finished , kde's already up , and i switch back to X11 , panel missing , i need to restart plasma-desktop.

Would that be something related to kwin or plasma ?

> Would that be something related to kwin or plasma ?

probably plasma(-desktop)
maybe related to the initial resize (and no xrandr/kephal whatever event/hint when you're on the VT)

you should however do an "xwininfo -int -children -root" to check whether the panel is not there or maybe in another position or not stacked up or not tagged as panel or whatever. (you can check the panel from it's id "xwininfo -id 123456"

Keep it closed , and finally i found it's because conky override plasma panel , it's still alive.