Comment 2 for bug 214067

I do not think it has anything to do with ediff, since I do not use that or emacs.

I have the problem as well, compiz.real going to 103% processor usage (apparently more than 100 is possible on a dual core). If I ssh into my laptop then, I can kill all compiz processes, I even have an alias for it:

alias killcompiz="ps auxf | grep compiz | grep -v grep | awk '{print \$2}' | xargs kill -9"

And then restart compiz:

/usr/bin/compiz &

And then everything is normal again. Next test: Trying Ctrl-Alt-F1, typing my username and password blind, and then typing killcompiz blind, see if I can regain control of my laptop without having to use another computer.

System specs: Acer Aspire 5920, Geforce 8600 GS 512 MB, nvidia proprietary driver, Ubuntu 8.04, upgraded from a 7.10 install.