I don't have grey outs in Ubuntu on either my netbook or desktop computers.
I don't think that it necessarily goes with GNOME or Ubuntu's implementation
of it. However, I have lots of RAM and a decent video card on both desktop
computers but my netbook has only an Atom processor and 1 GB of RAM and full
GNOME works fine. No grey outs, stalls or freezes. It is easy to blame it on
the distribution or the desktop environment, but that does not fix the
problem and it may be giving a false picture when you just don't know for
sure.

If it was the distribution or GNOME then we would find the problem
widespread and that is not the case. I think that we are looking at isolated
cases.

What do you think about aptosid?