I just installed a fresh copy of 17.10 on my laptop and I can’t seem to logout/restart/shutdown(screen just freezes showing the wallpaper). My question is how can I see a log file or logout from the terminal to get more information on what is causing the freeze? Pressing the ESC key doesn’t work, none of the keyboard keys work to be honest. I can’t reproduce this issue when booting into recovery mode, logout/restart work fine. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Adding to this, it looks like I can’t even let the laptop idle because it just freezes just like clicking the logout/shutdown button. I guess the two are related since ubuntu is supposed to show the login prompt after it comes back from idle. Any help would be appreciated because I really like this distro and I’d have to change to Unity if I can’t find a solution 
Can you please provide the output of the command:
inxi -CG
This is the output if I type just inxi:
CPU~Quad core Intel Core i7-7700HQ (-HT-MCP-) speed/max~2800/3800 MHz Kernel~4.13.0-16-generic x86_64 Up~3 min Mem~1482.1/15920.3MB HDD~1256.3GB(0.8% used) Procs~259 Client~Shell inxi~2.3.37
Inxi -CG shows a blinking cursor but the terminal is blank even after 20 minutes of waiting.
Alright, you might get more info during shutdown by disabling the kernel "quiet splash" parameters.
Use the following procedure:
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
In the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= remove the "quiet splash" so that it reads:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
Then run:
sudo update-grub
And reboot