installed 18.10 development branch which contained mutter v3.30 and yes it fixed the issue
the login screen now appears even when choosing gdm3 as the default desktop manager sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Desktop Bugs, which is subscribed to mutter in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1727356 Title: Login screen never appears on early generation Intel GPUs (Core2 and Atom etc) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-shell/+bug/1727356/+subscriptions -- desktop-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
