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I'm freaking done trying to get Linux on my machine. I've tried every distro with many different versions of the kernel and I always run into the same problem on my desktop.

The computer super stutters for 2 seconds ish than freezes.

I've spent DAYS looking into this issue trying to find something. The worst part is that it can happen 5 minutes when I boot or 5 hours. At first I thought it was Compton. Then I thought I installed arch wrong. Maybe an update to the BIOS? How about downloading updated microcode? Maybe this obscure bug with AMD processors and setting power idle to typical? Nothing. I'm now behind on my school work because of the massive amount of time ive spent getting this fixed. It works just fine on my laptop, but it doesn't work on the machine I built to code with. I'm done. Give me Force Lightning, a red lightsaber, and call me a Sith baby because I'm joining the dark side. Here I come Windows.

For those who are wondering my setup:
Ryzen 7 1700
Rx 480
Asus x-370 prime
16 gb Corsair RAM

And no, Windows has never had this bug.

Comments
  • 2
    This is why I have yet to dive into Linux. I'm not interested in losing time trying to get my workstation up and running. Maybe someday, I'd still like to try. Until then, Windows 10 just works and it works great.
  • 5
    You could have just dual booted until you successfully installed it atleast once without any error... buts that's just me being smart lol
  • 4
    @duckWit in the past 6 years I've used Linux on all my machines I've never had a problem and they have always worked perfectly just out of the box. The file system is more intuitive and package managers are amazing tools to use.

    This is the first time I've had a problem and I'm not sure what I'll do without my beloved Pacman. :(
  • 0
    @ScribeOfGoD I've had them dual booted for a while. The installation is always successful but assuredly it just quits out. I've been trying to fix it for a year but I've just given up.

    My measly laptop works great however.
  • 1
    I actually had the same issue on windows with an AMD processor. Stutter, then freeze for 15ish minutes then go back to working. There was also zero whispers on the internet of what my issue could be. I just went back to intel and everything worked out fine. I had an FX-8350 8 core AMD processor. I never figured out what was really wrong, but what you are describing sounds similar to me.
  • 6
    I had a similar issue running an NVIDIA GPU, ended up being the nouveau drivers being shit and crashing. I'd say look into GPU driver logs if possible
  • 5
    As suggested, try turning off the graphics drivers.
    Then try to boot into text/framebuffer mode.

    If it still doesnt work, i would suggest looking into the kernel configuration (works best with Gentoo/Funtoo (in my humble opinion))

    Also, check for something like onboard graphics/ builtin kvm etc. This is also quite famous for causing hangups on boot.
  • 3
    @HackedPixels There's no onboard graphics with that setup, only iGPU would come with the APUs, which the R7 1700 isn't. So that's one thing that OP doesn't have to worry about
  • 2
    Where exactly in the boot process does it stutter and freeze? Are you able to access logs externqlly? Boot from USB if possible and try to view?

    Also I third graphics drivers, nvidia drivers are terrible. Try text mode boot flags.

    Possibly slap ctrl+alt+f1/2/3 and see if you can jump into a TTY session when the screen blanks
  • 1
    @dufferz it boots and works fully and is very usable. I have full access to journalctl which tells me nothing.

    And then at some point it just falls apart. It seems like everything freezes but not at once. When I move the mouse during this time it just hops to one place, waits a second, then hops to another and waits a second and does this until it's completely unresponsive.

    I don't know when or where it happens and it's seemingly random. I'm thinking it's something with the graphics card as it never happens when I'm in the tty. But then again, I can't be sure of that because I don't use the tty often enough to see if that is the case as I can't find anything that reliably triggers it. I thought it was the browser for a bit so I switched from Firefox to chromium. Same problem. And then I thought maybe displaying web was too difficult. Then it does this when I'm using vscode. Perhaps it's the X server and use Wayland. NOPE

    I'd file a bug with amdgpu but I can't reliably replicate it.
  • 1
    @Paramite
    Deepin
    Gnome w X
    Gnome w Wayland
    KDE
    i3 (my preferred choice)
    Sway (i3 in Wayland)
    Xfce
  • 0
    @dufferz I forgot to mention that the Rx 480 is an AMD card so I'm using amdgpu. Not a problem with Nvidia.

    I've not been able to switch to tty when this happens. When it starts freezing up, I can't get it to register a key press on the keyboard.
  • 1
    @HackedPixels in my experience everything seems to work in tty. However, I don't know if it's because it just hasn't gone down yet in the couple of hours that I've used it in tty. I've had it stable for 8 hours before and then hang. The very nature of it makes it a little impractical to try specific things.
  • 2
    I was about to suggest try different DE but you tried already. Hmmm, not trying to be smart, but have you considered mainstream distros? Ubuntu? If it's not really working then yea maybe hardware compatibility.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • 3
    Last time something like this happened to me, I ran out of ram and had no swap. Can you monitor ram usage while running X? I know you have 16 gigs, but it wouldn't be the first setup to exhaust them
  • 2
    Anything in dmesg?
  • 1
    @PrivateGER wow I'm an idiot. I never thought to look there. This morning I opened up dmesg and tailed it. 3 hours later it starts happening and I manage to switch over to it and there are messages there that don't look good. I wasn't able to screenshot it so I had to take a picture with my phone. Time to head over to arch forums because I'm not sure what these logs are saying. Perhaps my processor is bad???
  • 0
    I attached the picture of the log here.
  • 1
    That makes me think of the hpet timing bug any bios updates available for it?
  • 1
    And check hpet is enabled in bios
  • 0
    @gruff There is no setting for that in my BIOS for ASUS X-370
  • 1
    You can do it in software to try here looks interesting, try on and off or a different clock source https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic...
  • 2
    Try setting tsc=unstable, as suggested.
  • 3
    Oh, I'll call the Linux gods here too.

    @Linux @linuxxx
  • 2
    @PrivateGER if I understand you correctly i put that in the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT variable in the grub config and then update grub yes?
  • 2
    @lights-a5 That's how to do it in GRUB, yup.
  • 1
  • 1
    @PrivateGER

    Do you have the same problem on ubuntu? (yes ubuntu has better drivers)
  • 2
    @PrivateGER No clue, I'd say graphics driver issues but to blame getting behind on school work on a system while you could've just installed windows...
  • 2
    @linuxxx I wasn't too far behind thankfully but I could see I was heading that way which is why I quit trying to fix it. I'm just working on my Senior Project though so I just need to log hours and spend a couple more hours a few nights and I'll be back on track.

    @Linux yeah it would do the same thing on Ubuntu. I changed my grub.cfg according to what was posted above because it's a quick fix. Hasn't happened in the past 4 hours of uptime so I think that it's good now. But like I said, it was at random so it could still happen.
  • 2
    The Ryzen makes me worry, but support for those is supposedly better now.
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