My laptop seems very finicky with linux and enjoys periodically freezing. Some distributions are more stable than others and I’d like to keep testing other distributions without reinstalling/ downloading/transferring all my apps and steam games constantly.

What I would like to achieve is to have my small handful of flatpak apps and flatpak steam games on a separate partition to quickly access while I test and troubleshoot issues.

Is that possible to do with flatpaks?

  • alwaysconfusedOPEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    I have an AMD + AMD setup but apparently the Dell G5 series has issues with linux so it’s been an uphill challenge.

    I did see that LMDE 6 makes it easy to boot different kernels at startup which is handy. I tried looking at Liquorix Kernel but I don’t think it’s ready for LMDE 6 just yet. I can’t recall exactly why but I got a big nope when trying to download it. I think I tried looking at the Zen Kernel as well but couldn’t figure out if it’s just for Arch or if it’s compatible with Debian.

    Too much to learn and now enough hours or attention span. Slow progress but I guess it’s a thing to do besides watching my plants grow.

    • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      8 months ago

      Maybe just start with the different versions available in your distro’s package manager. I’ve never downloaded a custom kernel from somewhere else. (Well, I have but that was embedded stuff and not a desktop computer.)

    • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      8 months ago

      pages like this also suggest things like updating the BIOS and the graphics card firmware with some AMD tool. And I’ve read several times you should try the kernel parameter amdgpu.runpm=0

      Make sure to do all of that first. And observe if the freezes happen in certain circumstances. Maybe you can deduct something from that. Maybe it happens while gaming (GPU). Or when under load. Or if you move it around (loose connection), or when hot or after a certain time even if idle. Disable power management and see if that helps. Should be less effort than installing 5 operating systems. (If the crash isn’t super rare) And try using the magic SysReq keys to force linux to sync and reboot to see if the kernel is still alive somehow.

      • alwaysconfusedOPEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        Fortunately I updated my BIOS from windows before switching to Linux and as of recently, I still have the latest version.

        I added amdgpu.runpm=0 and that did increase stability considerably. My system froze up way less often which was great.

        I also found that adding processor.max_cstate=1 has made my system even more stable and I haven’t had a freeze up in days now. This page gives a nice run down of what it does.

        I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a freeze up in the future but overall my system has been a lot more stable making everything far more enjoyable.

        • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
          2·
          7 months ago

          Awesome. Let’s hope the eventually fix the remaining hiccups. Maybe it’s really the power management if those kernel parameters did it.