Constant Freezes on Solus

aristotelis

I am sorry to report that I am tired of the constant freezes (only mouse works) and other problems occurring in my system during the last month or so that I live in the solus universe. After years in ubuntu and arch, I have decided to try solus in my recently upgraded laptop. I have read all these positive reviews and I have been convinced to give it a try for this new independent distro, knowing the cons, i.e. that software availability may be a little restricted etc. But I was not prepared for the frozen desktops, starting out from the very first day. I have had major problems during professional presentations with the budgie DE and then I switched to the mate version, which I loved immediately. However, the problems did not stop. I tried to work around the problem, but I did not find a clear solution in the forum. And the problems continue. Yesterday my VMs (which I need for my work) froze twice and later both VLC and gnome video player froze. Today I try to update the system and I am stuck during the last 20 minutes on upgrade #52 out of 91 (libice). Nothing seems wrong with my internet connection and my hardware has been functional with other distros in the past. The specs are: Dell Inspiron 5559, CPU Intel i7-6500U (4) 3.1 GHz, 16GB RAM and GPU AMD Radeon HD. I am on the current kernel version, 5.4.1-137.
So, what is going on? Is it a problem related with my hardware and the lack of compatibility with solus? A problem with drivers? I have found people reporting similar problems, but no convincing solution has been described anywhere. Today will be my last day on solus unless I find a solution. I am sorry to say this, because I like the whole project and I d love to support it.
I will try the lts-kernel today and see if this fixes the problem. Some suggest that the kernel 5.2x (and above) is causing these issues. So, the lts-kernel switch may be a solution, but a temporary one. I will do the switch and then I will report my experience here, hopefully to help others.
Please send me your opinion about this and indicate a solution if you have one.
Thank you!

kuki

aristotelis Last update rollback kernel on 5.3.15-138.current....for stuck update try in terminal: until sh -c 'sudo eopkg up -y';do echo "Trying again";done

[deleted]

Ive also had some issues with the current kernel so im running the LTS one and have very few problems.

aristotelis

I have just installed the LTS kernel: 4.9.205-147.lts
It is kind of old, but if the problems will vanish, then I will stick with it.
Thank you for these replies. I will write back tomorrow to report the progress.

n2o

Been there, yes. The LTS kernel has solved all problems for me and only introduced one single problem: sometimes bluetooth mice can't connect. I just need to boot into the current kernel, connect the device and go back to LTS. Before I had lockups, boot failures, stuttering mouse pointers and programs under IO load etc... Now it's all good!

n2o

PS: @aristotelis your discussion title is somewhat clumsily chosen imho. The people making Solus do that for fun in their spare time so it's a present given to us by them. We should be careful not give them the impression that we think they owe us anything.

aristotelis

n2o There was no intention to offend the developers. I have tried to change the title.
Apparently there is no way to do that...

DataDrake

aristotelis fixed. Try to be a little more thoughtful next time 😉

As others have suggested, Kernel 5.4 seems to be at fault for the moment and latest 5.3 seems to be working well.

aristotelis

DataDrake Thank you for changing the title and replying to me. I will stay on LTS now that it seems that the constant freezes have gone and will try again with the current kernel when the bug will be fixed. Do you know if there will be an announcement?

Girtablulu

aristotelis we rolled back to kernel 5.3

n2o

Girtablulu With the 5.3 kernel my bluetooth works fine but the stutter problems are still there with I/O in the background. Staying on LTS.

aristotelis

Some more things that possibly matter: In the Budgie Desktop Settings, under Windows, I have deactivated "Attach modal dialogs to windows" and at the end I have also deactivated "Disable unredirection of windows". This has stopped some peculiar habits of Nautilus and other applications on the bottom panel.

vemothe

Installing the LTS kernel also resolved issues I had with my fan since it would constantly come on with the 5.3 & 5.4.1 kernels while doing basic web browsing but remains silent with the 4.9 kernel.