Hey folks. I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with Linux for over 20 years. Usually, my attempts to use it are either thwarted by issues installing, issues booting, or general problems while using it… leading to “catastrophic failure” that I can’t fix without digging into hours of research and terminal commands.

Windows 11 (even 10) are rock solid for me, even as a very heavy multitasker. No crashes. No needing to reboot, unless I’m forced to with an update, and really no issues with any hardware or software I was running.

But with Linux, I just can’t believe how unstable it is, even when I do the absolute basic things.

I’m trying to learn why this is, and how I can prevent these issues from coming up. As I said, I’m committed to using Linux now (I’m done with American software), so I’m open to suggestions.

For context, I’m using a Framework laptop, which is fully (and officially) supports Fedora and Ubuntu. Since Fedora has American ties, I’ve settled with Ubuntu.

All things work as they should: fingerprint scanner, wifi, bluetooth, screen dimming, wake up from suspend, external drives, NAS shared folders, etc. I’ve even got VirtualBox running Windows 11 for the few paid software that I need to load up from time to time.

But I’m noticing issues that seemingly pop out of nowhere on the software/os end of things.

For example, after having no issues updating software, I get this an error: “something went wrong, but we’re not sure what it is.”

Then sometimes I’ll be using Firefox, I’ll open a new tab to type in a search term or URL, and the typing will “lag”, then the address bar will flicker like it’s reloading, and it doesn’t respond well to my mouse clicks. I have to close it out, then start over for it to resolve.

Then I’ll open a different app, sometimes it might open, sometimes it won’t.

Or an app will freeze for no obvious reason, and I’ll get a popup asking to wait or quit.

Another time I left my computer while I went out for a walk, came back, and it was like I just rebooted… all my work was gone, and it was starting fresh from the login screen.

I’m trying not to overload things, and I’m doing maybe 1/5th of what I’d normally be doing when running windows. But I don’t understand why it’s so unstable.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

FWIW, I’m not keen to switch away from Ubuntu, because I do still want official support if there’s ever a problem with getting hardware to work.

UPDATE: Wow, I did not expect to get so many responses! Amazing!

Per suggestions, I ran a memtest86 for over 3 hours and it was clean.

I installed Fedora 41 and am now setting it up. Seems good so far, and elevated permissions can be authorized with biometrics! This was not something I had to. Ubuntu, so awesome there!

Any specific tips for Fedora that I should know? Obviously, no more Snap packages now! 😂

UPDATE 2: Ok, Fedora seems waaaay more stable than Ubuntu (and Mint). No strangeness like before… but not everything works as easily. For example, getting a bridged network adapter to work in virtualbox was one-click easy on Ubuntu… not so much on Fedora (still trying to get it working). And Virtualbox didn’t even run my VM without more terminal hackery.

But the OS seems usable, and I’m still setting things up.

One thing I have noticed, however. When I search for how to fix or do something, nearly all websites and forums reference Debian/Ubuntu commands, so the fragmentation there is a little annoying

  • marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    I work on Linux and use Linux at home. I’ll try to go through the problems you mentioned:

    1. Just run the update command again in the GUI or terminal. If it doesn’t work, we’ll have to dig into apt with verbose logs but I haven’t had apt break on me for over a decade unless I deleted something I shouldn’t have.
    2. Is Firefox installed as a snap/flatpak? That only happens with me occasionally when I installed flatpaks, they’re just slower. Canonical can be a real arse about this stuff, they might switch packages to snaps without telling you and you might only come to know about it once you dig deeper.
    3. All of these issues seem to related to your storage medium. Is the SSD OK? Open up the process monitor, sort by ascending order of disk writes/reads and open your applications one by one to see which one of them is the culprit.
    4. Rebooting suddenly is not normal. Unfortunately, you’ll have to go through logs for this one. Simple ones are dmesg and journalctl, we can dig deeper into them if you want to.

    If I had my hands on your laptop I’d be running a vulnerability scan by now but I don’t think the problem is serious enough to warrant it.

    • Showroom7561@lemmy.caOP
      2·
      2 days ago

      Thank you.

      Just run the update command again in the GUI or terminal. If it doesn’t work, we’ll have to dig into apt with verbose logs but I haven’t had apt break on me for over a decade unless I deleted something I shouldn’t have.

      Nothing needed to be updated. One package was “deferred”, and that was the “ubuntu-drivers-common”.

      Is Firefox installed as a snap/flatpak? That only happens with me occasionally when I installed flatpaks, they’re just slower. Canonical can be a real arse about this stuff, they might switch packages to snaps without telling you and you might only come to know about it once you dig deeper.

      Default Firefox, and I just checked, and it’s listed as Snap package.

      All of these issues seem to related to your storage medium. Is the SSD OK? Open up the process monitor, sort by ascending order of disk writes/reads and open your applications one by one to see which one of them is the culprit.

      Full chkdsk was performed before installing Linux on my SSD. In the Western Digital utility (in Windows), everything tested OK, too. No issues in the S.M.A.R.T. logs, either.

      Rebooting suddenly is not normal. Unfortunately, you’ll have to go through logs for this one. Simple ones are dmesg and journalctl, we can dig deeper into them if you want to.

      I don’t know if it actually rebooted, or if it just closed everything and returned on the login screen. I wasn’t home when it happened, I just came back to that :(

      But that was days ago. And it hasn’t happened since.

      I’ll be running a proper memtest shortly, and will post an update once that’s done.