this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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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

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[–] furrowsofar@beehaw.org 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

Just FYI. My family has used linux for 25 years on many systems and we do not have stability issues. We use mostly Ubuntu or Debian.

Have no idea why your having issues. Could distro or hardware related. Also are you sure your storage media is good.

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[–] ijhoo@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Like @wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works just said, run memory test.

What hw do you have in that laptop?

something went wrong, but we're not sure what it is.

Check the system journal with

sudo journalctl -e

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What hw do you have in that laptop?

It's the 11th Gen Framework 13 running:

  • Intel® Core™ i5-1135G7 , integrated Intel XE graphics chip
  • Western Digital Black 770 2TB SSD
  • 32gb ram (16GB x 2) Crucial DDR4-3200

sudo journalctl -e

This generates a lot of stuff. Anything in particular that I should post?

[–] sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Errors and Warnings obviousky.

you coukd redirect the output to a file

sudo journalctl -e > log.txt and upload it sonewhere for us to check

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thank you! I'm going to do a proper memtest once I'm off work, and will take it from there.

[–] sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

If there is a problem with memory, windows wouldn't have worked too.

Highly doubt memory is the issue but doesn't hurt to check

[–] ijhoo@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

Look for an error in the journal as soon as the error you mentioned happens. Maybe some details get saved in the journal. Post it somewhere online like pastebin, then we can maybe tell you what to check next

Like others have said, what you are experiencing is super unusual

[–] Abnorc@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Do your issues appear on a fresh install? At my admittedly limited level of expertise, I'd probably start from there. If a clean install works properly, then something that's happening later is messing it up. You'd have to keep track of changes you make to your system and check for issues as you go.

If a clean install is borked from the get-go, maybe try different distros. Since Framework supports Fedora, I'm surprised that anything would go wrong.

I don't know if Framework offers any support or warranty, but you could check with them too.

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[–] blechlawine@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago

I use Zorin OS 17 (based on ubuntu) on a desktop AMD based system and a framework laptop 16 for about a year now and even before that used an older version of Zorin OS for about 4 years on a shitty lenovo laptop and never had any stability problems. Even the lenovo still runs reliably.

The only problem I've had on the desktop is that the linux driver for an ntfs formatted drive constantly corrupted my data on that drive to the point where some of the data got lost. All other drives are formatted with ext4 and work without any problems. Maybe your problems could be similar?

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

If you want to try a distro that can just work for you, instead of reading about it, do this:

  • Aurora if you don't do gaming.
  • Bazzite if you play games.

They are both from the Universal Blue family of distros which are based on Fedora Silverblue.

They are all immutable and atomic. They won't break. They will be more stable than windows. It will be easy. And it will come with batteries included.

Also, if you do gaming and are also a developer, there's bazzite-dx which will be releasing soon.

[–] tkk13909@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

+1 for UBlue-based distros!

[–] huskypenguin@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Which is based on Fedora and OP wants avoid American ties (on an American laptop)

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[–] heythatsprettygood@feddit.uk 1 points 1 week ago

If you're on the 24.04 LTS release it might be worth upgrading to 24.10, as it has a lot of bug fixes and improvements from upstream, especially if you have a recent Framework board. Although it isn't your preferred option to change distros, it may be worth giving openSUSE Tumbleweed at least a test drive to see if it's an issue with your laptop or just an Ubuntu issue, as I have had Ubuntu have issues even on fully certified laptops, and openSUSE has been pretty plug and play for me on a secondary machine even with its faster update cycle. Might be worth checking your hardware too, as random hitches and reboots could indicate that you might need to reseat RAM or that the CPU/GPU is for whatever reason unstable.

[–] gnuhaut@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

Since you say the thing is working fine on Windows, there's almost certainly a bug or several. I'd say probably a driver in the kernel, but could be something else. Changing distro or kernel version does sometimes help with that sort of thing, mainly because another distro may have newer or older kernels and other software, and bugs get both introduced and fixed every release.

Freezing issues can have lots reasons, including buggy apps, RAM exhaustion due to memory leaks, bugs in the graphics drivers or graphics stack more generally, various blocking I/O things taking unexpectedly long due to network issues or faulty hardware or drivers.

If you want a chance to figure this out, you probably need to run things in the terminal, like installing software updates through the apt and snap (?) cli utilities. GUIs are notoriously shit at reporting unexpected errors, whereas all sorts of programs (including GUI apps if you start them in a terminal) do regularly print warnings and error messages to stderr, which will show up in a terminal. This is because it's easy for the programmers to do that with just single printf() (etc.) line.

For driver issues, looking at the kernel logs can sometimes show interesting things as well. I will say that, when looking at logs or terminal output, there often are warnings that are completely unrelated and/or harmless, and that's not necessarily obvious to the user.

If this is a software issue, framework imho shouldn't advertise their stuff being able to run Ubuntu if they cannot stay on top of issues that are happening in this configuration.

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