I've been using this distro for about 8 months now. It used to work fine, however, for the past ~3 months it's begun randomly crashing. It usually happens between 2-4 times a day and it's becoming worse.
I need to fix it, however, I'm completely lost as to how to go about troubleshooting it—especially since when it happens my OS is basically unusable.
Here's what happens when it freezes:
- All apps and the OS GUI become unresponsive. I can sometimes move my mouse a few pixels every few seconds, until the OS becomes completely unresponsive and I need to reboot.
- Audio stops, loops, or is super laggy.
I suspect it's due to a memory leak, although I have 8GB of ram (which is a fair amount) and that's always worked fine on other OS like Windows. As for any other specs, I have a decent PC (including an Intel Core i5-4670K and Radeon R9280X).
I'm not running any intensive applications, either, and even if I was I'd expect a functional PC. I primarily use my PC for web development, so I typically only use a few lightweight apps (like Atom, a few terminal windows/processes, Firefox or Chrome, and Spotify).
It just happened before whilst only having Spotify and the latest Firefox open (which is very performant, and I only had a few tabs open), so I suspect it's due to something deeper in the OS.
What could the issue be, and what should I do from here to troubleshoot and solve it?
I had the same problem as you. Maybe your kernel is not working properly with the drivers you have to use. Try to install another kernel version and see if it helps. (Works most of the time).
An amazing program for doing that is Ukuu.
First add the repositories:
Now update them:
Install the program:
And then launch it from the launchpad or via the terminal by:
Inside the program, you can choose the kernel you want. Then, it downloads and installs it. As the program indicates, those are the common errors that you have, caused by a non compatible kernel.
Hope it helps...