linux4noobs

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linux4noobs

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Whether you're a seasoned pro or the noobiest of noobs, you've found the right place for Linux support and information. With a dedication to supporting free and open source software, this community aims to ensure Linux fits your needs and works for you. From troubleshooting to tutorials, practical tips, news and more, all aspects of Linux are warmly welcomed. Join a community of like-minded enthusiasts and professionals driving Linux's ongoing evolution.

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[Solved]PC froze, now what? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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What do I do, when my PC freezes?

Windows has ctrl+alt+del, does Linux Mint has something comparable? The only thing I know about is REISUB, but that borked my PC, so I am hesitant to use that again.

Are there any remaining alternatives to waiting and/or using the power button?

Edit: Thank you all for your insights and possible fixes. Crashes usually happened when I was running (cpu/ram?) heavy workload. Increasing swap space was not even on my radar, so I did that now. :) Hopefully Mint will run more stable now.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (8 children)

Sometimes the freeze might be in the display manager. Eg xorg or your wayland compositor has crashed.

In that case, you can use keyboard controls to change tty and fall back to a text interface. I think it's ctrl + alt + Fn$number, where $number will correspond to the tty you want. Most graphical sessions launch on tty2, so you would use crtl + alt + F1 to switch to tty1.

From there you can log in and use terminal commands to launch a new gui session, or to try and debug what went wrong. Generally, I've only had freezing issues on Linux when my GPU is dying. There was also a period where my work computer didn't have enough swap space. It would freeze whenever I tried to compile code during a video call.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There was also a period where my work computer didn’t have enough swap space.

Since I am still quite new to Linux, is swap space referring to swap RAM?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

swap space is a dedicated place on your hard drive that the OS throws stuff to when there isn't enough ram for everything. this is called swapping. since the hard drive is involved, swapping can slow things down a lot. if you get close to filling both ram and swap space, the machine starts shedding load by killing programs.

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