System locks up

Two things come to my mind (and both could be wrong).

Try the LTS kernel first, maybe that fixes the problem.

Also, it could be the noveau driver, I’ve often experienced system freezing with it. If you are indeed using the noveau driver, try installing the 340 driver from the AUR (it only works with the LTS kernel and will probably break in the future):

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nvidia-340xx-lts-dkms

In case it doesn’t work, just boot into the TTY (or boot from live ISO, chroot into your system) and remove it.

If none of that helps, and the problem is only with Firefox, try disabling any GPU-related stuff in the settings. If you are watching a lot of YouTube videos, try using your media player of choice, instead of the browser (the video player that is embedded into the YouTube website is quite bad, I never use it). Or consider switching your browser to Ungoogled Chromium.

In any case, rebooting your system by pressing the reset button or cutting power to it is not recommended, since it may cause filesystem corruption. Instead, before it freezes, enable the Magic SysRQ key.

Also, next time you buy a graphics card, make it AMD, life on Linux is so much easier without having to deal with NoVidea’s :ox::poop: .

4 Likes