[Discuss] Think I need a new computer

[slitt at troubleshooters.com (Steve Litt)]

Kent Borg said on Sat, 15 Jun 2024 12:38:39 -0700

>My Dell XPS 13 7390 is getting old creaky, and at nearly 4-years, it 
>isn't new, but how annoying, it has been a nice machine.
>
>This morning it was dead, I had left it plugged in, running, with the 
>lid closed. And this morning its battery was dead. It has been 
>complaining about disconnects, so maybe there is an intermittent in my 
>cables.
>
>Reboot, look at log files, see nothing interesting before the messages 
>from my powering it up. Then a while later, as I unlock it the dialog 
>asking for my password went away, the background of the lockscreen 
>refreshed, and the mouse pointer froze. Trying to switch consoles
>didn't do anything. I forced a powerdown.

Let's start by getting this out of the way: Does this computer have an
nVidea video card? Nvidea on Linux has been known to cause
intermittents that look like hardware problems. It happened to me when
I built the box I'm now on, and I cured the problem by swapping in a
Radeon. It's a well documented problem that happens to a small percent
of Linux users, and you never know when your distro's nVidea driver
update will cause stuff like this.

I'd suggest trying all the combinations and permutations of free and
proprietary drivers for your nVidea card, if you have one. And if you
buy a new computer, for gosh sakes make sure it doesn't have an nVidea
graphics card. There's a reason Linus gave Nvidea the finger.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21