PureOS crashing frequently

Absolutely, I did not take your meaning that way. I did not know what your level of expertise or thinking is when it comes to these kinds of issues; I was only trying to point your thinking in the right direction :slight_smile:

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My thinking is that wea re a community.
Strangers on one level but connected on another.
And sometimes we need to say things in order for things to improve.
I really push all my friends to use Linux. And I just want the whole Linux OS world to get going - become the best!

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I also do get frequent crashes, especially with GNOME all of sudden deciding to reboot the shell and go back to the login screen in the middle of writing an article in Libre Office. It happens a few times a week at least.

I’m running a brand new install from 2 weeks ago, after my system did a similar crash and forcing me to manually reboot. Only this time I couldn’t get back to the PureOS login screen and I was forced to re-install the OS.

It’s very disconcerting as I was under the impression debian/pureos was a stable distro, doesn’t seem the case to me.

I have a Librem 13 v3 with latest coreboot installed.

Also 13v3 here, coreboot about ~14 months old.
I have absolutely zero such crashes, however I’m always on KDE Plasma and I have 452 outstanding updates (few weeks since I last updated), so both could make a difference.
In general Debian is rock stable, however PureOS is based on the Debian Testing, which is still a pretty stable thing in general, but it’s also constantly moving.

Trying an alternative desktop environment could help you in two ways: It would allow you work stable, assuming the problem is in a part of Gnome. If you still observe the same issue, this hints at the lower layers: hardware (unlikely as you describe it), driver, graphics subsystem.
A simpler first step is to log in to GNOME with a different backend. On the login screen, you should be able to choose whether you want GNOME with Xorg or Wayland. That could also hint at where the problem is.

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I second this. My crashes, as few as I was able to get it down to, still occur only in GNOME.

OK that’s interesting
I also get my crashes with GNOME
sad coz there is something I like about GNOME but maybe i need a different DT KDE?? Cinnamon?
How do I add a DT ?

Basically, you just add the proper package. For KDE Plasma, that is plasma-desktop, which pulls in the essentials. Here, it is outlined in great detail.
Note that for testing purposes it should be sufficient to only install the main package. The rest is sugar coating. You could still use your existing Gnome apps within Plasma. Especially you don’t need to change the display manager (gdm / sddm). Except of course, that is the troublemaker :thinking:)
Likewise you can do with other DEs. Just find out what the packages are named.

Thanks @Caliga
Installed kde
see how it will be like.

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My experience is Puri.sm support is fast, astounding and outstanding. Yeah, I’ve made a mistake or two getting acquainted with PureOS. Support team has been VERY respectful, didn’t make me feel stupid, and they solved some VERY difficult issues. Don’t be too quick embarrass them. They are the best friends in a spot of trouble.

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Totally agree
My experience of Purism has always been positive.
They are great team - I wish the whole FOSS universe will be like them!!

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I certainly didn’t mean to convert you to Plasma instead of fixing the real problem.
But if it now doesn’t crash, a few things can be ruled out as cause, and you can work reliably, when needed.
I’d still follow up with support to figure out why Gnome crashes for you.

I tried Plasma but it was casually crashing
So I returned to GNOME
I am fine with things[except when you looking at a crashed screen thinking what now…:wink: ]
Thanks @Caliga

I agree with this expression, but I don’t think this is the right situation to use it. PureOS is based on Debian which is one of the most stable OS out there. So what makes these crashes is not the OS per se but how Purism modifies it (and how much they test it), making it kind of a rolling release distro (which by nature breaks often). So Purism took a stable OS and transformed it into a “rolling relese” distro - and this is what’s causing these bugs and crashes. If I’m wrong, please correct me, I’m willing to learn and to understand this situation better myself.

As pointed here we could have different channels for users to choose from: stable, unstable etc…

I have PureOS on my laptop and Hyperbola (FSF-endorsed as well) on my desktop PC. So even tho Hyperbola is based on Arch - I found it to be more stable just because I’m using their “stable” branch, not the “testing” one.

https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:main:releases

PureOS actually started from Debian Testing which is a rolling release. We also go to great lengths to not modify the upstream code but rather have an “upstream first” philosophy which means that we contribute upstream into Debian when we work on PureOS. This is why there are very few PureOS only packages in PureOS.

We are going to follow the stablization process as Debian moves from Testing to Stable, a process that has already begun. Hopefully you’ll see, and maybe you’ve already seen, significant stability improvements.

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Some of us laptop owners are under the impression that because all the man power is currently focused on the phone, PureOS isn’t getting the attention it needs. Hope this changes soon. I’ve seen many companies go under because they tried to bite more than they could chew, hope this won’t happen.

On an unrelated note, is GNOME 3.32 coming anytime soon on PureOS? There are more than a few performance improvements, could help with the crashes. At this point my Librem is more unstable than my Windows 10 machine.

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That is a fair concern, but I can assure that won’t happen. We have people dedicated to the laptops, and we’re hiring more, and they don’t work on the phone at all. PureOS is getting a lot of attention at the moment. Not least in the tooling around PureOS.

Regarding GNOME 3.32, we are targeting that as a version of GNOME we want. As Debian’s Buster becomes more stable, there will be greater stability in the operating system that is PureOS and one of the less stable parts is GNOME.

Can you point out what crashes you’re seeing? My machine, which I use daily in heavy usage and is stock PureOS, doesn’t crash. I keep it updated and run a bunch of cutting edge GNOME code via flatpak, but I just don’t see a lot of issues when I look in dmesg or my logs. Please report what issues you may have.

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@jeremiah please note that OP @sherab_kelsang claimed to experience crashes no matter which DE, hinting to the layers below. Also, I have a hunch they don’t really know where to look.
So, after the next crash you could open a terminal, become root, run dmesg (and maybe filter it)

# become root
su
# list errors and stuff
dmesg
# list crashes
dmesg | grep segfault

Btw, @jeremiah, am I correct that PureOS does not write core dumps by default? (Why?)

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So this was the part I was missing, thanks for the explanation :slight_smile:

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Thanks for this @Caliga

next time i have a crash i’ll try to take a note of it.

  1. I think instead of word crash i should have used frozen - to the extent that I needed to reboot the machine with the on/off button
  2. I am using now Gnome classic - and I have’nt had much problems since.
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