GNOME Freezes Randomly

Hello,

I have a cheap Acer E51-511-C9XB notebook computer that I just got 42.2 GNOME installed. It installed well and I proceeded to update it, added the Packman repo (for codecs), and I noticed that randomly it just freezes, especially so when I use FF or any other browsers - heck sometimes it just freezes when I just make some changes to browser options (I have Opera, FF and Epiphany/Web installed).

Some system information:

# usr/sbin/hwinfo --gfxcard
08: PCI 02.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)              
  [Created at pci.378]
  Unique ID: _Znp.DREcHvOpJq4
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:00:02.0
  Hardware Class: graphics card
  Model: "Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display"
  Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x0f31 "Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display"
  SubVendor: pci 0x1025 "Acer Incorporated [ALI]"
  SubDevice: pci 0x089d 
  Revision: 0x0e
  Driver: "i915"
  Driver Modules: "drm"
  Memory Range: 0x90000000-0x903fffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0x80000000-0x8fffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  I/O Ports: 0x2050-0x2057 (rw)
  IRQ: 89 (64875 events)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d00000F31sv00001025sd0000089Dbc03sc00i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: i915 is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe i915"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

Primary display adapter: #8

# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series SoC Transaction Register (rev 0e)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display (rev 0e)
00:13.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor E3800 Series SATA AHCI Controller (rev 0e)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx, Celeron N2000 Series USB xHCI (rev 0e)
00:1a.0 Encryption controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Trusted Execution Engine (rev 0e)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series High Definition Audio Controller (rev 0e)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor E3800 Series PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 0e)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor E3800 Series PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 0e)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Power Control Unit (rev 0e)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Atom Processor E3800 Series SMBus Controller (rev 0e)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

This notebook used to run Win 7 flawlessly and was primarily used to play movies for the kids and the occasional social media.

Any help will be great.

I don’t use Gnome but Gnome is really resource intensive and those intel atom processors are meant for phones and/or tablets
you should try a lighter desktop like lxqt or lxde
I’m not sure how powerful the integrated graphic card on an atom is or if it has any acceleration
are you sure it ran windows 7 because as far as I know those atom’s can only run 8 and 10
maybe you’d be better off installing android on it, you can get a live image here
http://www.android-x86.org/
use dd or rufus in dd_mode to make a live usb and try android

Try this

Hello i have a laptop with intel 2gen HD3000, and the bug/glitch/error is not external graphics cards is the it-self dedicated card and the solution that i find was this

  1. Go /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

  2. Create 20-intel.conf

  3. Put:

    Section “Device”[INDENT] Identifier “Intel”
    Driver “modesetting”
    Option “AccelMethod” “glamor”
    Option “Backlight” “intel_backlight”
    EndSection

i dont know why the ppl of kde fix a bug to enter to other, because in the 5.8 early versions, this error not exist and the 5.7 neither have this error, i am using leap 42.2 KDE 5.8.x, other solution i try and work too is change opengl [FONT=&amp][FONT=&amp]V.[/FONT]2.x to opengl V. 3.x[/FONT]
[/INDENT]

Thanks for your feedback - really appreciate it, however from cpuinfo and the BIOS I see it registered as a Celeron - an excerpt from cpuinfo.

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor    : 0
vendor_id    : GenuineIntel
cpu family    : 6
model        : 55
model name    : Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU  N2930  @ 1.83GHz
stepping    : 8
microcode    : 0x80c
cpu MHz        : 499.778
cache size    : 1024 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 4
core id        : 0
cpu cores    : 4
apicid        : 0
initial apicid    : 0
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 11
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer rdrand lahf_lm 3dnowprefetch ida arat epb dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid tsc_adjust smep erms
bugs        :
bogomips    : 3660.80
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment    : 64
address sizes    : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

I cannot explain why - perhaps you can share your comments or insights? Thanks for the link to the Android distro - however I will use this machine to do some light scripting/automation and will be using a lot of LibreOffice for my work, so I guess I really need a full-blown Linux desktop now. As for XFCE - I will consider it since GeekoLinux has made it a lot simpler to deploy a smaller image.

Thank you I have created the said file and will test it out. BTW what did you do to change the OpenGL version? From OBS?

Like @I_A said, try LXDE or LXQT on your installation. Or try XFCE, my favorite of the light desktop environments. Any of those three will perform MUCH better than GNOME or KDE on your hardware.

I agree GNOME is heavier, but with 8B RAM and an average load of lower than 25% (with LO and FF running) I think it is not an issue.

I hear ya, but the concern isn’t just RAM usage. Your CPU is extremely underpowered. That’s a very good reason to use a less resource-intensive environment.

Desktop Settings > Screen/monitor manager > the second tab

[/INDENT]
As I mentioned similarly in the other thread you posted this in, I post the same here too: the backlight option should be commented out if you’re using the xorg modesetting driver instead of the intel … IOW, its an xorg intel driver option, not one (currently) applicable to the modesetting driver … see “man intel” and “man modesetting” for details