I'm having a tough time with my five-year-old laptop's GPU, which keeps crashing regardless of the Linux distribution I try. I ran a memtest and it showed no issues with the hardware, so I'm feeling pretty lost on how to resolve this. I'm considering switching to XFCE with Cachy or maybe Debian, but I'm not sure if that will help. I've followed the guides for installing GPU drivers, but the laptop blue screens in Windows and has artifact issues in Linux, especially after hibernation or sometimes right after booting. I'm wondering what other tests I can run or if a more stable distro with X11 might be a better fit for my system. Here are my specs: HP OMEN, Ryzen 7 4800h, GTX 1660 Ti, and an AMD Radeon Vega series.
4 Answers
I recommend opening up your laptop and giving it a good cleaning. Dust can accumulate and cause overheating, leading to crashes. Make sure the fans are clean and consider replacing the thermal paste if it hasn't been done in a while. If the heat pipe isn't working properly, you might need professional help. Since you have both a GTX 1660 Ti and an integrated GPU, you could try disabling one in the firmware to see if that helps stabilize your system. Sometimes, one of them might be causing issues.
It sounds like your GPU might be failing. Considering it's crashing on both Windows and Linux, switching distros won't fix a possible hardware issue. It might be time to think about replacing the GPU if that's an option for you.
You could check the kernel messages for any useful hints. Try running `journalctl --list-boots` and `journalctl -b -1` to see if anything shows up that could point to an issue. Pay attention to the logs from when it crashes so you can track down possible causes. I had similar issues with Nvidia drivers on older graphics cards that were linked to suspend states. Sometimes downgrading the drivers can help too.
If you're getting crashes on both operating systems, it's likely a hardware problem that needs fixing. Distro hopping is not going to solve that. You should look into having it checked for any broken components.
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