Linux Mint Cinnamon freezing to death (needs hard reset) with graphical artefacts

[escertdez]

Hello, I've recently installed Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon on my [laptop: https://termbin.com/7d25] (first time user) and it's been going fine, except it tends to freeze sometimes, never crash, just freeze. I've tried everything from ctrl+alt+escape, to the reisub method, but it needed a hard reset every time. It's definetly related to the GPU because of graphical errors right before the freeze, like the mouse cursor "borrowing" some texture from the screen moments before the freeze or artifacts going across. I've looked at the system log and the two big caps lock errors related to the gpu were:

[drm:amdgpu_job_timedout [amdgpu]] *ERROR* ring gfx timeout, but soft recovered
[drm:amdgpu_dm_commit_planes.constprop.0 [amdgpu]] *ERROR* Waiting for fences timed out!

I have to say that this happened randomly when the GPU was at little load (driving the display and maybe hardware accelerating the browser), and in windows i've stress tested it with no adverse effects multiple times, so it doesn't seem likely that it's the gpu itself that's the problem. Maybe Linux just doesn't like it.
Could it be the driver, and if so, are there any alternatives? Also i don't know if this is the right place to post this, apologies if so.
Feel free to request more information about the system or the logs because i am probably leaving a lot out.

Thanks in advance

 

[kc1di]

one thing you can try is turning off modetesting in the kernel. by adding nomodeset to the grub boot line. See here. Scroll down to the section on Solving freezes during the boot sequence and follow the instructions there then see if the freezes stop.

 

[escertdez]

one thing you can try is turning of modetesting in the kernel. by adding nomodetest to the grub boot line. See here. Scroll down to the section on Solving freezes during the boot sequence and follow the instructions there then see if the freezes stop.

I've managed to do this but now it says my system is running without video acceleration and to check drivers, my screen brightness is locked at full, and i have higher CPU usage, so it seems like it just removed the previous driver for some basic one that can only drive the display, which.. is not ideal.
I'll check the current driver, and then run driver manager and see what that does

 

[escertdez]

Even if the freezing stops the computer in it's current state is basically running GPU-less and is slower than Windows (that's an achievement). So while i think in this neutered state it's not going to freeze to death anymore i don't think this is the way. I've been thinking about just changing the distro but i don't know if it isn't just going to grab that same driver or similar (from what I've seen AMD drivers for mobile gpus are limited, or i can't search for them well enough) Hopefully the nomodeset will act as a temporary fix so i can look for other solutions without issues. Thank you kc1di

 

[kc1di]

Ya, AMD went through a time they did not offer much for Linux drivers. So It may just be there are not any good ones for that card. But I would give MX a try if you decide to leave Mint. Manjaro may have better drivers also but not sure.

 

[KGIII]

I'd try the irqpoll mentioned on that page, in exclusion of all the other options. So, instead of nomodeset, no_acpi, or any of that, just put 'irqpoll' after the quiet splash. Follow the rest of the directions, but just use irqpoll.

 

[escertdez]

For now I've updated the kernel from 5.4 to 5.11 and changed grub back to quiet splash because some guy had ryzen graphics issues resolved this way, however if that fails i will try the irqpoll method and report back. Thanks for the help