Whenever I update a package or the system via the Pop! Shop, or downloading a game or updates from Steam, my desktop constantly freezes and hangs. It works perfectly fine otherwise.

I was wondering whether this was common behaviour. It’s a bit frustrating because it means I have to pick my moments to update to be when I can go do something else for a while and come back.

If I’m on a Discord call and am doing an update or downloading a game on steam, the freezes mean that my friends can’t hear me and I can’t hear them.

I’ve tried Googling it but haven’t found anyone with this specific issue yet.

I run a medium-power gaming desktop rig.

Any advice on how to fix or improve this?

Update:

Here are my hardware specs. Sorry for not including them earlier; I was at work when I posted this.

  • Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. X570S GAMING X
  • RAM: 32 GiB
  • CPU: AMD® Ryzen 9 5900x 12-core processor × 24
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
  • @[email protected]OPEnglish
    3•5 months ago

    Thanks for your reply. Here are my specs and I’ve added them to the post:

    • Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. X570S GAMING X
    • RAM: 32 GiB
    • CPU: AMD® Ryzen 9 5900x 12-core processor × 24
    • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti

    I’m not sure what dkms is but I just Googled it and it looks like it’s related to AMD, is that right? I have an NVIDIA GPU so it might not be relevant.

    I ran sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade like you suggested and then tried updating some components while doing something in my browser. It seems promising so far, thanks! I’ll need to do more updates to know for sure though

    • @[email protected]English
      2•5 months ago

      I’ve got very similar specs to this and the Pop Shop still runs like garbage. Have you tried installing the Cosmic store? It’s what they built for the upcoming Cosmic DE but you can grab it from the Pop Shop as a replacement. It is infinitely more responsive.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•5 months ago

      dkms is Dynamic Kernel Module Support. It’s a tool to install kernel modules that aren’t in your normal repos. One of the drawbacks is that it rebuilds those modules every time you do an update; it takes some time, and it can sometimes appear like the update process hangs.

      Since you use an Nvidia GPU, I wonder if it’s some kind of Wayland bug, and using the CLI removes that part of the equation…? Either way, glad it’s working better. Maybe if it happens again, apt will give some kind of indication why, and you can pursue that (which was the main reason I suggested it).

      • @[email protected]English
        2•5 months ago

        Unless OP is running some other DE, it’s likely not a Wayland issue. Pop!OS runs Gnome on X11 by default.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•5 months ago

          Ah, I thought I read that Wayland was now the default compositor. X11 shouldn’t have as many issues with Nvidia, I agree.