I’m using an XPS 13 9350 with 16GB of RAM and the Intel Graphics 540. I am using Fedora KDE spin. When I am using computer, either randomly or when I start a program, my computer will slow down and quickly fully freeze. In this state, the only thing I can do is shut it down. Is there any way to make it so that a program is killed, or something else that doesn’t fully stop my system?
Personally, I wouldn’t accept this as a normal thing to work around.
You likely have a hardware issue, or a hardware incompatibility. Everyone talking about low RAM is forgetting that the kernel is going to kill a non-required process if it eats up memory and is causing a panic. Most of the time you’ll get crashes, not freezes.
Does it always freeze when beginning work? Run software to do full checks on RAM (
memtester) and disk (smartctllong test), as those are the most likely culprits.If that doesn’t work, and you don’t have spares to try, maybe dual-boot or USB boot Debian to try a different OS with a different build structure to rule out incompatibility.
Swapping exists. I don’t think kernel kills if swap is availiable. Swapping might be freezing the system