i had cachyOS installed for a couple of months but was plagued with random system freezes (only hard reset possible, no leads in journalctl). i tracked it down to an issue with the combination of wayland, KDE plasma and the kernel or at least that’s what i could gather from web searches. i had at least one of those freezes per week, often more.

i am now on kubuntu which basically has the same combination of things (wayland and KDE) that should cause the problem but it has been running fine for three weeks, no freezes. so something with the cachy kernel didn’t agree with my system.

i was now told i could use the arch kernel on cachyOS, which was news to me. i tried switching to the cachy LTS kernel but the issue persisted. i now wonder how does the compatibility of the linux kernel work? is it compatible because it is both arch linux? or would the kubuntu kernel also work on cachyOS?

  • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    2 hours ago

    in your shoes: i would try distros/implementations without wayland or kde to rule those out as possible sources of the problem.

    i know that ubuntu will let you switch to xservers, so kubuntu might let you as well.

  • juipeltje@lemmy.world
    5·
    5 hours ago

    It’s hard to say for sure what’s causing the issue, but it’s definitely possible that it’s kernel related. I’ve never used cachyOS, but when i was still using Arch i’ve had issues with newer kernels multiple times. Switching to the LTS kernel would usually fix the problem though. I’m actually facing a weird issue myself right now on GNU Guix, where my pc has randomly rebooted itself multiple times over the past few weeks. My first thought was the kernel since Guix is also rolling release, but i haven’t tried the LTS kernel yet because the nonguix substitute servers are having issues, so i would have to wait for it to compile lol.

    Oh btw regarding your question, i don’t know if cachy offers the regular arch kernel in its repos as well, but generally speaking kernels should be pretty compatible regardless of distro. You can also install the cachy kernel on NixOS for example.

  • Björn@swg-empire.de
    10·
    6 hours ago

    The kernels (and accompanying modules/drivers) are more or less freely interchangeable.

    Bugs in the kernel are pretty rare in my experience. I think it’s more likely that the bug was somewhere in KDE Plasma. Kubuntu’s version should be older than the one on Cachy. On top of that Kubuntu has their own patches for KDE, so even if the version numbers are the same they are not the exact same programs. And on top of that the way they compiled KDE will be slightly different.

    • bad1080@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      3·
      5 hours ago

      Bugs in the kernel are pretty rare in my experience
      i chalked it up to some kind of optimization that doesn’t agree with my computer but that’s just my head-canon

      I think it’s more likely that the bug was somewhere in KDE Plasma. Kubuntu’s version should be older than the one on Cachy. On top of that Kubuntu has their own patches for KDE
      interesting, distrowatch says plasma-desktop “6.4.5” for kubuntu 25.10 and “6.5.3” for cachy 251129 (the version i likely was on) so it is a possibility. (plus i feel like it started after an update)

    • gens@programming.dev
      2·
      6 hours ago

      Don’t forget Mesa, the userspace part of graphics drivers. Also versions freely changeable.

  • ascend@lemmy.radio
    3·
    5 hours ago

    Im having a similar issue on cachyos, but my screen freeze is recoverable by removing the HDMI to external monitor and waiting a bit, then the built in screen will come on and I can plug the HDMI back to continue. I haven’t been able to narrow it down I just write down the time it happens and look at the journalctl but can’t make sense of it

    • bad1080@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      5 hours ago

      i didn’t try that but does your audio loop the last ~second too? (all my monitors are external)

      • ascend@lemmy.radio
        2·
        3 hours ago

        No for me the audio would keep going like nothing happened. It was just the display that was stuck. Like I could alt tab or switch desktop and the audio would follow correctly and when the screen got unstuck it would be where it should

  • Adam@doomscroll.n8e.devEnglish
    4·
    6 hours ago

    I was experiencing similar issues under Manjaro. I couldn’t tell exactly when it happened but attributed it to a kernel or other update.

    Are you seeing anything in dmesg? I was seeing kernel ring timeouts just after booting (I don’t know how it recorded them from before the freeze but it did). My searches led me to find that the Ryzen 5600 silicon had degraded just enough to be unstable. I could underclock it and it got a bit better but not fixed. In the end I replaced it with a new 5800 and the issues completely went away.

    • bad1080@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      6 hours ago

      dmesg
      i didn’t know about it so i didn’t check

      My searches led me to find that the Ryzen 5600 silicon had degraded just enough to be unstable.
      interesting but my cpu is the same on kubuntu so i doubt degradation is causing the issue

  • BandanaBug@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    7 hours ago

    CachyOS has a handy kernel tool which let’s you select what kernel you’d like to run. You can try and play with that.

    • bad1080@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      7 hours ago

      i did try the LTS kernel but to no avail. i kept my fingers off the rest as i had no idea what i was doing.