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Been using macOS and Ubuntu for years now, and while I try to make Ubuntu my primary operating system so I can ditch my slow MacBook Air 2018, I always end up g

Been using macOS and Ubuntu for years now, and while I try to make Ubuntu my primary operating system so I can ditch my slow MacBook Air 2018, I always end up going back to it. Look, I love Ubuntu. Heck, I am a recognized Ubuntu Member, was the leader of the LoCo Team for my country for a while, helped a few universities in my state switch to Ubuntu from Windows, have a plaque signed by Mark Shuttleworth acknowledging my contributions and everything. But macOS is simply better, even though it sucks monkey balls right now — better for me, of course. My Ubuntu machine — which I built to edit photos and game — currently runs on a Threadripper 2950X with two VEGA 64 GPUs. It should be a beast, and it is, but the entire computer freezes from time to time and requires a hard reboot to come back to life. Nothing I could find in the logs so far. Sometimes that happens once a week, sometimes it happens five times a day — heck, I had it happen right after a reboot once. While the MacBook Air chokes when I open more than say, 45 tabs in Safari, I never had similar issues, and I only reboot this computer when I forget to charge it. You can say Apple is dead all you want, but there will always be people like me that will go the Apple route because they are tired of troubleshooting shit all day — I spent a fair amount of time doing that in my earlier days, and I spend all day doing that at work, so why would I want to do that 24/7?

rusk 7y ago
> the entire computer freezes from time to time Hate to point out what may be obvious, but since this is a self-build, have you entirely eliminated hardware issues? Bad connections or components that just don’t jive properly together? Just saying cause the first thing that came to mind when you described the issue is something similar I had a while back with mismatched RAM; it doesnt sound as though the comparison controls for these kinds of causes.
- jamesponddotco 7y ago
  Yep, already did rule these things out — it also doesn't happen in Ubuntu 18.04 or Windows, only on Ubuntu 19.04. My guess is that this is a kernel or GPU driver issue, since it doesn't happen in Ubuntu 18.04, but it will take time to find exactly which version of the kernel get this to stop.
asjw 7y ago
> My Ubuntu machine — which I built to edit photos and game — currently runs on a Threadripper 2950X with two VEGA 64 GPUs. It should be a beast, and it is, but the entire computer freezes from time to time and requires a hard reboot to come back to life. That's the story with all the assembled pcs out there. Something is faulty, replace it. When I stopped doing it myself and started buying workstations with an actual warranty, my problems ended. My main machine has been a Debian testing for the past 3 years on a Lenovo P70 with 64gb of ram, not a single glitch, except those things a power user running bleeding edge software has to face . The quality of the hardware is very important, Mac hardware is just good and extremely overpriced.
- jamesponddotco 7y ago
  I commented above, but this is not faulty hardware — the same issue do not happen in Windows 10 or Ubuntu 18.04, for example. The whole point of leaving macOS for me was to be able to build my own hardware without spending an insane amount of money. You think MacBooks are expensive in the US, come to Brazil and try to buy one.
  - necovek 7y ago
    The fact that other software does not complain does not mean it is not faulty/mismatched hardware. Linux will frequently trigger more faults (as an example, since it aggressively uses entire memory as filesystem cache, memory problems are highlighted even when Windows runs just fine). Similarly, new drivers might be stressing the system in a way the old ones didn't (eg. cooling might be insufficient). Not saying that is happening for you, but the fact that older Ubuntu or Windows work correctly is not an indicator of trouble-free hardware.
alexis_fr 7y ago
What do you think about PopOS, based on Ubuntu, from System76, seems like they’ve polished it, haven’t they?
- jamesponddotco 7y ago
  Haven't checked it out yet, it is on my to-do list though — that and PureOS, from Purism.
fragmede 7y ago
The answer, which is far more practical these days, given the proliferation of computers, is setup netconsole (to an RPi?), and get debug messages out of the kernel, assuming the crashed aren't MCE errors that are logged to bios and reported on bootup. The other bit to rail against, is closed source drivers and blobs. They'll crash the kernel, and debugging those are basically impossible.
- jamesponddotco 7y ago
  While I agree with this, and I will end up troubleshooting the issue and figuring it out this week, it kinda proves my point. I would not need something like this in macOS. On the other hand, if I did, I don't have the same troubleshooting power I would have with Linux. I guess /u/nkoren is right, computing in 2019 sucks.
  - fragmede 7y ago
    It proves your point, but puts up a new one: netconsole isn't possible on OS X outside of Cupertino. I don't want to have to work at Apple to debug this issue that exists on Radar, outside of public view, but isn't reliably reproducible, and isn't even possible to fix in the next release OS X, or a custom kext.

rusk 7y ago

> the entire computer freezes from time to time Hate to point out what may be obvious, but since this is a self-build, have you entirely eliminated hardware issues? Bad connections or components that just don’t jive properly together? Just saying cause the first thing that came to mind when you described the issue is something similar I had a while back with mismatched RAM; it doesnt sound as though the comparison controls for these kinds of causes.

jamesponddotco 7y ago
Yep, already did rule these things out — it also doesn't happen in Ubuntu 18.04 or Windows, only on Ubuntu 19.04. My guess is that this is a kernel or GPU driver issue, since it doesn't happen in Ubuntu 18.04, but it will take time to find exactly which version of the kernel get this to stop.

asjw 7y ago

> My Ubuntu machine — which I built to edit photos and game — currently runs on a Threadripper 2950X with two VEGA 64 GPUs. It should be a beast, and it is, but the entire computer freezes from time to time and requires a hard reboot to come back to life. That's the story with all the assembled pcs out there. Something is faulty, replace it. When I stopped doing it myself and started buying workstations with an actual warranty, my problems ended. My main machine has been a Debian testing for the past 3 years on a Lenovo P70 with 64gb of ram, not a single glitch, except those things a power user running bleeding edge software has to face . The quality of the hardware is very important, Mac hardware is just good and extremely overpriced.

jamesponddotco 7y ago
I commented above, but this is not faulty hardware — the same issue do not happen in Windows 10 or Ubuntu 18.04, for example. The whole point of leaving macOS for me was to be able to build my own hardware without spending an insane amount of money. You think MacBooks are expensive in the US, come to Brazil and try to buy one.
- necovek 7y ago
  The fact that other software does not complain does not mean it is not faulty/mismatched hardware. Linux will frequently trigger more faults (as an example, since it aggressively uses entire memory as filesystem cache, memory problems are highlighted even when Windows runs just fine). Similarly, new drivers might be stressing the system in a way the old ones didn't (eg. cooling might be insufficient). Not saying that is happening for you, but the fact that older Ubuntu or Windows work correctly is not an indicator of trouble-free hardware.

alexis_fr 7y ago

What do you think about PopOS, based on Ubuntu, from System76, seems like they’ve polished it, haven’t they?

jamesponddotco 7y ago
Haven't checked it out yet, it is on my to-do list though — that and PureOS, from Purism.

fragmede 7y ago

The answer, which is far more practical these days, given the proliferation of computers, is setup netconsole (to an RPi?), and get debug messages out of the kernel, assuming the crashed aren't MCE errors that are logged to bios and reported on bootup. The other bit to rail against, is closed source drivers and blobs. They'll crash the kernel, and debugging those are basically impossible.

jamesponddotco 7y ago
While I agree with this, and I will end up troubleshooting the issue and figuring it out this week, it kinda proves my point. I would not need something like this in macOS. On the other hand, if I did, I don't have the same troubleshooting power I would have with Linux. I guess /u/nkoren is right, computing in 2019 sucks.
- fragmede 7y ago
  It proves your point, but puts up a new one: netconsole isn't possible on OS X outside of Cupertino. I don't want to have to work at Apple to debug this issue that exists on Radar, outside of public view, but isn't reliably reproducible, and isn't even possible to fix in the next release OS X, or a custom kext.