Random freezes with Arch Linux (requires hard reboot)

Framework Laptop 16 Linux
61

Yeah, it’s a bummer. Things that worked for me to resolve the crash:

  • Upgrading BIOS to 03.07
  • New mainboard (the first one Framework shipped me was apparently flaky, it had this and other issues, they eventually RMAed it and the new one was free of amdgpu freezes even with old BIOS versions)

Things that did not work for me:

  • Any kernel version, although some made it much more frequent
  • kernel workaround parameters even though some people say they’ve had success with them

I would definitely try upgrading the BIOS if you have not, also you can try kernel workaround parameters. Like I say, the AMD staging kernel I recommended above did not turn out to have solved it in the end.

Good luck

1 Like
62

I have had this issue since I got the 16 (6 months ago)
On Saturday, I replaced the POS Mediatek Wifi card with an Intel AX210
So far, not a single freeze. I’ve been deliberately doing things that had been likely to cause freezes (sleep without locking user session first) and it’s behaved itself perfectly.

63

For me it started only like early this year while I have my 16 since Q2 last year. Getting rid of that MTK piece of garbage was one of the first things I did, yet no change on my side.

64

I have tried three different Linux distributions (Artix, EndeavourOS, and Arch) and keep getting random freezes 5-15 minutes after bootup and login.

Please tell me there is something I can do.

65

New victm here, I think I may have something helpful?

On a framework 16, AMD + dGPU. I ran for ~6mo on fedora and another month on qubes both with no issues. Recently switched to arch and started being plagued by this random freeze. Its inconsistent, and I can’t seem to replicate it. What I do know is:

-The main difference from my arch system to my others is it uses wayland, not Xorg

-Every time this crash happens, checking journalctl, right before the force restart is seen (from me holding the power button), the following error is clearly visible:

image
image2268×228 63.2 KB

This has been consistent with every time the crash happened. It’s also worth noting it seems related to the touchpad and ever since I started paying attention (last few crashes), it’s always happened as I was moving the cursor using the trackpad and NOT while typing. In fact I cant remember it ever happening while typing, which would explain how rare it is for me as most of my computer time is spent on terminal/neovim.

I also do not recall it ever happening while using my usb mouse.

The one caveat is while the symptoms of my crash seem similar im unsure it is the same one as previous users have reported not seeing anything helpful in journalctl

66

I doubt those are the cause of the crashes. I have those same messages in my logs all the way up until I finally dumped Wayland and went back to X11 (xlibre).

67

I would tend to agree that it would be really weird if that was the case.

I might switch back to xorg and see if I still have rand crashes or not… I just cant get over the fact I know this exact hardware ran fine in fedora/xorg which really makes me want to blame wayland

68

Hi :slight_smile: I recently received a Framework 16 laptop, AMD CPU and integrated GPU. I installed Manjaro with X11 and i3wm. Modules: HDMI, Ethernet, Audio and 3 USB-A modules. I removed one to be able to charge the laptop (need to buy a USB-C module :sweat_smile: ). /tmp is a file on the disk. 16 Gb RAM.

  • I’ve been having random crashes and freezes.
  • Sometimes I can still move the mouse but the screen no longer updates. Short press on the power button does nothing.
  • If kill picom I believe there are no crashes, but then the screen only updates if I move the mouse, or if there is an animation playing (for example glxgears).
  • bluemoon seems to work fine (but I can’t access this forum). firefox seems to crash the computer very often.

I will continue testing.

69

Posting an update on this. It has been a while (months) since I got a freeze that forced me to restart the computer completely. The issue seems to have gone completely away, and I did not do anything in particular apart from upgrading to Arch 6.18. I have not upgraded the BIOS or replaced any part of the laptop.

I had tested with some kernel parameters that did not seem to change anything (I eventually removed them). I also had absolutely no luck with using Pstore to catch the bug when it was happening.

Some screen flickerings can be seen at times, but they’re way less noticeable than before and go away in less than a second. I suspect this is mostly an issue with the high refresh rate and the screen resolution. It’s definitely not a big deal, and you barely notice it in everyday use.

Another issue I had for a few days was the splash screen not going away after logging in. The screen seemed stuck like before, but simply closing and reopening the lid resolved the issue, so it wasn’t really a freeze.

70

Random freezes on Framework 16 with Arch Linux are likely kernel or driver issues.

Try updating to the latest kernel and AMD firmware, test an LTS kernel, disable aggressive BIOS power management, check journalctl -b -1 -p err, boot with amd_iommu=off iommu=pt, or run a minimal session to isolate the problem. Hardware seems fine, focus on kernel, drivers, and power settings. Keep backups.

71

Same here still. I can’t even get through a full system update. As I’ve said before, I’ve been through three different distros. Even some without systemd.

I have updated the BIOS and that did not change anything. It may have made the issue worse.

I was going to post an update here after updating the kernel but I cant even do that because after so many hard reboots it seems to not be booting now. I have to install a fresh distro again. No worries because nothing is important on this laptop as I haven’t been able to run it stable enough to put important data on it or use it for more than an hour or two before this happens.

I’ve installed linux on countless machines, all quirky and odd and old ones. This is the worst linux experience I’ve ever had. I’ve had this computer for over 6 months. Beyond frustrating.

72

Sad to hear that @Async_d :frowning:

After some OS updates (and maybe disabling hardware acceleration in Firefox, I can’t remember for sure), hard freezes do not happen anymore. But almost every time I use the computer the OS stops responding to touchpad clicks and keyboard input for about 50 seconds (touchpad still moves the mouse). Maybe once every hour. It forces me to take a break, then it continues to run normally. I still need to try @Aurom ‘s suggestions.

Recently I added microcode to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf which I believe has installed AMD firmware.

73

@43e I had a similar issue to yours where the keyboard & touchpad/mouse-buttons would randomly stop responding (after initially working). Though it usually only took about 5-10 minutes of use rather than an hour, it could occasionally work for a bit longer.

I don’t know if it would’ve started responding again after 50 seconds, because I’d always immediately close & reopen the laptop - sometimes that would fix it - otherwise, holding the power button until shutoff & rebooting would get it working again (until the next random freeze).

I’m also on a new Framework 16, AMD AI 300, integrated GPU. The issue also affected an external keyboard & mouse (if plugged in) - like the touchpad, the external mouse could still move the pointer after its buttons froze.

Besides the external keyboard & mouse, no other non-Framework hardware was used (external display, eGPU, etc.) - the RAM, SSD, & power supply were all ordered through Framework.

The issue showed up on two different distros, neither of which was Arch-based:

I usually use Linux Mint, but the latest Mint’s based on an Ubuntu LTS that’s too old for the Laptop 16 (24.04), so I first installed one of the Laptop-16’s officially supported distros, Fedora 43, using the spin with Mint’s desktop environment (Cinnamon/X11):

After seeing the keyboard/mouse-button freezes, I replaced the install with Ubuntu 25.10 Cinnamon:

That was also affected, so I tried a third install, vanilla Ubuntu 25.10 (GNOME/Wayland). That completely fixed the issue - it’s still installed, and hasn’t frozen the keyboard/mouse-buttons once.

Assuming we had the same keyboard/mouse-button issue, despite the different distros & desktop environments, the common factor appears to be X11.

74

I would also suggest to check temperatures of your CPU. Early batches had thermal issues (mine was one of those). The only time I’ve experienced freezes was when I quite literally… cooked it.

Maybe Arch is missing something related to power management? I’ve seen similar issues with (modded) Chromebooks.

My suspicion is that stock firmware has broken THERMTRIP (thermal protection), so system freezes instead of shutting down. This caused me a lot of headaches as I would suspend my laptop, throw it in my backpack and run to catch a tram/bus/train, and it would be too hot to the touch/locked up when I tried to get it out of the backpack and use it.

This spurious wakeup is caused by trackpad having SCI capability (meaning clicking the trackpad can wake the system up), and when you’re running around with your laptop in your bag, lid naturally gets squished. In case of Framework 16’s the screen is so big that squish by other items (like headphones or books) in your backpack can result in clicking the touchpad, which in turns wakes the system inside your backpack.

In my case it’s running Fedora (work), but I also ran my personal Gentoo install on it (swapped the SSD) when I was moving and didn’t have access to my workstation. Both worked just fine (with exception of flickering screen/wayland crashes as others had mentioned in this thread, but they can be mitigated by disabling automatic refresh rate and setting it to either 60Hz (to save battery) or regular 120Hz).

75

When buying a $2000 laptop, we shouldn’t be limited to which distro to run, nor should we have to downgrade the framerate.

Can the framework team say something about this? @Matt_Hartley

76

I assume that you have reached out to Support about this? Are your temps getting high and causing the freeze? If not, it sounds like a hardware issue - RAM, SSD, mainboard, maybe wifi card. Best of luck getting it sorted out and having a functional machine.

,

77

Well you are in luck, because none of what you said here is true.

I have 5 different distros installed on mine, and they all work perfectly fine. Your issue sounds like a bad ssd. You should probably get it troubleshooted and replaced.

2 Likes
78

Thermals have been fixed. In fact, I’m pretty sure someone from Framework saw me complaining about it on mastodon and started offering free PTM7950 shipments within a month.

Same thing happened with keyboard wakeups. I complained on mastodon that system was waking up from lid pressing on the keyboard and they issued keyboard firmware upgrade within two weeks. It can’t be a coincidence.

Swapping stock liquid metal with PTM7950 fixed thermal issues for me (although wakeups still remained, I would need to mess with ACPI_TABLE_UPGRADE to disable SCI (not aware of a different way to disable wake flag in pinctrl driver).

I worked around it by hibernating the system, or putting it inside my backpack with screen facing my back. It’s a bit more dangerous, but likelyhood of system waking up in my backpack dropped significantly.

(This will not be a problem with coreboot which I’m currently working on, as I will simply add user-configurable option to disable trackpad wake like I did on Chromebooks).

As for framerate: It’s absolutely not Framework’s fault. AMDGPU’s been buggy (especially past year) on all devices I own and Framework isn’t at fault nor responsible for stability of regressions in a Linux kernel.

I would argue it’s not even that bad compared to RX7800XT in my workstation, which tends to randomly lock-up (after which I need to either save my work over ssh and reboot the system, or if I didn’t have unsaved work jump to TTY2 and send SIGINT to OpenRC by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL).

It’s been behaving strangely okay recently, but I’m sure I won’t make it to month of uptime without crashing.
❯ uname -a
Linux tora 6.19.2-gentoo-tora #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Feb 19 20:43:23 CET 2026 x86_64 Genuine Intel(R) CPU 0000 @ 2.60GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
❯ uptime
19:55:49 up 10 days, 2:37, 2 users, load average: 0.89, 0.99, 1.13

(I seriously cannot wait for GPU reset patches to be finally merged in upstream. It’s outrageous we don’t have that feature in 2026 given it was working on Windows 7… in 2009.)

Like others have said, there can be numerous factors for this. I simply listed yet another one.

I would go around troubleshooting it in following steps:

  • Run something intensive (like 3D rendering) and jump few times while holding system in your hands. Might sound stupid, but if you have hardware fault, loose component or screw (which would cause short and subsequent lock-up), this should reveal it.
  • Boot into memtest86+ and let it run it’s course.
  • Do disk benchmark and hit the GPU at the same time, I’ve seen systems crashing from power management weirdness (especially Google/ELDRID Chromebooks) while doing exactly that.
  • Try reaching your laptop over ssh from another system after it (seemingly) hangs. It might be that you’re running into AMDGPU issues like I do on my workstation.
  • As a last resort, build cable for getting logs from Embedded Controller and stick it into top-right USB-C port. You might get PORT80 writes or other errors from Embedded Controller’s logs which would help you troubleshoot the issue.

Last but not least, I highly doubt it would fix your issues, but I increased battery life by 2 hours on my FW16 by writing this script and adding it to root’s crontab (@reboot /usr/local/bin/pm_fix.sh):

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# HDA
echo '1' > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

# Enable ASPM on WiFi and NVME
echo 'auto' > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:02:00.0/power/control
echo 'auto' > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/control

# WiFi performance sucks
iw dev wlan0 set power_save off

# Disable USB wakeup sources to prevent system from waking up in the backpack
echo 'disabled' > /sys/bus/usb/devices/usb1/power/wakeup
echo 'disabled' > /sys/bus/usb/devices/usb2/power/wakeup
echo 'disabled' > /sys/bus/usb/devices/2-2.3/power/wakeup
echo 'disabled' > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-4.3/power/wakeup

Hope this helps.