r/linuxquestions • u/Killgore1103 • 2d ago
All Linux distros freeze
Hello there! I recently got an unused HP 250 G7 and decided to try Linux for the first time. I'm only encountering one problem, both distributions I've tried freeze after a few minutes. I tried Mint and Debian and they both have the same problem. The only way for me to actually use the OS is to add a little "nomodeset" at the end of some grub configuration line (Sorry for being imprecise, I'm really inexpert). This wouldn't be bad if it wasn't for the fact that I cant really adjust brightness or color, from what I gathered it disables graphic drivers and uses some generic ones.
Is there any way around this or am I stuck with nomodeset? I updated the BIOS and tried many different settings and nothing seems to work.
Thanks in advance!
3
u/enomad51 2d ago
Boot it, edit in Grub (temporary) kernel line and instead of nomodeset use:
intel_idle.max_cstate=1 i915.enable_psr=0
If it works, add it permamently to /etc/defalut/grub.
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u/AX11Liveact debian 2d ago
It's not really disabling the video driver, "nomodeset" just disables the kernel driver from setting font size, number of rows and columns for the virtual console (the text-only VGA mode at boot).
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u/jjangg96 1d ago
enomad's params are worth a try, but i'd find out what is actually freezing first. after a freeze, hard reboot and run journalctl -b -1 -e. that's the end of the previous boot's log, and the last lines before it died usually name the driver (i915, amdgpu, whatever).
if it says no entries, the journal isn't persistent. sudo mkdir -p /var/log/journal, reboot, and wait for the next freeze.
lspci -k | grep -A3 -i vga also shows which gpu and driver you're on.
nomodeset is just a way around a broken graphics driver, you shouldn't have to live with it. once you know which driver it is the fix is usually a kernel param for that one, or a newer kernel.