I have been having such a difficult time getting a 2018 Dell Latitude 7930 to run any Linux distro stably. Maybe there is something obvious I am missing or maybe it really is dying hardware that’s the root cause of the issue.
The silly thing is I had a stable install of openSUSE Tumbleweed running for a few months but because I made some poor choices on disk partition when I installed it I was eventually backed into a corner where I had to wipe the SSD and install from scratch.
I since then have tried Tumbleweed again as well as Ubuntu, Mint, and finally Manjaro to no avail. The Debian based distros completely freeze at some point, either immediately upon login and loading the desktop or when running apt update. Tumbleweed gets a kernel panic within an hour or so, even though I changed kernel options to a previous known-good config. Now after quite a frustrating time installing Manjaro it freezes within an hour as well and the diagnostic light code indicates a CPU issue.
Strangely enough none of these issues are apparent when running from a LiveUSB, but occur on two different M.2 SATA SSDs with proper installs.
At this point I don’t really care which distro I use, as long as it doesn’t crash constantly. Does anyone have any suggestions on other things I can try?
I would start by running a full memtest scan. Faulty RAM can manifest itself as apparently random freezes or application crashes.
Of course I should have done that too. Running one now, I’ll let it go for a few hours and see what happens.
Not sure you saw my edit, but I’ve been using a Dell Latitude 7490 for years and its been perfectly fine, so the issues you’re experiencing aren’t normal. Something is definitely up with your specific laptop. Just mentioning to help you narrow down issues.
If it finds bad areas take a picture. You can tell the kernel which are the bad addresses so it can avoid them.
That was my first thought, sounds like a hardware issue, either maybe overheating? Faulty ram or ssd issues, etc
Been using Ubuntu on my Dell Latitude 7490 for years with no issues
you have faulty hardware, whether it’s RAM or cooling or storage related, no way to tell but crashes like that don’t happen nowadays.
edit: I recall having some issues with a 7490 a few years back, it needed some special module for the fan or the sensors, not sure. don’t know if that’s your issue, but look it up.
I think you mistyped the model, if it’s a 7390 it should be the same hardware as the 7490 I’ve mentioned. the module I needed was i8k, check if your model needs it.
Install a windows first just to launch the Dell Command Update app (you’ll have to download it from the Dell website) and use it to update the BIOS and Intel firmwares.
These laptops even run badly on win10 until you update everything.
Then install your chosen distro. I bet there will be fewer problems then.
