It started freezing maybe a month or two ago. It happens anytime between a few seconds after the OS loads, to hours or days later. I do not recall downloading anything around when this issue began that could be suspect.
I’ve put off fixing this because I have no idea how to even begin troubleshooting it. Internet searches for “Linux freezes” returns practically countless potential problems.
What are some recommendations? I have my root directory on a 30 GB partition separate from my home directory, which I think makes reinstalling my base image (Debian) easy without losing personal data, so that’s an option. Maybe there’s a system log file that would provide some insight?
I’m Linux dumb so please teach me how to fish!
I’ll add that my Windows install (on a separate drive) doesn’t freeze, and my Linux install is on a new Samsung drive that didn’t report issues, so the problems unlikely hardware related.
02:05 18OCT: Thanks for all the quick responses, a lot of helpful suggestions so far. I should clarify that “my computer freezes” means it is 100% unresponsive until it is rebooted. Ctrl+alt+del spam or changing terminal sessions gets a response. The last few entries in my most recent journalctl boot outputs are different from one another, and the I did not see any errors. For now, I’ll boot a live USB and let it sit for while, see if it crashes again.
Unrelated, but I had something relatively similar once with my Inspiron 7520 laptop. In theory, that machine only supports 8GB of RAM, but technically I could put 16 into it and worked fine. Later I upgraded to a different machine and put this laptop aside, but sometimes I set it up if I go to friends place and need a PC to do some light multiplayer lan parties or such.
For a while, the laptop has a strange locking up issue when I booted 64 bit OSs. Or I don’t know, after my testings, it seemed that booting a 64 bit OS would crash my machine sooner or later. Maybe even right after boot, maybe after when I logged in or used it for some time. Booting into Memtest also locked up eventually the laptop (but running the 32 version of Memtest didn’t). Pulling out either memory stick (2x8GB) solved the issue, it worked with both sticks on both slots, if I used only one. The two sticks together on the other hand made my machine crash after boot, no matter which stick went to which slot.
Difference is that every OS did this, not just Debian, though Windows seemed to keep up longer in this case, but it also crashed on me.
Now I don’t have this problem. It just… disappeared after not using the laptop for a while again.
So… if it’s not software issue, maybe try to reseat your RAM sticks. Or use some compressed air to clean up the slots, maybe check the contacts of the sticks and clean them with some isopropyl and a soft brush.
It also can be storage issue, if your Windows install works fine on a different drive. Once I had an Ubuntu installed to the same laptop I mentioned and its HDD was failing hard, but the system kept up for a while, just had some really weird issues popping up here and there. But then eventually failed completely. Amongst the weird happenings, random freezes were also a thing with my bad HDD.