How to Fix Endless OS Freezing Problem (Low RAM)

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Endless OS can Freeze or Hang due to many reasons like any other computer. But, I am going to discuss how to deal with the Freezing of Endless OS due to lack of RAM or Processing Power of CPU.

Problem Symptoms :wink:
OS starts normally and Apps work fine. After Running Few Apps at once or Multiple windows on the same App ( tabs on Chrome ) suddenly Endless OS freezes .

Problem Reasons :slight_smile:
Low RAM (2GB or Less) with Shared Graphics
Low Power CPU like Intel Atom or Celeron
Too Much Apps running
No Swap drive for Virtual memory

*** Swap is a memory chunk on harddisk that acts as RAM, having swap is good for running more Apps at once but no swap gives swift App loading as long as few Apps are running at once

How to Check RAM/CPU usage :blush:

Install and open the app Gnome “System Monitor”

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Inside the Processes memory (RAM) and % of CPU (Processor) resource used by different apps/processes

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Click on the Resource Tab

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Here, 1.2 GB RAM out of 1.7 GB ( Actually 2.0 GB but 256 MB is pre-allocated for the Integrated Graphics ) is occupied. Running one or two more Apps will stall the Endless OS as soon as occupied RAM reaches close to 1.7 GB !

Keep an eye on System Monitor while running multiple Apps !

Solution :smile:
Restart PC once a day free up RAM occupied by gnome-shell & gnome-software
Run Less Apps at Once
Buy/Upgrade RAM
Make a Swap Partition on HDD
Reduce Shared Graphics Memory Size from BIOS ****

**** Since many notebooks from ASUS comes with Endless OS preinstalled, so I think it’s worth sharing this option. Intel HD Graphics (Internal) works by taking a portion of the RAM, larger the Graphics Memory lower the RAM. My ASUS Notebook’s internal Graphics occupied 512 MB RAM at first leaving about 1.4 GB RAM left for the system. After doing this tweak, I have 1.7 GB !!

I reduced the Graphics Memory from 512 MB to 128 MB. This is how :slightly_smiling_face:
During Computer Starting Press F2 Function Key to Enter BIOS

Use Left-Right-Up-Down arrow keys to navigate

Advanced >> Graphics Configuration >> Pre-Allocated >> 128 M
to reduce Graphics Memory

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IMG_20180303_152118_HDR.jpg4160×3120 1.4 MB

Now save the BIOS setting and restart computer. Log into Endless OS >> Start “Setting” App >> Open “Details” to check

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For what it’s worth, this is an issue we’re looking at addressing. Upcoming releases of Endless (in the months time frame) should behave better on low memory systems (possibly by using less memory for disk buffers, more aggressively killing processes when memory is almost full, or something similar).

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In the meantime, try to limit the tabs that you have open in Google Chrome. If you like to keep multiple browser tabs open, you might have a better experience with Chromium (“Internet” in the app center), which automatically discards tabs that are less recently used (and automatically wakes them back up when switching back). (This is a feature we enabled in the open source Chromium package, but which we are unable to control in Google Chrome.) The downside to using Chromium is that we are not able to freely distribute some of the video codecs, which is why we guided users to using Google Chrome by default.

Roddy

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@roddy, I tried to make a Swap Partiotion with Gnome Disk and was able to make a Swap Drive but it didn’t work as virtual memory , any idea why ?
Long ago I used a Linux Distro called PUPPY LINUX where the Swap drive worked and the system was very responsive with very little RAM !

I was expecting Swap Partition to work like virtual memory, maybe missed something,

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@Demon_Cloud Sorry for the late reply…

Thanks for the tip about the graphics memory setting in the ASUS BIOS!

You should be able to make a swap drive or a swap file that works as virtual memory. With spinning hard drives, though, the performance is pretty poor. We have recently (as of Endless OS 3.3.15) enabled zram for all users, which sets up a swap of compressed pages in memory, and performs much better than swapping to hard disk in our testing. With this change, we disable any swap partitions that had been set up, but after booting you can manually adjust your swap configuration with the swapon and swapoff commands. We are working on other changes to improve memory consumption in upcoming releases, so hopefully you will see further improvements over the next couple months.

Roddy

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@roddy, Sorry to you too for late reply, because I have moved to a new machine with SSD.

Not using the “Endless OS” right now ( although, I am keeping it with my new machine just in case Apocalypse hits and Internet goes down ! ) .

Thanks for informing me about the improvement on swap, I guess I will boot into the old HDD and update my Endless OS installation. By the way, will swap partition on SSD/USB 3.0 work better ?

See you around.

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I have an I5 and 8 gb of ram with an ssd and experience freezes. Hopefully this will get addressed. I use linux all the time on this laptop and dont experience this issue with other distros…

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The Endless release that will come out in in 3 days (3.5.0) will behave better in low memory situations (and try to kill processes rather than freeze).

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This is the side effect of using Gnome and Flatpak, the minimum is 2 GB of RAM, but it is recommended 4 GB, the 64-bit processor is minimal, but recommended true dual core 2 Ghz, definitely and unfortunately Endless OS ( even new version) is not for weaker pcs