On Thu, 9 Aug 2018, Iznogoud wrote: >> Who should I be angry at? AMD or the Linux kernel developers? This >> was such a horror story that I think I might never buy another AMD >> chip. > > I completely understand your frustration, and I empathize. But there is > not point in blaiming anyone, and it certainly will not help... With the > philosopher's hat on I will say that it is all about how you deal with > such issues. If I were you I would have suspected bad memory first. Then > you run a memtest for several days. Yep. Found nothing. > If that passes, you are left with software issues, which you can very > easily both isolate and remedy, especially with Linux. Just downgrade to > a different distribution or kernel. It is not hard to do, and with a > good backup (either a terball or dd) you could get back to where you > were once you have all the info. (A) I think it is hard to do, and (B) I don't think it would have worked. Are you saying that changing the Linux distro or kernel version would have fixed it? I think the newer kernels were better (the ones that came out in the past year). I haven't heard that older kernels would have fixed it. > It is a free OS. It is the best OS. Can't blame the developers. > > AMD and Intel are all you have for hardware, and in my opinion hardware > is dirt cheap. > > Either way, this is a first world problem, and one with a solution that > you found yourself. A win. But it took me a year. If there is any way to avoid having that happen again, I will avoid it! I think you are right, though: it was a haphazard thing and avoiding AMD won't help me. But I think there is a way to avoid future problems: I should work with well-established hardware. I chose to use a brand-new AMD chip because the young guy in the computer shop told me it was the cool new thing (it is pretty cool). In retrospect, that was a mistake. If I only use year-old processors (or older) and mobos, then there will be data on the web and I won't be waiting a year to figure out what happened. So I agree -- AMD, Intel and Linux are best, and I'm stuck with them. I'm going to be avoiding the hot new thing, though. Mike