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 when its frozen does not get 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.