Forgive me, I'm by no means a Linux power user, and I'm brand new to Arch distros especially, so have patience if I say something stupid, but I'm trying to track down the cause/solution for a particular issue (Possibly one that has followed me through many various OS's)
I've found that my system will often hang if I run too much stuff. I get that Linux likes to do that in general, and I've been researching the right ways to avoid that. Swap partitions are setup correctly I believe.
But today for the first time, I've found a way to force the computer to hang on command, and I think it's related to the CPU, maybe the disk, but not RAM. If I open Blender, everything performs surprisingly well, until I begin a render. At that point, the Latte dock stops working. If I click any icon, it will not launch and the dock will become stuck in place. Often other programs will freeze as well. If htop was running in console, it will hang. If I run ps, it will list some processes and then hang in the middle of its output. Eventually Alacritty itself will completely hang. If I navigate around too much, program after program will stop responding until I can't navigate anywhere anymore. I'm not sure if it's permanent however. There were times when I assumed it was hosed and restarted, but I also tried leaving the renderer up, which did not seem to hang, and the moment the render completed, all hung programs caught back up.
That led me to think there was some sort of priority issue on the CPU, and that's where I struggle to find good resources/information online. I noticed htop listed blender with a nice value of -10 with only the pulseaudio process having a lower value. I tried changing the values, but blender kept resetting itself to -10, and setting Latte to -15 didn't seem to make any difference. In general I would expect even an intensive application to be forced by the kernel to leave at least a few cycles for the window manager and active application, since modern computers typically are designed to run more than one program at a time. But that's where my knowledge of Linux completely dries up.
I'm also not sure how to copy text from Alacritty, so I piped inxi -Faz to a text file and copied from there. I hope this is okay.
System: Kernel: 5.11.15-148-tkg-bmq x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.0
parameters: intel_pstate=passive BOOT_IMAGE=/@/boot/vmlinuz-linux-tkg-bmq
root=UUID=662c36b3-f552-4932-b639-d05f01796fe2 rw rootflags=subvol=@ quiet splash rd.udev.log_priority=3
vt.global_cursor_default=0 systemd.unified_cgroup_hierarchy=1 loglevel=3
Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.21.4 tk: Qt 5.15.2 info: latte-dock wm: kwin_x11 vt: 2 dm: SDDM Distro: Garuda Linux
base: Arch Linux
Machine: Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: EP45T-UD3P v: x.x serial: <filter> BIOS: Award v: F1 date: 10/13/2008
CPU: Info: Quad Core model: Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Core Merom family: 6 model-id: F (15)
stepping: B (11) microcode: BA cache: L2: 4 MiB
flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 19219
Speed: 2136 MHz min/max: 1600/2400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2136 2: 2227 3: 2200 4: 2315
Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled
Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: EPT disabled
Type: mds status: Vulnerable: Clear CPU buffers attempted, no microcode; SMT disabled
Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI
Type: spec_store_bypass status: Vulnerable
Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, STIBP: disabled, RSB filling
Type: srbds status: Not affected
Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics: Device-1: AMD Pitcairn PRO [Radeon HD 7850 / R7 265 / R9 270 1024SP] vendor: XFX Pine driver: radeon v: kernel
alternate: amdgpu bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:6819 class-ID: 0300
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: loaded: ati,radeon unloaded: modesetting
alternate: fbdev,vesa display-ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.0x11.2") s-diag: 582mm (22.9")
Monitor-1: HDMI-0 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 96 size: 509x286mm (20.0x11.3") diag: 584mm (23")
OpenGL: renderer: AMD PITCAIRN (DRM 2.50.0 5.11.15-148-tkg-bmq LLVM 11.1.0) v: 4.5 Mesa 21.0.3 direct render: Yes
Audio: Device-1: Intel 82801JI HD Audio vendor: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS5/GA-EG45M-DS2H driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:3a3e class-ID: 0403
Device-2: AMD Oland/Hainan/Cape Verde/Pitcairn HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 7000 Series] vendor: XFX Pine
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 01:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:aab0 class-ID: 0403
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.11.15-148-tkg-bmq running: yes
Sound Server-2: JACK v: 0.125.0 running: no
Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes
Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.26 running: no
Network: Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Gigabyte driver: r8169 v: kernel
port: b000 bus-ID: 04:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200
IF: enp4s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Gigabyte driver: r8169 v: kernel
port: c000 bus-ID: 05:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200
IF: enp5s0 state: down mac: <filter>
Device-3: Broadcom BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN
vendor: Linksys WMP54GS v1.0 802.11g Wireless-G PCI with SpeedBooster driver: N/A modules: ssb, wl port: c000
bus-ID: 06:01.0 chip-ID: 14e4:4320 class-ID: 0280
Device-4: Edimax 802.11n NIC type: USB driver: N/A bus-ID: 2-1:2 chip-ID: 7392:a822 class-ID: 0000 serial: <filter>
Drives: Local Storage: total: 1.82 TiB used: 88.05 GiB (4.7%)
SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Toshiba model: DT01ACA200 size: 1.82 TiB block-size: physical: 4096 B
logical: 512 B speed: 1.5 Gb/s rotation: 7200 rpm serial: <filter> rev: ABB0 scheme: MBR
Partition: ID-1: / raw-size: 536.87 GiB size: 536.87 GiB (100.00%) used: 88.05 GiB (16.4%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/sda3
maj-min: 8:3
ID-2: /home raw-size: 536.87 GiB size: 536.87 GiB (100.00%) used: 88.05 GiB (16.4%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/sda3
maj-min: 8:3
ID-3: /var/log raw-size: 536.87 GiB size: 536.87 GiB (100.00%) used: 88.05 GiB (16.4%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/sda3
maj-min: 8:3
ID-4: /var/tmp raw-size: 536.87 GiB size: 536.87 GiB (100.00%) used: 88.05 GiB (16.4%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/sda3
maj-min: 8:3
Swap: Kernel: swappiness: 10 (default 60) cache-pressure: 75 (default 100)
ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 1.94 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: 32767 dev: /dev/zram0
ID-2: swap-2 type: zram size: 1.94 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: 32767 dev: /dev/zram1
ID-3: swap-3 type: zram size: 1.94 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: 32767 dev: /dev/zram2
ID-4: swap-4 type: zram size: 1.94 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: 32767 dev: /dev/zram3
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 77.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: radeon temp: 59.0 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info: Processes: 246 Uptime: 1h 32m wakeups: 0 Memory: 7.77 GiB used: 3.41 GiB (43.8%) Init: systemd v: 248
tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 10.2.0 clang: 11.1.0 Packages: pacman: 2002 lib: 558 Shell: fish v: 3.2.1
running-in: alacritty inxi: 3.3.04
