System locking up when playing videos

General Help
1

Hello!

I really like Zorin os so far and it's the best version of Linux I have used in terms of user interface. It brought my old Asus tablet back to life.

Sadly after a few a weeks I came across a very big problem. Every time I do something graphically demanding task (for example: using freetube or playing videos in VLC) after a few minutes my system locks up with the last few seconds of the audio looping. Now this is very unfortunate because the only thing I use this tablet for is watching videos and basic tasks.

I read about others having the same problem, but they all had NVIDIA graphics cards. But my little tablet only has integrated graphics, which should work right out the box.

I am new to Linux so I don't really know how to diagnose the problem.

My specs:
CPU+GPU: Intel Atom BayTrail-T Z3775 CPU 1.46 GHz with Intel HD graphics
RAM: 2 GB RAM
Storage: 32GB eMMC

Any help is appreciated!

2

Your system with 2 GB is perhaps overloaded when you watch videos on it. Maybe an even lighter distribution such as AntiX can help.

3

Did you not have this problem a few weeks ago? Then it could have been caused by an update. You could try booting with an older kernel by selecting "Advanced options for Zorin" in the grub menu during boot and setting a different kernel.

4

This also happens to me, with 4 GB of RAM, and AMD, but I think it's something to do with Mozilla, because when I use Brave it doesn't happen at all. I have noticed that when I run apt update / upgrade, there are errors with some Mozilla files being unable to install, or kept back.

If I forget and use a Mozilla-based browser, everything starts off fine, then it freezes and the only thing I can do is force re-start my laptop. For me, using Brave is the answer. Good luck finding a simple solution.

5

Welcome to the Forum!

Because I don't use Lite, I'm not sure where You can find, but You should look in the Settings if You can find Options for Energy and look how it is set up to turn off/lock the System and set it to ''Never''.

6

You can disable it at
settings>power/energy settings

tab system: set powersaving mode to never for on battery and connected to power supply
tab display: Set all to never

Linux often doesn't recognize when videos are playing and turns on powersaving/screensaver. But I never had a sound loop on my system while watching videos on XFCE, so I'm not sure if that is the problem here. But try to turn them off and see if it is better then.

7

You can fool the system with simulated keyboard/mouse activity when playing videos, by using either Caffeine or Expresso.

8

Unfortunately, these programs / gnome extensions are not available for XFCE.
I myself use additionaly presentation mode to prevent computer going to sleep while watching videos.

9

I was not aware they did not work on XFCE, but see presentation mode is available as functional alternative. There is also a app called Caffeine-ng which is supposed to be suited to XFCE, if you can find it.

10

I originaly installed an older Zorin os, beacuse that was the only version that booted. This maybe happened after I updated to Zorin os 17, but I'm not 100% sure, beacuse I updated shortly after installation.

11

Thanks, I will try it.

12

They were already disabled so that was not the issue.

13

Probably the older Zorin version was better supported on your system and needed less ressources.

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14

Well, than I will probably roll back to it. I will keep the thread open until I do.

15

Just out of curiosity, did you happen to install the codecs?

16

No, I didn't install any of that. Thanks for suggesting it, I will try it tomorrow and write the results.

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17

I don't know if that will solve your issue, but we can always hope... :slightly_smiling_face:

18

Sadly it didn't fix it :frowning:

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19

Maybe reinstalling the Desktop could help. Type in the Terminal:

sudo apt reinstall zorin-os-lite-desktop

2 Likes
20

Thank you so much! It seems to have resolved the issue. I tested it with the 5 minutes long costa rica video and then with 2 videos playing the same time and there was no freezing. I am still a little sceptical, but I hope it's a permanent fix.

3 Likes