Why does my Ubuntu 20.04 computer keep freezing?

Question

I recently installed Ubuntu on a pretty old computer to try to give it a new life. After a while, it started to freeze pretty often, and whenever it does, I have to do a hard restart. It could just be the fact that it's a really old computer, but I'd like to know if there's anything I can do to treat the problem.

The computer is an Optiplex 755 that's at least 5 years old, probably older. It has ubuntu 20.04 installed on it. Here are the specs I got from

    sudo dmidecode -t4 | less
dmidecode 3.2
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 2.5 present.
Handle 0x0400, DMI type 4, 40 bytes
Processor Information
        Socket Designation: CPU
        Type: Central Processor
        Family: Core 2 Duo
        Manufacturer: Intel
        ID: FB 06 00 00 FF FB EB BF
        Signature: Type 0, Family 6, Model 15, Stepping 11
        Flags:
                FPU (Floating-point unit on-chip)
                VME (Virtual mode extension)
                DE (Debugging extension)
                PSE (Page size extension)
                TSC (Time stamp counter)
                MSR (Model specific registers)
                PAE (Physical address extension)
                MCE (Machine check exception)
                CX8 (CMPXCHG8 instruction supported)
                APIC (On-chip APIC hardware supported)
                SEP (Fast system call)
                MTRR (Memory type range registers)
                PGE (Page global enable)
                MCA (Machine check architecture)
                CMOV (Conditional move instruction supported)
                PAT (Page attribute table)
                PSE-36 (36-bit page size extension)
                CLFSH (CLFLUSH instruction supported)
                DS (Debug store)
                ACPI (ACPI supported)
                MMX (MMX technology supported)
                FXSR (FXSAVE and FXSTOR instructions supported)
                SSE (Streaming SIMD extensions)
                SSE2 (Streaming SIMD extensions 2)
                SS (Self-snoop)
                HTT (Multi-threading)
                TM (Thermal monitor supported)
                PBE (Pending break enabled)
        Version: Not Specified
        Voltage: 1.2 V
        External Clock: 1066 MHz
        Max Speed: 5200 MHz
        Current Speed: 2400 MHz
        Status: Populated, Enabled
        Upgrade: Socket LGA775
        L1 Cache Handle: 0x0700

Was another question today about freezing, the OP gave gave specs and I think was able to help. Have a powerbook 180 that is pretty old(not working good) and a P4 that is newer, working good. — crip659, Aug 10 '20 at 20:27
If freezes are at random it most likely is the memory. can you do a memcheck? — Rinzwind, Aug 11 '20 at 06:54

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 11 '20 at 06:38

The speed of your processor (2400MHz = 2.4GHz) seems to be fast enough from my experience (running Ubuntu 20.04 with a single-core 1.3GHz processor here with no issues) so I suspect it might have to do with insufficient RAM.

To check the total amount of RAM on your computer, fire up a terminal and run:

$ grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:        2035504 kB

In my case, I have about 2G of RAM which is just enough for Ubuntu to run reasonably smoothly. If you only have 1G of RAM (= approx. 1000000 kB) then Ubuntu will easily freeze whenever you try to fire up a browser or anything GUI-related. Unfortunately, there's probably nothing much you can do to speed up Ubuntu in this case.

For reviving an old computer with Ubuntu, I would recommend a lighter flavor of Ubuntu such as Lubuntu which should work well with just 1G of RAM.

It would appear I have JUST under 2G of RAM. Thanks for explaining that. (By just under 2G, I mean i have 1999236 kb) — SyntheticHuman, Aug 11 '20 at 16:59

Why does my Ubuntu 20.04 computer keep freezing?

dmidecode 3.2

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