Plasma System Monitor hangs entire system

Ask Fedora
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1

I’m using Fedora 35 KDE with closed source Nvidia driver for a very obsolete Nvidia card.

When I use Plasma System Monitor, the system often hangs (even ctrl-alt-F3 does nothing, only a hardware reset works). With the current software, I haven’t had any similar problems when NOT running Plasma System Monitor (KSysGuard works fine as a slightly uglier alternative).

When I was using the nouveau driver, I had lots of similar hangs, pretty much any time updates were occurring at the same time both in a visible window and in some other window hidden by that visible one. I don’t know whether there is any connection between those failures and the failure I’m asking about here.

I suspect the ancient Nvidia card is somehow relevant, because it is the only really unusual thing that could explain why I have this problem and most others don’t.

A google search found just a few other mentions of this problem, each of which implied it was much less common on systems where it happens at all than it is on my system. If I leave Plasma System Monitor running while doing ordinary activities, my system will hang within at most a few minutes. Often it hangs just starting Plasma System Monitor.

Is this a symptom of some more serious underlying problem with this computer? Or is it just a bug in that program that somehow isn’t hit by most users?

2

Are you using xorg x11 or wayland. If you are on wayland try with x11 and see if the problem there

3

I think I’m using x11, but I’m not sure how to tell. (I’m not an experienced Fedora user. most of my linux experience has been with a VERY stale version of Centos and even for that I’m not a competent administrator).

Process that are running include
/usr/bin/startplasma-x11
/usr/bin/kwin_x11
and there is zero output from
ps -ef | grep -i wayland

Those are the best hints I have that it is x11 not wayland. Tell me what I should have checked instead.