I use Linux (with KDE) as my primary desktop, and I have done so or years. I have written SysV, Upstart, and systemd init scripts/units/whatever. I know what a udev rule is and how to write them. I’ve mucked around with kernel modules, and I’ve dipped my toe into kernel development once or twice.
And I have no friging clue what’s going wrong with my computer. At random, as often as a half hour apart or with weeks in between, I get a line like:
kernel:[ 4650.216417] Disabling IRQ #18
in the kernel log, and suddenly the box is borderline unusable. Most notably, the mouse seems to degrade to updating only twice per second, but all input into the machine drops down to painfully slow updates.
I’ve looked into this extensively, more than once, and the only thing that I’ve found is it that it’s an IRQ associated with the USB stack (probably for the mouse, but I’m not completely certain), and the internet is completely unhelpful as to what to do next. The kicker? The only way I’ve found to fix it is to reboot the box. Like it’s frickin Windows 95 or something. The kernel simply won’t turn that IRQ back on until you do.
I’m writing about this now because I literally just copy-pasted that line out of a terminal on the box, and it’s the second time in the past hour it’s done this. Honestly? This is the kind of shit that convinces people to switch to a Mac.
Not that I’m going to, I hate Macs. But I will be rebooting into Windows 7 for a while, just so I get different bugs to live with for a while. I’m done with this one.