I never sorted out what the answer was but I’m almost certain it was a gnome issue, possibly a conflict. I did manage to completely hose my system through troubleshooting, but, hey, I just grabbed an earlier version of my nix config, typed one command, and was back up and running in an earlier state. NixOS is weird and troublesome to learn but goodness it’s useful.

I have been entertaining myself by reading this post out loud. It sounds like I’m having a stroke over and over.

It’s a great suggestion (even kidding – though Doc Brown asking about the strength of gravity in the future crossed my mind), but that’s exactly why I don’t think it’s a hardware issue. It’s going to end up being some weird kernel/gnome conflict triggered by one specific flatpak.

Yeah, I will definitely try another live iso. The ONLY possible lead I have is that in btop there’s a .gnome-session entry that pops to the top of the list when the pause happens, but (a) the peak displayed CPU usage is like 10%, and (b) I can’t figure out what it is. So I’m going to try both a KDE session and maybe a new user just to see if there might be something config-related. Though, again, I didn’t change anything in my nix config.

Part of my issue is that I’m not even sure how to describe what’s happening to search to see if it’s a known issue in recent kernels, gnome, etc. I keep descending into insane metaphors, like “it’s sort of like when the cat is about to throw up a hairball and everything pauses while the horror unfolds in front of you.”

I haven’t updated firmware. And because I’m just going to be That Guy this week, I had done a garbage collection cleanup the day before this nonsense started.

Integrated laptop keyboard (so I assume USB under the hood?)

LOL.

Or, rather, LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

The repeating is a symptom, and the system pause/stutter/whatever is still happening regardless. I thought about it just as a sanity play, but I’d rather fix the underlying issue.

You’re right, but it’s pretty horrendous typing in this environment so it slipped my mind.

Intel® Core™ i7-10610U 16GB Intel® UHD Graphics Gnome/Wayland NixOS 23.11 kernel 6.1.57

Thanks to COVID and work from home and smartphones and Teams/Zoom, I’ve gone from an hour commute each way to a constant stream of meetings, texts, emails, IMs, etc. that must be addressed immediately, from 8am to 6pm. I don’t think the “back in my day” folks fully understand how much more people are asked to do now. I once obliterated an older colleague when he complained that youngs these days don’t put in half the hours he used to. I was like “Um, you used to go to the print office and wait four hours for prints to come out, take them back to the office, proof them, then take the documents to the courthouse and file them in person. In the same time, I’m responding to 100 emails, reviewing 20 documents ON MY PHONE, conducting 3 conference calls, listening to 2 coworkers’ breakdowns, and drafting, reviewing, printing, proofing, and submitting the documents you used to sit and wait for.” To his credit, he said I was right and I never had a problem with him again.

All of which is a long way of saying that, sometimes, more often than I would like, I can’t just “go to the restaurant” because of time or because I’m no longer commuting. For all their problems, the apps mean that I’m eating fewer frozen pizzas and more poke bowls and salads.