I been having issues with the cheap hp gaming laptop with Linux, One CPU core runs at 100% no matter that do i tried masking and disabling stuff, changing the Network card, adding Ram, and some desktops like Gnome forks had issues as well, KDE, and Mate work fine but it looks like it maybe has a Firmware, Driver or a Kernel issue, so far i tested it with Fedora, Fedora rawhide, Ubuntu and Mint, I’m going to test Debian next.
The laptop i had issues with Windows 11 works fine. https://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Victus-15-6-inch-FHD-144Hz-Gaming-Laptop-AMD-Ryzen-5-8645HS-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-4050-8GB-DDR4-512GB-SSD-Mica-Silver-2024/5395277312
Edit Only Gnome 3 forks have issues with the Nvidia Drivers i will retest it at a later date with a new install and one CPU thread runs at 100% with all DE’s and OSes but Windows 11.
Edit 2 I think i found the issue AMD APUs on some systems with Nvidia GPUs will spam the system the bug report i found said to disable the iGPU. also Gnome forks work fine i think it was my fault for not disabling secure boot.
Hard to know for sure without knowing what exactly it is you’re trying to run, but since you’re using an AMD processor, I would guess it’s NOT a firmware/driver issue. New Intel processors would be a different story.
Even today, not every application is programmed to use multiple cores effectively, or at all. Again, we need to know what application(s) you’re running when this happens
Can you confirm if there are processes sucking up all that cpu usage?
Also, if it’s only some desktops with that issue, then it’s clearly not a lower level issue but something to do with GNOME and derivatives
If Gnome has issues but Plasma and Mate work fine, then it’s likely not firmware related, but rather a process in Gnome that’s using a core all the time. So find out what that process is, if it’s a common thing on Gnome and if it will finish if given enough time.
The CPU thread runs at 100% with all DE’s/OSes i tested so far and the Nvidia Drivers and Steam had bad issues with Gnome 3 forks, but work fine with Mate and KDE I even gave the Open Kernel Driver a ago before reinstalling a new OS with a a different DE.
Maybe worth trying an alternative OS with a different kernel entirely from Linux, as a live USB. For example Haiku or ArcaOS?
However if you’ve tried Windows and not had the issue then it may not add anything as you nay already have excluded defective hardware?
More than distro hopping maybe try out a zen kernel or compiling kernel yourself and changing kernel config and scheduler, or a newer version of the stock kernel?
I’m not super current on what’s in each kernel but I’d expect latest mainline to handle newer processors better than some of the older stable kernels in some of the more mainstream slower releasing distros.
