so here's my next mind numbing problem I have an HP 15-f272wm before me now which shipped with Windows 10. The machine runs splendidly with Linux except for when it locks up completely.
I have the "thermal.off=1" command on the kernel command line, but that avails not. No modules are failing to load, and theres no journal entry because it's a complete hardware freeze. I am running the latest version of bios.
It may be important to note that this model does not have an internal cooling fan. It does not do this with Windows.
What am I missing? I've tried Arch, Ubuntu, and OpenSUSE and the result is the same. it seems to happen at random. Not during gaming, watching videos, or anything you would expect.

Sounds like one of my hp stream 11's at the end of it's life. Still afflicted by that, probably something to do with the battery. Although it randomly shuts off, not froze.

You could run a couple nmon's in terminals to monitor cpu usage, ram usage, and such. Assuming it doesn't just power off when it locks up. There's also gkrellm for similar monitoring.

Beyond that, it used to be common for a machine to randomly lock up when the video driver sucked. Although the machine was not technically locked up, you could ssh into it if it had that running. But all keyboard and mouse input was ignored / unavailable and the GUI / X session was frozen.

Also run memtest86+, you might have bad RAM that is causing you grief.

One work around for X freezes is to run in an unaccelerated driver like vesa or fbdev. If the problem goes away, there's your culprit.

Also check the dmesg for missing firmware. There's microcode for the CPU and firmware for GPUs. And hardware is a lot more grumpy these days when it doesn't have it.

I do have the microcode installed, but I will have to try the x driver thing. Thank you!