Boot problems with Linux-libre 4.18 on older CPUs

Due to a known bug in upstream Linux 4.18, users with older multi-core x86 CPUs (Core 2 Duo and earlier?) may not correctly boot up with linux-libre 4.18 when using the default clocksource.

If you are affected, and the CPU is new enough to support HPET, you may work around this by adding clocksource=hpet to the kernel command line. GRUB users can accomplish this by inserting GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT+=" clocksource=hpet" in to /etc/default/grub and re-running grub-mkconfig.

If your CPU is too old to support HPET, you may work around this by using the linux-libre-lts (4.14) kernel instead of linux-libre (4.18).

As this is fixed in 4.18.9, you may also want to wait for a package update.