Having the same issue under Xubuntu and Lubuntu. Every Linux version of Inform 7’s IDE has been extremely unreliable, but the older versions would often crash while editing files, resulting in loss of work. The new IDE only seems to crash when trying out the game inside the IDE. My “workaround” to this problem was just avoiding the play button like the plague, which is unfortunate as it is quite useful.
I still find any other IDEs non-ideal to the way Inform handles files, but one can set up the CLI Inform 7 to work with shortcuts or what have you and then you could use any IDE you’d want to.
Considering this is exactly the same as just never pressing the play button, I really think it easier to just release it and “Play” with some external interpreter instead.
For the old Inform 7 versions there was no choice, using another IDE was mandatory, as Inform would crash and lose whatever it was you’d have written.