I'm a half-savvy computer user, able to figure things out on my own for the most part. I've got a little formal training in Linux, and some further acquired on my own. I was going to just do a complete OS reinstall to solve my problem, installing other versions of Kubuntu/Ubuntu via GRUB to find one that works, but figured I might try asking here first. If it's been posted before, sorry, but the key terms I could think of all returned many hits.
Problems
The system will suddenly freeze, usually just after it's started to do something (opened a program, I switch to viewing something else). Well, everything freezes except the mouse, whose cursor is free to roam across an unresponsive screen. Keyboard LEDs stop changing when I press the lock buttons (though they remain on if they were on), and the tower makes no noise, but somehow, it's still happy to read my mouse. It seems that a higher CPU load makes it more likely to occur, but it doesn't seem to be necessary for any given occurence.
Also, there's an intermittent issue regarding programs not included in Kubuntu. The middle of the window for the application won't respond to scrolling, as in the image won't change, though the top and bottom portions will. Minimizing and restoring the window will refresh the image. Whenever this happens, the backgrounds of menus (File, Edit, etc) in the affected programs will be transparent. Changing the display resolution usually fixes this, though not always - say, 80% of the time - and when it doesn't, it won't fix it until I restart. And whenever I change the resolution, the bottom panel and any icons in it will stay at the lowest resolution the display's been set to since Kubuntu was last started.
Installation
Latest Kubuntu release (8.1 with KDE 4.2), on a machine that's a few years old (an HP built for Windows). Used a minimal Ubuntu CD to load a terminal where I apt-get'd "kde-desktop" (a full CD Kubuntu iso wasn't working for whatever reasons). I haven't yet figured out how to get a readout of the computer stats, but I'm fairly sure it's better than 2Ghz and 2GB RAM.
Thanks in advance, and sorry if this isn't the right place.
Problems
The system will suddenly freeze, usually just after it's started to do something (opened a program, I switch to viewing something else). Well, everything freezes except the mouse, whose cursor is free to roam across an unresponsive screen. Keyboard LEDs stop changing when I press the lock buttons (though they remain on if they were on), and the tower makes no noise, but somehow, it's still happy to read my mouse. It seems that a higher CPU load makes it more likely to occur, but it doesn't seem to be necessary for any given occurence.
Also, there's an intermittent issue regarding programs not included in Kubuntu. The middle of the window for the application won't respond to scrolling, as in the image won't change, though the top and bottom portions will. Minimizing and restoring the window will refresh the image. Whenever this happens, the backgrounds of menus (File, Edit, etc) in the affected programs will be transparent. Changing the display resolution usually fixes this, though not always - say, 80% of the time - and when it doesn't, it won't fix it until I restart. And whenever I change the resolution, the bottom panel and any icons in it will stay at the lowest resolution the display's been set to since Kubuntu was last started.
Installation
Latest Kubuntu release (8.1 with KDE 4.2), on a machine that's a few years old (an HP built for Windows). Used a minimal Ubuntu CD to load a terminal where I apt-get'd "kde-desktop" (a full CD Kubuntu iso wasn't working for whatever reasons). I haven't yet figured out how to get a readout of the computer stats, but I'm fairly sure it's better than 2Ghz and 2GB RAM.
Thanks in advance, and sorry if this isn't the right place.
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