hello,
I'm a raw beginner to Linux/Ubuntu. If I'm not leaving enough info please let me know WHAT I'M LEAVING OUT. Or at least what would be helpfull.
I have a Gigabyte T1028M Netbook and a week ago I decided to take the plunge and ditch Microsoft and come over to Ubuntu. I installed it without issues and have been successfully configuring touchscreen, multitouch touchpad, wifi, etc ever since. The only problems I've been having are:
1) Whenever I do anything that requires a "Save As..." or if I want to import music to the music player, or open a large file, etc, the screen goes grey and I have to wait for anything to happen. Sometimes for up to half an hour. I've found that I must not try to go too quickly for the file browser or click too many times in whichever application I'm trying to use or its going to freeze up for sure.
I have no idea where to start with this.
2) A lot of the applications that came standard with 9.10 will not launch. I get the little turning icon for 15 seconds and then nothing.

ps. I've been reading as much as I can to try and learn about Linux command lines etc but I feel I have a long way to go. Please be really descriptive if you have any possible fixes for my issues. I've looked at other posts and a lot of the time what people have to say goes way over my head.
If I cant get there issues resolved fairly quickly I will have to reinstall Windows on my system. Yuck!!!. That would really suck!

hi

altho you say you installed Ubuntu.....are you aware there a differents variants of this distro? (distribution)

2) Can you name the exact release you installed?

3) What other distros did you try if any?

4) Are you aware that netbooks or not-full portables do not handle full distros very well?

5) This means that to get the best out of a netbook you need to install a distro that is designed for netbooks....and designed for that particular netbook's processor

http://www.chineselinuxuniversity.net/news/63928.shtml

atom N270 or n280

6) No matter what....you can not afford to install full distros or distros that use a bloatware desktop environment or bloat windowmanager....examples being KDE or Gnome and Ubuntu uses Gnome.

7) Leaping ahead you may like to look at these distros and see if they are better?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari..._distributions

Hello aus9. Thanks for the reply.

Yes I am aware of the different distros and would like to have tried Ubuntu Netbook remix but a friend had this (9.10 Karmic) on hand and so in a moment of recklessness I decided to give it a bash. I'm no fan of Microsoft and had been looking at Ubuntu for some time.
My machine has the Atom N270 processor and 2GB of ram (if that makes any diffs)
I must say that most everything has worked really well so far. Startup and shut down times are radically faster than they were with XP, as well as starting up apps like Firefox etc. I've been hoping that it is a line of code or a tic in some options box that needs to change rather than my little netbook that can't step up to the challenge

well you seem to already know what to do.....heh heh

my desktop /va/log/dmesg has this info and yours...because you have the wrong distro variant....will be similar I suspect until you move to a true netbook variant.

KERNEL supported cpus:
Intel GenuineIntel
AMD AuthenticAMD
NSC Geode by NSC
Cyrix CyrixInstead
Centaur CentaurHauls
Transmeta GenuineTMx86
Transmeta TransmetaCPU

my distro is 686 or I could install the 64 bit variant....I am only showing you so you can look yourself and resolve to get rid of 9.10 and install remix or linpus or whatever

Ubuntu Karmic is not the most stable from Canonical and I have had this issue as well. I would regard is second in quality of stability comparing to Jaunty. It was hugely stable without a doubt and fast as well. I would suggest you try Jaunty and see if the problems persist. I doubt they would. Jaunty is much better in quality though Karmic looks better, but that does not make sense to me if it is not too useful.

Hey chaitanya.

I've read that. But then I would expect that Karmic will improve with time...and updates. My biggest problem here in South Africa is that we are really bandwidth starved. My 5gig per month cap doesn't really allow me to download a 750meg OS and so I'll either have to wait it out, wait for someone to give me another version or go back to XP...my very last resort. In the meantime i'm going to continue looking for a fix. You never know, maybe there is one.
What PC are you using? i would be interested to see if what aus9 has said above carries for you too, because I strongly suspect that he is correct and I must rather install the correct version of Karmic (Netbook Remix)
And thanks for letting me know that I'm not alone :-)

I am not using a netbook or a notebook but a Dell Optiplex 330n desktop. And I do not suspect hardware issue as I have run other versions right from Gutsy to Jaunty without any issues. Karmic is the only one with lot of issues.
If you are onto a netbook then it would be worth installing a netbook remix version rather.
I am also holding onto Karmic just because I hope it will get stable with the updates.
Though I am not too happy with Karmic but I am not going back to XP even as last resort. I havent actually used windows on my machine since last couple of years.
And if your Ubuntu does not feel stable then you can try some other distributions as well. Linux Mint is one based on Ubuntu and much similar.