I'm using Debian 3.x (Sarge) with KDE 3.1, although I had the same problem in Mandrake Linux 9.1. After I am connected to the internet programs start acting screwy. Konqueror either won't start, or it will take 5 or 10 minutes. Mozilla has the same problem. Other programs act buggy. If I click on "Browse" in a KDE application, the program will freeze, and I will have to close it with xkill. Does anyone know what the hell is going on? Is it possible that there is process running bugging everything up? Help is greatly appreciated, thank you.

Since it happens with both Debian and Mandrake I don't think it's the OS. Are you connecting through a router? Mozilla will take a little longer than Konqueror to start up.

Are you connected through an ethernet card or modem?

I am connected through an external modem, and I'm not going through a router.

Do you still have terminal access and/or the ability to get to another virtual desktop and open a terminal when this happens? If you're concerned about processes, try 'top' in a terminal, or the KDE system monitor and see if anything looks strange.

Is this a regular dialup connection, or a broadband connection? If broadband, it's possible that your modem has a router built-in. Is the external connection serial or USB? If USB, maybe something's wrong with hotplug, or ACPI/APM is causing a conflict in some way.

Just what occurred to me.

If both Debian and Mandrake had the same problem I still think it's not the OS. Maybe the cpu or the ram.

With a typical external modem, the modem has a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) built into it. Therefore, you should not be hogging CPU cycles while connected. Is this a USB modem??? If so, you problem is as others said, with hotplug or some other of the USB services.

If this were a CPU or RAM problem, you'd have it everywhere, not just while connected through dial-up.

Take the suggestion regarding running the console application called top. It'll tell you what is being used and how much CPU bandwidth it's hogging.

I was thinking it could also be the kernel drivers. They're common as well.

I am using an serial external modem, but I know it's not the modem because I have the same problem with ethernet and wireless. According to top, my cpu isn't doing much of anything. The only thing odd I noticed was that my ram dropped by about 5 to 10 kb every few seconds. I figure this could be top making a log or something in my ram, so it might be normal.

I suppose kernel drivers could be a possibility, although I wouldn't know which ones. Oh yeah, I don't think I had this problem when I was running Mandrake Linux 9.0. Is it possible that KDE is messing something up? I'll check that. Any other ideas? Thank you all for your help!

I think the problem has something to do with Mozilla based browsers because the main things it messes up is konqueror and Mozilla. I think the other things are related to konqueror (like the browse button.)

How could connecting to the internet mess up Konqueror's and Mozilla's ability to work properly?

Konqueror is not mozilla based. It has its own rendering engine called KHTML. I'm starting to think it could be hardware based. Have you got a live CD lying around? If you do, test it with that. You may want to upgrade/change your kernel to see if anything changes.Other than that, I'm out of ideas.

I've tried connecting using live cds, but usually Mozilla won't even start. Atleast it won't in PHLAK. I'll try Cool Linux CD again.

Just to let everyone know, I finally got rid of the weird internet problem without trying to. I think it might have been a nameserver problem or something because I ran dpkg-reconfigure etherconf to get my wireless card working and I managed to fix both problems. Yay!