Ubuntu 11.10 was fine, knocked spots off Windows. I upgraded to get the LTS

Sadly 12.04 makes Windows Vista look like Usean Bolt in a Ferrari.

What is wrong, has it got over bloated? I have neither the time nor the inclination to faff about in the internals of Ubuntu. It would appear that this is a common problem but I am yet to find out if there a quick fix, or how do I most easily download and install a slimline distribution that will work? All I do is word process, photos, movies - no fast games or stuff like that.

Intel® Celeron(R) D CPU 3.46GHz
2.0 GiB RAM
Release 12.04 (precise) 32-bit
Kernel Linux 3.2.0-24-generic
GNOME 3.4.1

But dont blame the hardware - Windows vista and 11.10 faster on this or almost identical machine

You could try the very similar Linux Mint. It has a similar install process to Ubuntu, comes with a few useful non-free packages by default and doesn't use Unity.

Welcome to the forums!

You have two options at this point:

1. You can find and install an operating system that works well on your hardware

or

2. You can try to troubleshoot the Ubuntu problem.

Either way you will get good support on these forums. My recommendation is to start with #2. If you are having a performance problem with Ubuntu, tools exist to help troubleshoot. You're already off to a good start by telling us about your hardware. The next step is to tell us exactly what you mean by "hideously slow to stop" because honestly I have no idea what that means.

Thanks! Its variable, I will try to post when its misbehaving badly with examples.

Please take a look at my sig. I have the main important pieces of my hardware listed there. This makes things go faster for you and for anyone answering questions.

I think you would find that Xubuntu 12.04 will work faster but if it is a basic hardware problem it may not as all members or the Ubuntu family use the package ubuntu-minimal as their base.

One thing you could try is editing your /etc/default/grub so that the line that gives the default for this instruction string no longer has "splash" in it. This will remove the splash screen part of boot up and shut down. This helps a lot of people with speed.

If you are not interested in having quite a few upgrades each day Debian testing is probably not for you. I use it as my production OS. Many people do. It is quite a bit more nimble on my hardware than Xubuntu 12.04 (I use Xfce).

The Linux Mint folks have a Linux Mint Debian Edition that is very nice. They have a Gnome version and an Xfce version and I am sure a KDE version (never checked - can't stand KDE). They use their own repos to give you Debian testing packages after they have determined that they are stable. I have LMDE Xfce installed on here to keep an eye on it. While I do not particularly like their system it is smooth, clean and works very well at "idiot" proofing Debian testing. A much better job than Ubuntu does (12.04 is based on Debian testing).

I recommend LMDE for noobs and those that want fairly up to date packages with great stability and little trouble.