Hey,

Finally got a chance to install Linux for real a few weeks ago, on a friends old laptop that I'm using temporarily. I decided on Linux Mint 10. Because the live CD worked, and others didn't and it's based on Ubuntu 10.10 so I figured that there would be lots of support for it. I absolutely love Linux! Still got a lot to learn though, but with what I've seen so far I'm impressed. Virtual desktops are so handy. The GUI makes much more sense then Windows. The software center is so much easier then having to search on google for software and hoping that you don't install a virus.
Not too happy about the command lines (yet), but I'll learn.

A few things are not going well. Sometimes everything just hangs.You can't click on anything. Opening the terminal with short keys and then trying to perform xkill doesn't work. Closing programs with Alt- f4 works but when everything is closed it still hangs and doesn't respond to mouse clicks.
In all cases I had firefox open and the last time I noticed that the only thing responding to the mouse were the tabs in firefox.

Does linux just hang sometimes, or is there something I can do? Does anyone here know?

Thanks.

p.s, I'll save the other questions for later.

Linux keeps logs of "everything" it's running.
I suggest you burn this cd from here: http://www.sysresccd.org/Download.
After a mishap reboot your box with this cd in,make sure it will boot from a bootable cd.
(You'll have to enter some cli commands).
Then when it's finished loading enter mc.
This will start a filebrowser.

You have 6 terminals to use,after bootup you'll be in nr. 1.
You can go to another terminal by entering ctrl-alt-F2 -- 6 ( that's Function key).
Now in another terminal you'll have to find out how rescuecd sees your harddisks.
Enter "fdisk -l | less".
This will show you the partition table(s).
If you still have Windows on the box it will probably be on /dev/sda1 or /dev/hda1.
You can recognize it by the id.
Here's an example:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 14 112423+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 15 3931 31463302+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 3932 60801 456808275 83 Linux

This my system I don't have Windows.
The id for NTFS (Windows) would be 7.
Swap is 82.
Now in order to browse the log files in your Mint install pick the partition which you think is where Mint is located.

Enter: "mount /dev/Your Mint partition /mnt/gentoo".

Move to mc and find /mnt/gentoo.
Enter to open it and find /mnt/gentoo/var/log.
In here you'll find lots of log files.
By reading them you might be able to determine what happened.
When you're finished and want to reboot you'll have to unmount the partition.
Leave the directory /mnt/gentoo and then go back to the terminal where you gave the mount command.
Enter "umount /mnt/gentoo".
Then enter "reboot".

This may be daunting at first sight but if you want to use Linux get used to it.

I've been using Linux for quite a while.
I have tried many different "binary point and click to install" distro's.
I now use a source based distro called Gentoo.
The rescuecd is based on it.
Gerard.

Jolie,

I also use LinuxMint, and I just moved from LinuxMint 9 32-bit to LinuxMint 10 64-bit, and have been using this "flavor" of Ubuntu since LinuxMint 8.

One trick that helps with a frozen system is the key combination <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<Backspace>. Basically it kills then restarts the X server (which displays the desktop) and will put you back to the login. You will lose any unsaved work, as it issues a sort of a general "X-kill." As long as the system will accept keystrokes (and usually even if you can't type anything into an application, X will still accept and process keystrokes), you can use this command.

In a similar vein there is a keystroke sequence that can cause the entire system to reboot. This is sometimes referred to as the "magic Sysreq" key; again, this can be effective even if the system seems to be ignoring keyboard input, because the keystrokes are directed to the Linux kernel, bypassing all the niceness of the X display manager, Gnome, and any stuck applications. As long as the Linux Kernel itself has not crashed, you should be able to type these keystrokes. Use this mnemonic to remember it: Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring.
Press and hold the <Left-Alt>+<Sysreq> (<Sysreq> key is equal to <Print Screen> on PCs). While holding, type:
<R>aising -- keyboard out of RAW mode and into XLATE mode
<S>kinny -- SYNC disks
<E>lephants -- SIGTERM (terminate) all processes
<I>s -- SIGKILL (kill) any remaining processes
<U>tterly -- Remount all filesystems as read-only
<B>oring -- REBOOT the system

For in-depth info on this technique:
http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v2.6.36/Documentation/sysrq.txt

Longtime users suggest waiting a few seconds between keypresses - not more than 5, usually, although it is possible to type them very fast. The slight pause allows time for the kernel to process the instructions and for the disk operations to occur. It is also recommended by longtime users that, if during the reboot the system displays a message about checking the disks - allow it to proceed. During the check, it is verifying that changes in the Ext4 filesystem journal are being written out to the disk. When I first started using Linux I discovered this and printed it out in big letters and taped it to the wall behind my monitor, as it seemed I was continually getting my system "stuck."

If I can be of any other help, let me know.

It won't tell you why it froze.
Gerard.

As with any OS, an app or process will occasionally hang or something will crash. It should be a rare occurrence though.

A couple of questions..

Are you using desktop effects (or compiz)?

Is there a specific app that you are always using when a crash occurs?

If you are using desktop effects, turn them off. Run for awhile with the desktop effects disabled to see if the crash occurs again. Desktop effects can be problematic, especially when using certain video drivers.

If you are running a specific app (say Firefox) when the crash occurs, try running the app from a command line in a terminal, rather than starting from a launcher. This allows you to see any system/error messages in the terminal window.

If you haven't already installed it, you should install gnome-system-log (system log viewer). This is a GUI to all your log files. Check those after a crash to see if you can determine what caused it. There is a lot of info in the log files but it can be a task to wade though it and understand what you are seeing, especially for a new user.

You should also disable any background services that might be running which you don't need. Not only will this make your system faster, but it may help with stability issues as well.

Please install hardinfo (system profiler and benchmark). Generate a report with it and post the results back there. This will allow us to see exactly what hardware you have and which system modules you are using. It might help with troubleshooting.

Random crashes are not easy to troubleshoot, regardless of the OS. You'll have to check the log files and/or use the process of elimination to determine exactly where the crash is occurring. Once you determine what is causing the hang, you can go about the process of fixing it.

@gerard,
Correct. I (perhaps wrongly) assumed that Jolie was interested in getting "unfroze."

@Jolie,
My System has the package gnome-system-log as accessible from Menu -> Administration -> Log File Viewer, and the package hardinfo as accessible from Menu -> System Tools -> System Profiler and Benchmark.

Alternatively, the log file viewer can also be accessed via the Menu and select the Control Center icon on the left.

If you need to see all applications arranged by category rather than the Favorites (default), in the upper right corner of the menu click on All Applications. Clicking here again will switch back to Favorites.

If you keep an instance of 'top' running, it will show what processes are tying up the processor.

My guess is that the problem lies with Adobe's Flash plug-in. Try disabling it (you will find it in Plugins on the Add-ons dialog under the Tools menu).

One important logfile I forgot to mention is /home/username/.xsession-errors.
You have to read what's in it before logging in otherwise it will be overwritten.
Gerard.

Nice to hear you gave Linux a try, I was skeptical at first when I tried it, and I'm never gonna forget it, and I'm glad I did, all the software for Linux is free, and most is open source as well, great help communities, documentation, guides. It's really really nice!

As for the hang thing that you mentioned I've never came across that problem so I can't help you out. Sorry!

Encase you're gonna be recording tutorials using Linux for your Gimp tutorials on your YouTube Channel, you can use Kazam, or RecordMyDesktop for a desktop screen recorder, and FFMPEG for converting file types (NikiePixel has a great tutorial on using FFMPEG for converting video files), and for a video editor you can checkout OpenShot, Cinelerra, or my personal favorite which is Blender

So hopefully the software, and links here help you out, if you're gonna do any screencasting in Linux

Wow so much help. I hardly know where to start!

Bob63, I used Ctrl Alt Backspace to unfreeze it whenever it happened. Those are the short keys that you remember when you read them. But thanks for the others. I'm going to look into them, and hopefully remember them all too later.

Mike, my last video was done in Linux with RecordMyDesktop and the file converted with Kdenlive.
The biggest problem is not lack of software, but the fact that this is and old computer that can't handle video editing at all!


saulgoode, If Flash is the problem, then I'm going to have to live with it. I use this computer a lot things that require Flash.

Gerard82, I'm going to troubleshoot with GnuTux first if he doesn't mind. Also because it's an old computer and problem no 2 is slowness and I've been wondering if I could turn off processes I don't use.

p.s. Nice to meet you Bob and Gerard

Okay, copied GnuTux's post to gedit and going to reply as best as possible.

The first time everything just hang (hung? hanged?) I was not alarmed, it happens. But after that it happened two times in 1 hour so that made me less happy.

I'm using normal desktop effects, I wanted to put it to none, but then Docky won't work.
Docky and Firefox were both running whenever the laptop hung.
I'll turn Docky and off and set the effects to none.

I'll run firefox from the command line from now on.

I checked, gnome-system-log is installed, and hardinfo is also installed.


With back there you mean here?

edit

I just generated a report. What bits do you need to know? Don't fancy posting things like my full name, username, IP address, whenever I booted up etc.

It's devided in
Summary
Operating System
Kernel Modules
Boots
Languages
Filesystems
Display
Environment Variables
Users

Devices:

Processor
Memory
PCI Devices
USB Devices
Printers
Battery
Sensors
Input Devices
Storage
DMI
Resources
And everything under network

That video looks cool.

I'll stick to Camtasia studio on windows. It can edit audio in one click, and you can do zoom and pan effects very easily too. I don't enjoy video editing at all. Want to be done in 10 minutes and with Camtasia you can. Besides I paid so much money for it, I can't justify not using it for the next 20 years. lol

This a old laptop I'm on right now. On my own laptop I don't have room for dual booting linux and windows. But when I got my hands on this laptop I took my chance and wiped it and installed Linux over it.

When I'll get a new computer I'll probably dual boot linux and windows. The way it looks right now, with Linux as main operating system because I like it better. But keeping windows around for making my videos and some other things that don't work in Linux yet. I haven't been able to watch missed TV programs online for instance because they all depend on Microsoft Silverlight with DRM.

This is the list of start up applications of which I'm not sure what they do. Are there any I can untick without creating problems?


Name=Certificate and Key Storage
Comment=GNOME Keyring: PKCS#11 Component

Name=GNOME Do

Name=GSettings Data Conversion
Comment=Migrates user settings from GConf to dconf

Name=mintUpload
Comment=Linux Mint Upload Manager
(how? where?)

Remote Desktop

Secret storage service

SSH Key Agent

Have they stripped out the DRM from the Linux version of silverlight? I've only ran across one website requiring silverlight but I was able to get the video elsewhere, so I did. I figured if Microsoft was involved, I didn't want it infecting Linux.

On the hardinfo program, it can generate a .txt formatted report so you can just delete out the personal info from there. I was most interested in seeing what hardware you have, along with the kernel and device drivers so "computer" and "devices" are the two categories needed.

One common problem I see is with desktop effects. The open source video drivers are sometimes pretty buggy and kinda slow. Other times, the manufacturer's proprietary drivers are the problem. Not choosing the best Linux video drivers for your specific video card can result in apps hanging or crashing, especially when using OpenGL composting managers and desktop effects. With the hardino report, we can quickly see what video card and drivers you have, as well as OS version and other useful info.

Saulgoode had an excellent suggestion to run "top" in a terminal. This will keep the process that uses the most CPU on top. Many times when a process hangs, it will gobble up a big chunk of the CPU. With top running in a terminal, you'll be able to tell what process is using all your resources. Flash is a known culprit but there may be tweaks that can help.

Oh and ..long time, no see.

There is no silverlight for linux. Only moonlight (think Open Source alternative.) MS doesn't want to give the DRM bit to them I believe. Dutch missed programs websites are very well done. Videos stay on it for a long time so no one feels the need to upload it elsewhere.

hardinfo

Computer
Processor Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 1.60GHz
Memory 1016MB (341MB used)
Operating System Linux Mint 10 Julia
User Name
Date/Time do 16 dec 2010 02:22:20 CET
Display
Resolution 1280x800 pixels
OpenGL Renderer Mesa DRI Intel(R) 915GM GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT x86/MMX/SSE2
X11 Vendor The X.Org Foundation
Multimedia
Audio Adapter ICH4 - Intel ICH6
Input Devices
Lid Switch
Sleep Button
Power Button
AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
Video Bus
Logitech USB RECEIVER
SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad
Printers (CUPS)
Print_to_PDF
SCSI Disks
ATA HTS421280H9AT00
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-K16RA

Operating System
Version
Kernel Linux 2.6.35-22-generic (i686)
Compiled #33-Ubuntu SMP Sun Sep 19 20:34:50 UTC 2010
C Library GNU C Library version 2.12.1 (stable)
Default C Compiler GNU C Compiler version 4.4.5 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.4-14ubuntu5)
Distribution Linux Mint 10 Julia
Current Session
Computer Name
User Name
Home Directory
Desktop Environment GNOME 2.32.0

Kernel Modules
Loaded Modules
aes_i586 Rijndael (AES) Cipher Algorithm, asm optimized
aes_generic Rijndael (AES) Cipher Algorithm
binfmt_misc
parport_pc PC-style parallel port driver
ppdev
dm_crypt device-mapper target for transparent encryption / decryption
ipt_REJECT Xtables: packet "rejection" target for IPv4
ipt_LOG Xtables: IPv4 packet logging to syslog
xt_limit Xtables: rate-limit match
xt_tcpudp Xtables: TCP, UDP and UDP-Lite match
ipt_addrtype Xtables: address type match for IPv4
xt_state ip[6]_tables connection tracking state match module
joydev Joystick device interfaces
ip6table_filter ip6tables filter table
ip6_tables IPv6 packet filter
arc4 ARC4 Cipher Algorithm
snd_intel8x0 Intel 82801AA,82901AB,i810,i820,i830,i840,i845,MX440; SiS 7012; Ali 5455
nf_nat_irc IRC (DCC) NAT helper
nf_conntrack_irc IRC (DCC) connection tracking helper
snd_ac97_codec Universal interface for Audio Codec '97
nf_nat_ftp ftp NAT helper
ac97_bus
nf_nat
nf_conntrack_ipv4
snd_pcm Midlevel PCM code for ALSA.
nf_defrag_ipv4
nf_conntrack_ftp ftp connection tracking helper
b43 Broadcom B43 wireless driver
snd_seq_midi Advanced Linux Sound Architecture sequencer MIDI synth.
nf_conntrack
pcmcia PCMCIA Driver Services
snd_rawmidi Midlevel RawMidi code for ALSA.
iptable_filter iptables filter table
mac80211 IEEE 802.11 subsystem
ip_tables IPv4 packet filter
snd_seq_midi_event MIDI byte <-> sequencer event coder
snd_seq Advanced Linux Sound Architecture sequencer.
x_tables {ip,ip6,arp,eb}_tables backend module
snd_timer ALSA timer interface
snd_seq_device ALSA sequencer device management
cfg80211 wireless configuration support
acer_wmi Acer Laptop WMI Extras Driver
yenta_socket
pcmcia_rsrc
snd Advanced Linux Sound Architecture driver for soundcards.
pcmcia_core Linux Kernel Card Services
psmouse PS/2 mouse driver
led_class LED Class Interface
serio_raw Raw serio driver
soundcore Core sound module
snd_page_alloc Memory allocator for ALSA system.
lp
parport
dm_raid45 device-mapper raid4/5 target
xor
btrfs
zlib_deflate
crc32c CRC32c (Castagnoli) calculations wrapper for lib/crc32c
libcrc32c CRC32c (Castagnoli) calculations
i915 Intel Graphics
drm_kms_helper DRM KMS helper
drm DRM shared core routines
usbhid USB HID core driver
intel_agp
8139too RealTek RTL-8139 Fast Ethernet driver
8139cp RealTek RTL-8139C+ series 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver
ssb Sonics Silicon Backplane driver
hid
i2c_algo_bit I2C-Bus bit-banging algorithm
video ACPI Video Driver
mii MII hardware support library
agpgart AGP GART driver
output Display Output Switcher Lowlevel Control Abstraction

Filesystems
Mounted File Systems
/dev/sda1 / 19,67 % (56,6 GiB of 70,5 GiB)
none /dev 0,05 % (488,0 MiB of 488,3 MiB)
none /dev/shm 0,15 % (495,6 MiB of 496,3 MiB)
none /var/run 0,06 % (496,0 MiB of 496,3 MiB)
none /var/lock 0,00 % (496,3 MiB of 496,3 MiB)
Display
Display
Resolution 1280x800 pixels
Vendor The X.Org Foundation
Version 1.9.0
Monitors
Monitor 0 1280x800 pixels
Extensions
BIG-REQUESTS
Composite
DAMAGE
DOUBLE-BUFFER
DPMS
DRI2
GLX
Generic Event Extension
GestureExtension
MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
MIT-SHM
RANDR
RECORD
RENDER
SECURITY
SGI-GLX
SHAPE
SYNC
X-Resource
XC-MISC
XFIXES
XFree86-DGA
XFree86-VidModeExtension
XINERAMA
XInputExtension
XKEYBOARD
XTEST
XVideo
XVideo-MotionCompensation
OpenGL
Vendor Tungsten Graphics, Inc
Renderer Mesa DRI Intel(R) 915GM GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT x86/MMX/SSE2
Version 1.4 Mesa 7.9-devel
Direct Rendering Yes


Devices
Processor
Processor
Name Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 1.60GHz
Family, model, stepping 6, 13, 8 (Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon/Celeron)
Vendor Intel
Configuration
Cache Size 1024kb
Frequency 1596,00MHz
BogoMIPS 3192,00
Byte Order Little Endian
Features
FDIV Bug no
HLT Bug no
F00F Bug no
Coma Bug no
Has FPU yes
Cache
Cache information not available
Capabilities
fpu Floating Point Unit
vme Virtual 86 Mode Extension
de Debug Extensions - I/O breakpoints
pse Page Size Extensions (4MB pages)
tsc Time Stamp Counter and RDTSC instruction
msr Model Specific Registers
pae Physical Address Extensions
mce Machine Check Architeture
cx8 CMPXCHG8 instruction
apic Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller
mtrr Memory Type Range Registers
pge Page Global Enable
mca Machine Check Architecture
cmov Conditional Move instruction
clflush Cache Line Flush instruction
dts Debug Store
acpi Thermal Monitor and Software Controlled Clock
mmx MMX technology
fxsr FXSAVE and FXRSTOR instructions
sse SSE instructions
sse2 SSE2 (WNI) instructions
ss Self Snoop
tm Thermal Monitor
pbe Pending Break Enable
nx No-execute Page Protection
up smp kernel running on up
bts Branch Trace Store
Memory
Memory
Total Memory 1016464 kB
Free Memory 279952 kB
Buffers 53544 kB
Cached 395848 kB
Cached Swap 0 kB
Active 365448 kB
Inactive 328156 kB
Active(anon) 248988 kB
Inactive(anon) 53488 kB
Active(file) 116460 kB
Inactive(file) 274668 kB
Unevictable 16 kB
Mlocked 16 kB
High Memory 129928 kB
Free High Memory 260 kB
Low Memory 886536 kB
Free Low Memory 279692 kB
Virtual Memory 3069948 kB
Free Virtual Memory 3069948 kB
Dirty 160 kB
Writeback 0 kB
AnonPages 244208 kB
Mapped 73728 kB
Shmem 58252 kB
Slab 23648 kB
SReclaimable 14840 kB
SUnreclaim 8808 kB
KernelStack 2240 kB
PageTables 5008 kB
NFS_Unstable 0 kB
Bounce 0 kB
WritebackTmp 0 kB
CommitLimit 3578180 kB
Committed_AS 1015244 kB
VmallocTotal 122880 kB
VmallocUsed 15804 kB
VmallocChunk 100608 kB
HardwareCorrupted 0 kB
HugePages_Total 0
HugePages_Free 0
HugePages_Rsvd 0
HugePages_Surp 0
Hugepagesize 4096 kB
DirectMap4k 20472 kB
DirectMap4M 888832 kB
PCI Devices
PCI Devices
Host bridge Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 03)
VGA compatible controller Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Display controller Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
USB Controller Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
USB Controller Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
USB Controller Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
USB Controller Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
USB Controller Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
PCI bridge Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d3) (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode])
Multimedia audio controller Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
Modem Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Generic])
ISA bridge Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
IDE interface Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
SMBus Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
Network controller Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
Ethernet controller Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
CardBus bridge ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
USB Devices
Printers
Printers (CUPS)
Print_to_PDF


Input Devices
Input Devices
Lid Switch
Sleep Button
Power Button
AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
Video Bus
Logitech USB RECEIVER
SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad
Storage
SCSI Disks
ATA HTS421280H9AT00
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-K16RA

Let me know if there's anything missing.

Yeah, that's what I thought. It's a good thing too. We want to keep DRM as far away from Linux as possible.

I see you are using the i915 Intel Graphics /w OpenGL Renderer Mesa DRI Intel(R) 915GM GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT. That's should work fairly well but certainly not nearly as roust of OpenGL support as say, a Nvidia card with proprietary drivers. Still, it should be able to handle basic desktop effects. You might want to peruse the Mint (or Ubuntu) forums for xorg.conf tweaks for that card.

At this point, just disable desktop effects and run "top" in a terminal. If you don't freeze, you know it's the video card/video drivers. If you are still having the same lockup issue, it may very well be as Saulgoode suggests, a Flash issue. Although, it could be something else.

Let us know how the tests go..

If I only had a clue what that meant. lol

DRM just shouldn't exist at all.


Can my video card be the problem of lag when scrolling in firefox or Chrome? Because, apart from video editing, everything seems to work fast enough, for what you can expect from an old laptop. But there is lag with scrolling even when CPU usage is 20% and RAM less then half used.

edit

Had a thought. How can I see what it says in the terminal for top and the one for firefox when everything hangs and I can't click on anything anymore? When I press Ctrl Alt T it just opens a new terminal.

Hi jolie,
The symptoms you describe are not due to old hardware.
Your box freezes,old HW would only slows it down.
Usually this is caused by something putting the processor in an endless loop.
Unlike Windows Linux keeps logs of everything it's doing.
Gerard.

Jolie,

I'm going to horn in here for a moment.

The gnome keyring and its components are concerned with securing your login password, certain repository keys (for downloading and installing software from repositories other than official Ubuntu); the gnome keyring can also generate digital signature private/public key pairs which can be used as part of a verification and secure fingerprint system, i.e.: You write an e-mail and attach a digital signature. The recipient can compare the attached signature to your public key and prove it was sent by you. You can also save personal passwords in the keyring. For example, my Yahoo IM password is in in my keyring, so if I use the Pidgin IM application to connect, it retrieves my password from the keyring.

ssh stands for Secure SHell, which provides a secure method of exchanging passwords and data over a network using public key cryptography. It was designed to replace telenet which exchanged passwords and data in plaintext. To generalize, if you are securely connecting to a network - local or remote - and need to use password authentication, you are using ssh.

Remote Desktop is a method that allows a user to control a computer remotely. There are a number of reasons why this can be a good thing - it is possible for a remote user to take control of the computer desktop to assist in troubleshooting, for example. Remote desktop can also be used for telecommuting and initiating file transfers. Yes, if it is improperly configured you might as well leave your computer sitting open and running on a street corner, but the default configuration is such that while the service is "turned on", it is sleeping and can only be activated with the user's permission and by supplying a username and password.

GSettings Data Conversion is used to convert Gconf information (Gnome settings) to dconf format. It takes a snapshot of your system's configuration and settings and writes it to a file, which can be transferred to another computer - allowing you to replicate your system's configuration on another computer.

MintUpload is a method allowing the user to upload files to remote hosting, such as an ftp fileserver. It also uses username/password settings.

Gnome Do is related to Docky.

In summary, most of the unrecognized apps you are asking about are pretty important - they mostly concern various levels of password, application and network security for your system.

As far as performance issues related to Firefox, I'm seeing some myself, but I feel that they are a Firefox issue. I also experience lags and hiccups (like a pause when scrolling down a page), and it seems that they get a bit worse with every Firefox update. However, I also have a lot of Firefox add-ins and plug-ins, so until I get around to running some safe-mode comparisons, I'll refrain from screaming.

Linux uses Xorg, which is the open-source implementation of the X window system version 11. xorg.conf is a configuration file that controls I/O devices like your mouse, keyboard, display and video card. It's normally located in /etc/X11. Sometimes you can manually tweak the xorg.conf to resolve issues with video drivers or other devices. Modern Linux distros are able to detect most everything but there are times when a tweak to the xorg.conf is necessary.

Can you please copy and paste the contents of /etc/X11/xorg.conf back here?


Slower open source video drivers could be an issue when scrolling in Firefox or doing anything video related. I took a few moments to investigate issues with 915GM (which is the video chipset you have). There are quite a few threads regarding slow performance when using the 915GM. There looks to be a couple of different video driver options for the 915GM.

There is a huge thread over at ubuntu forums regarding Intel Graphics Performance.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... ight=915GM

With a laptop, you are pretty much stuck with what you have, in terms of video.

Currently, I only use nVidia video cards with the proprietary drivers in Linux because they are fast and just seem to work well for me. The support is good and updates come quickly. I can display full screen HD video and 3D games at full speed with nVidia based cards. Other peeps prefer ATI. From what I've seen, ATI is slow to update their drivers.


From what I gathered, you were not experiencing a complete lock down so you should be able to use Alt-Tab to switch between open windows. It might take a minute or two if the offending app is hogging all the resources.

If you don't have any more lockups with desktop effects disabled, you've found the problem. If you do, my guess is that Saulgoode's suspicion regarding flash might just be the culprit. You're just gonna have to use it for awhile to determine what the problem is.