Oook!

Since about a month ago, after many years, I assembled myself a new computer which is running Windows 7 now. It had the strange habit of waking up from the sleep-mode by itself at night. And I just could not find out why. It was not magic packets or the network card, it was not my wireless keyboard / mouse sending random signals (check this link for info on that).

In the end, it was just the media center trying to update itself. This little annoyance can be turned off / changed in the Task Scheduler.

Yes, I am still learning all the finer details of using Ubuntu on my laptop and slowly my knowledge is growing. Sadly most learning experiences are from unexpected problems that pop up every once in a while. This morning, after entering my password, all keyboard functionality was gone. That was a annoyingly new. At least the magic keys were still working and allowed me restart my system. And after a second reboot then the system seems back to normal. For now.

Any hints on where I should check on what caused the error?

Overall getting used to Ubuntu was not that difficult, missing software was so far easily installed (though I was not always sure where, but it works). On the average, working with it feels faster than with WinXP, though at times the CPU seems to be used at 100% by a run-away process. How can I get a listing with how much load the processes are causing?.

On the annoying side, since I installed Ubuntu (3 weeks ago), Firefox crashed more often than Opera on my windows box in the last 3 years. Also the media player was locking the screen every once in a while, not even being able to change to another terminal. Always had to restart the system. And usually after waking up from hibernation, my network configuration is set back to some default. Always have to change it to connect again.

Well and now the GUI is not loading correctly... trying for 2 hours already to solve the problem - annoyed, not having access to my files including the important documents.

My resume at the moment: several small problems with Ubuntu that I could fix, faster than Windows but apparently more unstable.

Quo vadis?