firefox timing out before pages are loaded

[mjewell]

Apologies if this topic has been covered, but Firefox is displaying
"operation timed out" messages instead of loading the Ubuntu wiki and
forum --- along with Google and many other pages.  

I'm successfully using Ubuntu in my law office.  I just migrated my
desktop from XP Pro to to Ubuntu Linux 5.10, kernel 2.6.12-9-386, Gnome
2.12.1.

I used Mandriva 05 Ltd. Ed. briefly before switching to Ubuntu.  For the
most part, I greatly prefer Ubuntu.  

On the other hand, under Mandriva, Firefox behaved the same way as it is
under Ubuntu.  I wasn't able to solve the problem directly, but I was
able to work around it by using Konqueror which loaded pages very
quickly.  That workaround is not working so far under Ubuntu.   

Its my first attempt to use the Synaptic Package Manager, but it does
not appear to want to upgrade to Firefox 1.5 which some suggested would
fix the problem.  I'm reluctant to just install Firefox 1.5 from the
and command because I presume that it may create more difficulties than
it solves.  (That presumption is based on my own command line abilities
more than anything else.)  

Konqueror, Epiphany and straight Mozilla do not appear to be available
for the system according to the Gnome Add Applications software
installer.  I don't know if those browsers would work any better
though.    

Please help.

mjewell