Updates seem to make things worse, not better

[David Curtis]

On Fri, 2008-06-27 at 17:46 -0400, Pat Brown wrote:
> I tend to install all the available updates as they come up through my 
> update manager. I used to be able to watch YouTube videos, now I can't. 
> And more often than ever when I am surfing to any kind of web site my 
> laptop will freeze. I can use Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to get out and log back 
> in, but the only thing that stays active is my network connection, 
> everything else crashes, and if I haven't saved my work I often lose it 
> too. I've gotten into the habit of saving often, but it's still a royal 
> pain that the patches not only aren't helping my system's stability, but 
> seem to be making it worse. I don't even bother trying to watch YouTube 
> anymore. I get nothing but blank screens and system freezes.

YouTube is Flash based, which can be problematic on any platform. It
occasionally freezes up firefox on my system. Try unistalling flash and
see if the problems go away. 

After the next X freeze up try hitting CTRL-ALT-F1 (CTRL_ALT F7 to get
back) login and run:
$ tail /var/log/syslog

$ tail /var/log/messages

and

$ tail /var/log/Xorg.0.log,

to see the last few error messages in each file. It might give you a
clue as to what is happening. Just blaming "updates" is not
appropriate.