karmic slow after todays update

[nepal]

My Ubuntu Karmic system has gone horribly slow. For example to change
the background image takes about 10 seconds just to display the first
dialog that shows. It takes about 56/57 seconds to boot to a usable
screen that will take my input and I am not using lots of services
that need initialising first. I seem to be getting all the same
problems I had with Karmic with the kde desktop, a nightmare I am not
going back to. Can anything be done? I would'nt even know what to ask
for help on to troubleshoot this although I'm getting pretty despondent
these days about buntu. The experience for the last year has been
simply horrible, despite the advocates lauding the praises at every
misconfigure and messup....

nepal