[xubuntu-users] Problems after updating 14.04

[David Walland]

I have been running Xubuntu 12.04 successfully for nearly a year on my old
Dell Latitude D620.  This sports 2 GB memory and a 100GB SSD.  Recently I
decided to update to 14.04.  Everything went well and for some weeks the
machine and 14.04 have behaved impeccably, until I ran a normal set of
updates.
I have a Broadcom 4311 wifi card on the machine and had managed to make it
work following information from the Internet on how to do so.  After this
update, suddenly the wifi will no longer work and all of the instructions
to sort it in 14.04, I can find on the internet fail to work, including the
"official" Ubuntu instructions.  On startup, just after starting the
machine and before the desktop comes up it flashes for about 1 second
information which is about the problem (well it says "Broadcom" but it's
gone too quickly for me to read much more).

How do I hold this screen long enough to read what it says?

How do I sort out the driver so it works given that every set of
instructions I've tried have failed?

Also since the same update I now have a small black rectangle on my desktop
all the time.  It wasn't there before and I can't find any info on the
Internet about how to deal with it.  When starting, the desktop loads
correctly until I enter my password to go into my own area when the black
area reappears and is always on top.  It's about 8 mm from the LH edge and
about 2.5 cm down from the screen top.

Will I have to reset swappiness and the other settings I set up in 12.04 to
speed it up and to protect the SSD?  It's noticeably slower in 14.04.

I'm a fairly new boy at Linux so please treat me gently and explain all
those esoteric steps which all Linux non-newbies know and I probably won't
- I'm still following instructions mostly by rote.


Thanks in anticipation,

David Walland
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