All of a sudden Ubuntu has started to suck on my system. I've been running it for months with no problems, however this past week it seems that all my memory and CPU is being eaten up so much so that I can't even do anything on the internet without 5 second delays in between mouse clicks.

At first I thought it was Firefox, but forcing Firefox to quit [it doesn't ever close by itself, it keeps running in the background] then restarting does not help.

Using Chrome does not help.

Restarting the computer does not help. And after the most recent updates, my computer won't even shutdown by itself. I have to do a hard reset by holding the power button.

And again after the updates, Photoshop no longer works correctly, and flash video is unwatchable in Fullscreen.

Again, this all started within this past week. Everything was perfect before.

Any ideas?