Crazy things using almost 100% of resources

[Rob Sayer]

You don't have to have the KDE desktop installed to get a lot of KDE updates. All you need is to have installed programs(s) from the KDE desktop libraries. KDE is a highly integrated DE so installing almost any KDE apps will also install a lot of dependencies.

This is not really a problem, and I doubt very much it was causing your issues. I use dolphin as my default file manager in whatever other DE I'm going to use. It's so powerful and configurable I don't want anything else. And it did install a lot of dependencies, but they don't run if dolphin doesn't need them.

[whitesmith]

Hello again. Your posted figures look normal to my eyes. Since things returned to normal after installing the 59 upgrades, I'm tempted to speculate that one solved your problem. Firefox misbehavior is another possibility. Those are not scientific statements, just SWAGS, because there's no way to disprove any of them.

After installing a large number of updates I run these commands, in order, just to make sure that my machine is running properly:

sudo apt-get update

and then:

sudo apt-get upgrade

and then:

sudo apt-get check

Unmet dependencies are fixed with:

sudo apt-get -f install

You can read more about these commands in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet/Howto. I hope this procedure proves to be of help. Regards.

[Gnusboy]

whitesmith
Thanks for your help. Things are running "better" but not well. I am still getting gray dimming power outs - but not with any one program.
I have more than enough processing power and memory. These things seldom happened previously. I don't understand.
You have been very helpful and I hope you can help me find a solution.
I did recently plug-in a portable USB hard drive, but have not added anything to it yet. I'm planning to use it for back ups while I upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu. I just decided to unplug the HD and see if that solves my problem. I'll let you know how it works out.
I've been looking for a backup program other than Deja Dup which seems to have many problems.Any recommendation is helpful. I should be better at Linux than I am, having it for so many years, but I usually just learn what I need for the tasks I do.

[Gnusboy]

Hello Rob
I understand your comment on KDE and its being benign, but It doesn't explain why after 4 years of never getting a single KDE update, I am suddenly getting many of them.
Just this morning I received another 9 KDE security updates.
It's that they may, or may not build stronger security to my system - it's that I am getting them at all.
That is my quandary.
P.S.
Yet again this morning I had more problems with processor surges draining most of the RAM, which caused the system into a temporary freeze. I don't understand how just having Firefox open for browsing can suddenly draw 3.2 GB of memory? I looked at the sys monitor processor table, but I don't understand enough to figure out if there is a problem. Any ideas?
I appreciate you help. Thanks.

[newb85]

Hello Rob
I understand your comment on KDE and its being benign, but It doesn't explain why after 4 years of never getting a single KDE update, I am suddenly getting many of them.

The only logical reason would be that you installed an application that has them as dependencies. Have you recently installed something? What are the names of the KDE packages your system is updating?