screen flicker after upgrade to 11.10

[bluecjh]

Intermittantly (after 11.10 upgrade) screen flickers for about 20 seconds and netbook (samsung nc10) activity stops. changing brightness by hotkeys is broken yet again (god!) The screen flicker which happens every few minutes is a show stopper for me, as is the brightness.

[Spookster]

I have just suffered exactly the same problem on the same laptop immediately after upgrading.

It seemed to be happening when ubuntu tried to dim the screen after a few seconds of inactivity, so I went into System Settings (from the menu at the top right of the screen) and selected 'Screen' then disabled the 'dim screen to save power' option and this seems to have stopped the flickering. Obviously this isn't ideal as it will have an impact on battery life.

I'd suggest posting a bug report if one doesn't already exist, as this seems quite a major issue.

Personally, I've decided to have a fresh start and give Lubuntu a try on this machine, as Ubuntu is just too slow now on netbooks, so I'm just hoping this won't also have the same brightness issue.

[bluecjh]

Lubuntu. I know nothing about that. I will investigate. Can I upgrade/downgrade to that from ubuntu do you know? I too find ubuntu slow compared to win 7. The task or app bar takes an age. This upgrade is very buggy and more like a beta. Thanks for your reply.

As a netbook user, or in fact as any kind of user I only use the browser, a music player and a word processor. I loathe the look of libreoffice, but I dislike windows too. ahhh! When, until now, i used to use ubuntu, I felt it was my netbook, whereas as a windows user you feel like you're wrestling with all the various providers for control of the machine. If only Ubuntu could get the basics right: a stable release, a decent word processor ahhh!

chris.

[Spookster]

I've found Ubuntu to be too slow ever since 11.04, which I've put down to the Unity interface. I'm very happy with it on my desktop PC, though, but I don't think it's suitable for an under-powered netbook like this one any more. I put Lubuntu on my wife's (old) laptop a few weeks ago and it gave it a new lease of life.

I didn't have any files on my netbook that I needed to keep (everything's on Dropbox) so I just wiped it and did a fresh install of Lubuntu via a USB drive (although I believe it's possible to switch without doing a full re-install - "sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop" might do the trick). The installer also offered the option to switch to Lubuntu and keep your existing files.

The install went very smoothly and the laptop feels much snappier again now. Lubuntu is more of a basic OS than Ubuntu, but it does the job for me.

The flickering has not come back but the brightness keys still don't work right - the screen is either very bright or very dim. However this is a minor issue for me as I usually have it on full brightness anyway.

Also, Lubuntu comes with Abiword and Gnumeric instead of LibreOffice by default - might be worth a shot (LibreOffice is still available to install of course). Personally I'm a Google Docs fan.

[bluecjh]

Spookster, I read your comments with interest. 11.04 did seems slow but I think there is something seriously wrong with this 11.10. I load a word file in LibreOffice, that's about 360 pages (1mgb) and it takes about 1 -2 minutes!, against word (circa 20 secs.) 11.04 LibreOffice was about the same as word previously. I'm not watiting two minutes just to save a document?

Google docs? Great in many ways and always getting better. I'm a fan, but!! Large files are too slow to respond. Printing font quality is awful. I tried a professional letter in Arial on Google docs and it was an embarrasment, so I have backed away there. I simply uses Gdocs as a sort of notepad. Microsoft's fonts are a treasure. However I'm sure Google will get there, but I generally dislike the slight delay off Web applications. I find it disconcerting. I write fiction and the word processor is like my right arm. I dislike Windows and love Word. No pleasing some people. ;)

rgds bluecjh

[bluecjh]

What I love (when it works) about Ubuntu is that it is "quiet" where Windows is noisy with constant updates, apps trying to communicate back to their base, the need for Anti Virus software etc, etc...

It's just a shame ubuntu is so flaky.:)