Things which are NOT causing the freezing

Software or Operating System- format and complete reinstall hasn't fixed the problem.
RAM- 2 different sticks tried without changing the results.
TV Card- removed it and it still froze. Also, now Vista BSODs on me before the login screen.
Overheating- she's perfectly fine after I restart; I don't have to wait for her to cool off before restarting
CD-ROM drive- removed it and she's still freezing

Upgrading Info

I asked Eric if the changes that were made when Ubuntu was installed (the noacpi stuff at boot, and the thing with irqpoll) would stay when I upgrade versions, say to Edgy, and he says they will. So that's good. But I'd still rather not have to do it when I only have myself to rely on, just in case he's wrong.
Also, She froze again today, after 5.5 days of uptime. We're going to see about putting the RAM in another computer and see if it freezes, so that we can determine if the RAM is actually bad, or if it's something else.

Why Beryl Didn't Work

I found out yesterday (via Beryl's web site) that Beryl is not supported on Dapper, for some reason (they didn't elaborate), which might explain why it didn't exactly work well even though even my computer exceeds the system requirements.

Conky

I messed around a bit with my conky setup, found out how to change the text colors and so forth. It's kind of worrying to me that apparently I'm using around 40% RAM, because that's about what I was using with half as much RAM.
She froze again today, after more than 4 days running.

DVD Drive

Today the DVD drive started acting strangely. The DVD would spin and stop, spin and stop, and there was a slight grinding noise. The DVD was not accessible while this was happening, with the video freezing and an inability to open Computer or the drive in the file browser. I was going to restart, but before I did that I tried kicking her, and it worked. This could be a problem in the future, however.

Freezing

Phoenix froze again today, which took me by surprise because I replaced the RAM. MemTest86, which I used and which found an error, apparently doesn't find only RAM errors, and mine is clearly not a RAM problem, so I have to see if I can figure out which piece of hardware is actually causing the problem.

Printer

With judicious help from tech support (read: Eric did it all, and I ran to the printer to see if it printed right), the printer is now set up correctly. It is a Magicolor 2300DL connected directly to the network, and in order to use it it was set up as "HP JetDirect", an option under the "network printer" option. For some reason, OpenOffice was localized to Europe when I installed Ubuntu, so there were a few problems with the paper type being set to A4 in several places, but it's working now.

Autoscrolling

One of the minor annoyances I've been having is not being able to press the scroll wheel and scroll down the page by moving the mouse, but I found out how to fix it today. In Firefox, there is an option to enable autoscrolling which does that, so I did that.

Flash 9 Beta

Since fox.com requires Flash 8 or higher, and unfortunately the highest version of Flash that is available for Linux is 7, I was unable to get into it. Fortunately, there is a beta of Flash 9 for Linux, and I installed it according to the excellent instructions with explanations found here. Hopefully it will work!
Update: Fox.com still doesn't work.

KDE

I installed KDE today, just to try it out. I think it looks better preconfigured than Gnome does, and the menus being in the lower left corner rather than the upper left might make it easier to make the mental switch from Windows to Linux (habits like the start menu's location die hard). Also, I learned how to make the terminal pseudotransparent; in the Gnome terminal it's an option in Edit>Profiles... However, I do mean pseudotransparent. You can see the background through it, but not the other open programs, and that's kind of disappointing. Anyway, I'm back to Gnome, at least for now. Maybe I'll mess with KDE sometime later, when I feel like configuring everything. Oh, as a side note: the uptime desklet includes logging out and back in (not restarting) as still being up.
Phoenix froze twice yesterday. I really need to get new RAM.

RAM

My computer has been freezing for the past few months (since some time before I installed Vista, anyway), so on the reccommendation of people on a tech support forum I ran Memtest86 last night, and it found an error. What that means is that my RAM are (probably) bad. As per the Kingston site, my RAM is covered by a lifetime warranty. Since Eric was going to get me new RAM anyway, he is going to get me a new stick of 512 MB RAM, and I will install that. Then the RAM currently in the machine will be returned and a new stick of 512 will be sent to me, which I will then install.

First Post

I installed Ubuntu Linux (6.06, Dapper Drake) last month (December 2006) and have decided to track what I do to my Linux installation for several reasons:

1. Easier tech support if I need it
2. To keep track of my progress learning Linux and the programs I use