My computer has an I5 cpu , Nvidia graphics card GTX 550 ti and 8 GiB's of memory. Before installing Ultimate Edition, I used Mint 12 (built on Ubuntu 11.10) and, ever not liking Cinnamon, installed and used KDE, along with Windows 7. None of the problems I am having occurred when the machine ran on Mint 12. I have now installed Ultimate Edition 3.5.2, which is installed as well as the earlier installed Windows 7.
The only good thing about Ultimate Edition so far is that it was easy, after adding the ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates ppa, to install the Nvidia 331.20 driver (which is the correct driver, according to Nvidia) through Jockey.
Here is a list of a number of my problems:
1. Dolphin sometimes (i.e. several times a day) does not open or it takes five minutes for it to open.
2. Sometimes (i.e. several times a day), it is not possible to logout or the logout dialog takes 5 minutes or so to come up.
This is what I have done, thus far, to address the noted problems, which are, in my view, deal breakers for Ultimate Edition on my I5 computer, unless the problems can be fixed.
1. After the initial installation, my first attempt to improve things was to upgrade KDE to its latest version by adding the kubuntu backport ppa and running apt-get upgrade. The latest version of KDE did nothing to improve matters at all but did not make things any worse.
2. I tried switching to compiz instead of kwin, to manage the windows. This did nothing for me. I also tried turning off most of the effects, which did nothing either.
3. I also tried switching the version of OpenGL to 3.1 from 2.0, which seemed, for a while, to improve things a lot, with the system becoming faster than it had ever been (even with the prior Mint OS). However, the problems returned within two days. I might note, the system still runs better, overall, with version 3.1, except when Dolphin ceases to function or I can't logout, which still occurs several times a day. I also played with the Nvidia settings (to deal with tears showing in Flash videos), but these did not deal with the above noted problems.
4. I tried using Unity. While listed in the DM as existing, when I tried to login after logging out from KDE, I reached the 3.5 wallpaper and a spinning pointer and nothing else. I rebooted, because there was no way to log out as there was no access to any programs at all - i.e., no menus, no access alt F2, no nothing. I reached the same non-functional desktop, so I rebooted into repair, added in networking, ran the repair packages program, which did not restore anything. I booted into the repair again, dropped to terminal and uninstalled unity. I was able to boot back in, this time very, very slowly but, eventually, into a cairo-dock desktop [note: I installed cairo-dock soon after I installed Ultimate Edition), from which I logged out and then back into KDE.
5. I reinstalled Unity, logged out and was able to log into Unity. However, Unity is only partially functional. In particular, I prefer the left side launcher to hide but, if you set it to hide, it hides but there is no way to get it to unhide other than with Ubuntu Tweak or Unsettings. I installed Unsettings and tried to set the parameters to make it easier to unhide the launcher from hiding but that does not work. Unity Tweak lacks any setting for setting the parameters for hiding. Myunity installs but will not open, leaving a message that it is not compatible with 3.5. I gather that 3.5.2 is not really designed to work with Unity or, perhaps, there is something seriously wrong with my system.
6. I installed Cinnamon. In order to do so, I had to deal with an incompatibility, removing the bluetooth program (I do not recall the name) before it would install. In that I do not like Cinnamon and both like and want KDE to be functional, my only use for Cinnamon was to use Startup Applications to turn off a few of the programs I do not need to start up automatically.
Please note that when I run Top, the system, except when it is malfunctioning, has excellent load averages (e.g. 0.01 for 1 minute, 0.03 for five minutes and 0.05 for 15 minutes, when the machine is left to idle). However, when the machine is acting up - normally occurring when Dolphin refuses to start or refuses to start quickly, opening a terminal becomes difficult and you can wait 5 minutes for a terminal to open. I have run Top when there are problems and the load averages are rather high, as in more than 1.0. However, given that the machine has 4 cores, the fact that the load averages are over 1.0 ought not cause the machine to freeze up, so far as I know.
I also note that, even when things are working well, the machine uses much, much too much memory. An idle machine has 1.4 GiB's of memory being used, which is ludicrous. If I turn off Cairo-Dock, it drops to 1.3 GiB's, which is still ludicrously high.
Any suggestions - other than to install another OS from scratch - would be welcome.