Internet trouble in Linux (Ubuntu)

[Neo Necron]

I recently built a new system, which runs on the Linux distirbution Ubuntu.
I connect to the internet through a router, to which my computer is connected via cable.

I can connect to my network fine. I am able to access my router's control panel, and I can download updates and applications using the synaptic package manager with no trouble.

However, when I use Firefox web browser, some pages take a while to load (eg the mozilla start page) and some just dont load at all. Firefox finds the page and then spends ages connecting to it, until it just times out.
This happens on mozilla web browser also.

I also try connecting to messenger services using the messenger app (I forget what it is called) but each time I try, the program is continually 'connecting' and progressing no further.

Everything works fine on my other computers, which both use Windows XP, and if it's of any importance, I have the same problem whether or not I used static or dynamic IPs

Does anybody have any idea what could be going on? Networking has never been my strong point!

[Hohenheim]

I'm not entirely sure if this is the same problem, but I did some looking around, and found this: apparently, in similar cases of performance problems with firefox, disabling pango seems to help. Instructions are given at that thread there.

As I said, I'm not 100% sure that this is the same problem, but it is somewhere to try, right?

[Neo Necron]

Yeah, I'd found a similar thread in those very forums, with a very similar solution and it worked. Thanks anyway

Somebody also replied to my own post in the Ubuntu forums eventually. Solution here.

This thread can be closed now, wonderful S-mod people. Thanks.

[awall]

Actually, as long as we're talking about internet trouble in Ubuntu (or in my case, Kubuntu), I have a question as well.

I connect to the internet through DHCP; however, the network I'm on seems to give me the same IP every time I connect (112.229.something). Occasionally, however, I will try to connect and my computer will think it's connecting to something that is giving it the IP address 169.254.something (I realize that is a reserved IP for private networks). When this happens, I don't actually have a connection, and any attempt to use the network fails. The last time this error occured, my computer received the bogus IP on eth0, which is the ethernet interface; this was particularly odd because there was no cable plugged into my computer at the time.

It doesn't matter whether I try to connect via ethernet or wireless, I occasionally get the error either way. When it happens, the only solution is usually to reboot and hope that the error fixes itself. Any idea what could be causing it? Are IP addresses assigned by DHCP cached anywhere that I could clear out?

If it helps, I noticed this problem after I installed knetworkmanager. This required me to comment out both of my interfaces from /etc/network/interfaces, but that seemed to be okay because knetworkmanager handles this stuff on its own.

I realize that if I really want an answer, I should post on ubuntuforums... but I'm too lazy, and don't really have enough questions to be worth getting an account there.

Thanks.