The author of this article admits that Yes, Linux does break once in awhile.  But here are some fixes to common problems.

Lately I’ve been into sprucing up my Linux install so that it boots faster and is more responsive.  Here is a general guide to tuning your linux system.  It’s not he best article, but pretty darn good.

I just upgraded my Ubuntu 7.04 to Ubuntu 8.10 and found that Flash video playback was choppy.  At first I thought maybe I had too many services, so I spent a few hours cleaning that up.  While the laptop boots faster and is more responsive, the video playback was still choppy.

After Googling, most answers will say to ensure you have the latest version of Flash and to make sure you aren’t using free 3rd-party Flash software.  I was using the official Adobe Flash plugin, so those articles didn’t help me.

I also checked video drivers and even tried different browsers.  Nothing helped.

Finally I realized that all this time I was focused on Video when the problem could be Sound.  I found out that PulseAudio is the new server used in Ubuntu.  It’s not enough to use sys-v-conf or BUM to turn off the PulseAudio service, you need to uninstall PulseAudio from your system completely.

After that, Flash will play just fine.