When I log in to the desktop Ubuntu seems to "stutter". Doing pretty much anything causes the cursor to freeze for a few seconds, and the rest of the screen updates something like every 15 seconds (during these 15 seconds I can still move the cursor). For example, opening the home folder I first see no effect, followed by a semi-transparent home folder, and finally the folder as it should be (this can take like 30 seconds); no animation, just three individual frames. Also, I sometimes don't see a window for a program, even though the program in question is supposed to be "up".

Since this is my first experience of Linux, I confess I have no idea where to start - searching the web I only found problems with complete freezes/crashes requiring rebooting, as opposed to this "stuttering".

I installed Ubuntu 12.04 32bit from a bootable USB stick a couple of days ago, right after a fresh Vista 32bit install. Thinking the stuttering might stop if I updated Ubuntu, I managed to install approx 270 updates through the Update Manager, but the stuttering was still there. Apart from the updates, I haven't installed any software other than what was included on the bootable USB stick.

Vista and Ubuntu are on a single Crucial m4 SSD, in a dual-boot setup, with GRUB. CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 GPU: Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (with the recommended proprietary drivers) RAM: 2GB DDR2