Comment Re:Surprise? (Score 0) 579
Ubuntu have it own problems, but you case is clear: you have something broken in your system, with so many different systems failing, including known stable apps like firefox, thunderbird and rsync, you have a corrupted system.... something like rsync will not lockup in any system, so is something below (ie: the kernel, the filesystem or the hardware) that is failing i. Try:
1 run a mentest86 for some hours... if it reports any error, your hardware is broken... you can try to play with the bios settings to see if something is pushing too much the system. The AHCI will not be detected by mentest86, but also try to revert that and test... you should check for corrupted FS (fsck from a liveCD) and files (debsums) after that, as is AHCI is giving errors, you may have corrupted files
2 try to reset your profile - login as a different user, move your current user home to
3 try to clean your system, upgrade any package, check if any ppa is messing (installing) new or older version of libraries
4 if all fails, reinstall ubuntu
5 if still fails, install a LTS ubuntu and test
6 if still fails, install again 10.04 ubuntu and test
7 if still fails, sorry, but something is broken in your hardware... after 10 years is not surprising if something like RAM, cpu capacitors or power source start to give problems
good luck