Ubuntu sometimes stutters in that the mouse will briefly stop moving, sometimes the screen will lock up completely.

Yes, I have observed such behaviour too, but in my case it was a damaged RAM. Do your system crashes more times a day?

The system never crashes. It's just stutters and is generally slow, on Windows 7 it positively flew, It's surprising to me that Ubuntu seems to perform so poorly.

Yes, that is surprising when there is no hardware damage.

1You may also give a try to the properitary drivers of ati or nvidia.
 -> Type jockey in the desktop program search(upper left corner;you know). There should be come up the program for driver installation. Try arround with the versions offered to you.
-> If you already have properitary driver installed you may want to try deinstallation of them(look for software updates after that to get the latest openSoource drivers).

2.o.K the trivial explanation is that there might be an error with the installation CD/DVD you have.

-> Have you checked the checksum of the download? -> Firefox extension Downthemall can do this automatically on fresh downloads(the default MD5 is enought for intergrity check). In this case make a newinstallation with a verified download, or look at point 3.

3.o.K a flee forwad is in moment an option:
Ubuntu12.04 is prepared in the moment. It will be a Long term Support version which causes that the main development is performed on stabilisation from 11.10 and only new features added where it is necessary(like for performance issues).

I am by myself on it and it works proper for common user task since two weeks. When you do not want to start up with setting up you own cloud computing buisnessm, you may try it:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily/current/

When you choose this option also install downthemall extension in firefox first for automatically checking the download integrity.

Alternativ you can do a live upgrade( I would not recommentthis by your performance problems; may be they keeps there)

when you follow:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePangolin/TechnicalOverview

with especially:

To upgrade from Ubuntu 11.10 on a desktop system, press Alt+F2 and type in "update-manager -d" (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release '12.04' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

Run also an update when instllation has finished.

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One of this I am pretty sure will solve your problems. Low performance is not normal for Ubunu.

I'm going to try upgrading to 12.04 tonight and will report back, really appreciate the help.

Upgraded to 12.04, no joy.

Still get the stutter.

Downloaded a film to see what would happen, the majority of playback was fine but every 10-20 seconds the screen would reeze for a 1/4 of a second.

To me it's either the GPU or HDD.

When I check the additional drivers options nothing comes up ie there are no drivers apparently.

???

Mhh,

that is not good.

I would suggest you to file a bugreport on xorg(the opensource graphic).

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Or in short:

ALT + F2 ubuntu-bug xorg

or do

ubuntu-bug xorg on terminal.

Say that is on intel graphic integrated hardware. Apport should gather the specific hardware information automatically as far as I know.

So, much more I can't give you. The rest is on developers. Do also regular updates when there would no direct reaction on your report. Much bugs are solved crossover.

I add this only as commment, so that other may see the status of the question as open and maybe they can give you some additionals.

Good luck.

Thank you melchiaros, filed a bug over at xorg.

While i'm waiting for a response from over there do you have any more trouble shooting steps I could try?

Have the same problem here. Did try ubuntu 12.04 today, same problem.
I think this had something to do with the kernel power bug, tried all the workarounds on the net, did not work either. ChemicalKicks did you have more luck?