current 10.10 crap

this is desktop with fresh 10.10 installation i did according to recommendation given by help channels in case of problems (in fact that's basically the only solution they have to most of everyday problems). p4 2.4, 1gb ram.
after a few months of occasional use, the problems are as follows:

• audio (a mia echo card) was gone for some time, but is back - no idea why/how
• after the system is left on for a night, in the morning seemingly some gnome elements are gone, it displays warnings about some apps (?) / widgets (?) gone wrong (unfortunately i didn't write down the warning, since it's impossible to be done on the computer itself); both options to be chosen are a mystery to me, and finally only "skinny elephants" help. finally i have some od the information area icons permanently gone (the speaker, for example), no idea how to bring it back.
• when under heavy load, it happens the system goes to near freeze state (cursor barely moving), only "skinny elephants" help
• as a side note, "sugar inside xephyr" is useless, since when you approach the border of the window it very rarely shows the black frame menu, which renders sugar unusable.

just a few days to 11.04. since general supporters' opinion is that upgrade ruins  your system, and fresh install is the only safe option, i wonder what will happen.
on the other hand, under 10.04 the audio was permanently gone and openoffice.org was crashing few times a day. improvement?
still, under windows there's almost no such thing as permanent system crash, and you can invoke system monitor and kill a process. here - no.