Ubuntu Installation :: Can't Install Packages In Maverick (10.10)?

I decided to give a new download of Ubuntu 10.10 a chance. It went on fine,I even installed VirtualBox with noi problem, But I am light on assessories,particularly gimp. I tried the Ubuntu Software Center, then I tried the Synaptic Package Manager for this and other packages, and guess what? I kept getting errors like this:dpkg: failed to read on buffer copy for copy info file `/var/lib/dpkg/available': Input/output error
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)I even found a link that showed how to include gimp on 10.04 or 10.10 with a few command line statement, and I thought that would fly, but I got the same error again. Another problem is that my monitor keeps fading to a sort of blue-gray color indicating the processor is having trouble keeping up, but I have only FireFox running, and the keyboard locks up after after just a a smaill handful of charactrers are typed, then after about 10 seconds or so, the keyboard buffer flushes to the screen.

This certainly is not typical of earlier Ubuntu versions, and I wonder if anybody else has similar problems or knows the cause and cure.I am down to the point of asking myself, what is so urgent with the Ubuntu developers that we are having more and more conflicts between hardware and software to resolve with each new release? And that they are pulling more and more packages out of the LiveCD in order to make room for something that is bulking up in some other manner? What are you people up to, make Ubuntu more like Windows with coming releases? If I wanted Windows, I would stick with or get a newer version of Windows.