I think that's where the problem was first time around ... I didn't do the updates before I started "playing" .... but even afterwards, it still screwed up.
On second install, I did the updates right away and Firefox seemed to work fine.
But, I went to watch a youtube movie and the whole computer froze up after about 2 or 3 min ...
Ubuntu doesn't seem to have proper drivers for my video card (NVIDIA) but at least the drivers it's using work, for the most part, and that's probably why the thing froze.
Whatevah .. I went back to Winders for the time being.