I have used Earthlink for years, never had a problem. It my cost a few $ more but they are never down and never throttle.

If you tried PCLinuxOS & KDE and still had problems, I humbly suggest that linux is not your problem.

With over 10 Million Lines of Code and additions plus changes everyday, it would be a little tough for any one person to really grasp it. Even Microsoft contributed 20,000 lines of code to the kernel after they got caught hijacking the Hyper-V network drivers. There is a map here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linux_kernel_map.png

Anything you want to know about the kernel is here: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/

They maintain the kernel, support Linus Torvalds so he can devote full time work on the kernel. You have to find info by searching.

You may need to install a newer kernel. 2.6.32.xx

This is a good place to start, they maintain the kernel. They support Linus Torvalds so that he can work on it full time.
http://www.linuxfoundation.org

The site is huge and the best way to find what you are looking for is to use the search function. Example inodes.

01 2 * * sun root /usr/bin/apt-get update ; /usr/bin/apt-get -q -d -y -u dist-upgrade ; /usr/bin/apt-get autoclean

I used to use something like this, download but don't unpack. The y will answer prompts.
Now I use Synaptic with automatic notifier. Runs in system tray, you can set it to check every hour, every day, etc.

Auto upgrades are way to dangerous as once in a while a package will slip in that wants to yank out half of your operating system.