system impossibly slow

Description: Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS
Release: 12.04

dbus:
  Installed: 1.4.18-1ubuntu1.4
  Candidate: 1.4.18-1ubuntu1.4
  Version table:
 *** 1.4.18-1ubuntu1.4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main i386 Packages
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.4.18-1ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main i386 Packages

My system runs like a dog, I noticed it when I installed kubuntu on top of a server install (I had my reasons). Network takes a couple of tries to come up on reboot. Flash in firefox brings the system to 100% CPU utlization (hulu.com is a decent test of same).

Found this in apport.log, don't know if it's relevant.

ERROR: apport (pid 10208) Sun Oct 20 08:33:49 2013: called for pid 19161, signal 11
ERROR: apport (pid 10208) Sun Oct 20 08:33:49 2013: executable: /usr/lib/firefox/plugin-container (command line "/usr/lib/firefox/plugin-container /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so -greomn
i /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja -appomni /usr/lib/firefox/browser/omni.ja -appdir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 18955 false plugin")
ERROR: apport (pid 10208) Sun Oct 20 08:33:49 2013: gdbus call error: Error: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.gnome.SessionManager was not provided by any .service file
s

ERROR: apport (pid 10208) Sun Oct 20 08:33:49 2013: debug: session gdbus call:
ERROR: apport (pid 10208) Sun Oct 20 08:33:49 2013: apport: report /var/crash/_usr_lib_firefox_plugin-container.1000.crash already exists and unseen, doing nothing to avoid disk usage DoS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Also, someone was trying to find a bug in their application (sflphone) on my system... he tracked one of the issues down to a problem with DBUS.

Some pieces of our conversation on IRC (I don't know if the different comments are related to this specific issue or not but it all came out in one debug session so I'll let someone that knows what they're doing make that determination):

the socket is not responding
since you restarted dbus, many system services failed to register
your whole system is slowly crashing right now

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/empathy/+bug/952407
network problems, unresponsive d-bus, look like your issue to me

 there we go! it is a bug in kdelibs

can only happen on Ubuntu server. The KUniqueapplication class break a default policy and lock dbus
I can fix that by using "KApplication" instead of "KUniqueapplication" is the package is built on Ubuntu 12.04