What happened to FF in Linux?

[magomago]

Something that has been getting to me is that FF in Ubuntu is ridiculously slow. In fact it was ludicrous to the point that I switched to 'swift fox' in an attempt to gain some speed. In fact it is a little faster. Rather than waiting (lets consider a BBC live bookmark that already refreshed itself) literally 2 seconds for the live bookmark to display all the text when I click it, it will only take 1.5 second. In windows its instantaneous. Hell, in older versions of nix that I've had (although I guess its going to perhaps come down to FF itself) is 1000000x faster than this. Did Mozilla just get extremely lazy on the *nix port?

I don't consider my machine brand new, but not sluggist at all. Its an x2 4400 with 2 gigs of ram and a 9700gs. I don't have any desktop effects turned on (What do they call it now? Last I knew it was compiz), and I don't have any addons for FF.

 

[Brazen]

The live bookmarks are instantaneous for me in Ubuntu 9.04, and I have a handful of addons. Firefox seems to be faster and more responsive on Ubuntu than on Windows for me (even though my Windows is installed on a quad core desktop and Ubuntu is on a dual core laptop). Are you using a fully updated Ubuntu 9.04 desktop?

A couple things you might try:
1) remove your firefox profile. Just close Firefox and delete the whole folder at ~/.mozilla/firefox/random.default, then re-open Firefox and try it out.
2) try the Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop LiveCD. Even though it will be slow loading from the CD, once the system is booted and Firefox is open, it should run from memory and not the CD. See if Firefox is faster here.

 

[xSauronx]

seems fine to me

opera always seemed father than ff anyway...but i wont give up my plugins.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: xSauronx
seems fine to me

opera always seemed father than ff anyway...but i wont give up my plugins.

That's my experience as well(Ubuntu 8.04). I have Opera installed also, and it is a bit quicker, but I prefer Firefox.

 

[Fox5]

1. What's your hardware?
2. Firefox is sluggish on Linux. It has a bug with ext3 that causes excessive writes. Either switch your ext3 partition to writeback mode, or upgrade to ext4.
3. Flash is really sluggish on Linux, and this really hurts Firefox.
4. Chrome is quite a bit speedier on Linux, so if you want a fast browser, it's not a bad choice. Opera also seems to behave a bit better, but flash performance is even worse.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Fox5
...
2. Firefox is sluggish on Linux. It has a bug with ext3 that causes excessive writes. Either switch your ext3 partition to writeback mode, or upgrade to ext4.

I do use xfs on my system, so that could be contributing to Firefox being nice and speedy on my system.

3. Flash is really sluggish on Linux, and this really hurts Firefox.

I've never had a problem or speed issue with flash on Ubuntu 9.04.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: Fox5
...
2. Firefox is sluggish on Linux. It has a bug with ext3 that causes excessive writes. Either switch your ext3 partition to writeback mode, or upgrade to ext4.

I do use xfs on my system, so that could be contributing to Firefox being nice and speedy on my system.

3. Flash is really sluggish on Linux, and this really hurts Firefox.

I've never had a problem or speed issue with flash on Ubuntu 9.04.

If you have multiple tabs open, it can start to slow down/stutter for some reason. It does this on windows as well, but seems to hit sooner on Firefox. On Ubuntu, 4 active tabs with flash can cause my system to start to stutter, where it might take 10 on windows, and that's only if they're playing. (on ubuntu, even paused videos seem to cause a performance hit, as do flash banners)
On Windows, Chrome handles many flash windows open better than Firefox. On Linux, Chrome doesn't support flash yet.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: Fox5
1. What's your hardware?
2. Firefox is sluggish on Linux. It has a bug with ext3 that causes excessive writes. Either switch your ext3 partition to writeback mode, or upgrade to ext4.
3. Flash is really sluggish on Linux, and this really hurts Firefox.
4. Chrome is quite a bit speedier on Linux, so if you want a fast browser, it's not a bad choice. Opera also seems to behave a bit better, but flash performance is even worse.

1. x2 4400+, 2 gigs of ram, 250 gig partition, 9700gs, no special effects on desktop

2. OOOOOOOOOOOH. I have ext3 set up. Is ext4 stable and safe to use? I may just have to reinstall for that reason

3. Yes I've noticed that flash absolutely sucks on Linux and its something I was aware of. I can barely play any "HD video" on youtube without the system grinding. Once I turn it off, it is much smoother.

4. I did a search for Chrome, and they (google's own pages) said they only had a windows version. Did things change recently?

If I can just use chrome 'll do that. But FF is slow flash or not. Sluggish cannot begin to describe it. I'm going to assume its EXT3 right now

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: magomago

Originally posted by: Fox5
1. What's your hardware?
2. Firefox is sluggish on Linux. It has a bug with ext3 that causes excessive writes. Either switch your ext3 partition to writeback mode, or upgrade to ext4.
3. Flash is really sluggish on Linux, and this really hurts Firefox.
4. Chrome is quite a bit speedier on Linux, so if you want a fast browser, it's not a bad choice. Opera also seems to behave a bit better, but flash performance is even worse.

1. x2 4400+, 2 gigs of ram, 250 gig partition, 9700gs, no special effects on desktop

2. OOOOOOOOOOOH. I have ext3 set up. Is ext4 stable and safe to use? I may just have to reinstall for that reason

3. Yes I've noticed that flash absolutely sucks on Linux and its something I was aware of. I can barely play any "HD video" on youtube without the system grinding. Once I turn it off, it is much smoother.

4. I did a search for Chrome, and they (google's own pages) said they only had a windows version. Did things change recently?

If I can just use chrome 'll do that. But FF is slow flash or not. Sluggish cannot begin to describe it. I'm going to assume its EXT3 right now

Firefox does some kind of file sync every couple seconds or so. On ext3, it apparently syncs the entire journal every-time this is called. Firefox is at fault for using it excessively, but ext3 is at fault for not behaving well with it. Ext4 does not have this problem, and ext4 is stable. The next version of ubuntu has a good chance of using it by default, but it's worth switching to. (it's possible to convert from ext3 to ext4, but you may have issues)

Chome has a developer release available for linux. On the page that tells you no linux version is available, this should be in small print. Like I said, works well, except for it currently lacks flash.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: Fox5
...
2. Firefox is sluggish on Linux. It has a bug with ext3 that causes excessive writes. Either switch your ext3 partition to writeback mode, or upgrade to ext4.

I do use xfs on my system, so that could be contributing to Firefox being nice and speedy on my system.

3. Flash is really sluggish on Linux, and this really hurts Firefox.

I've never had a problem or speed issue with flash on Ubuntu 9.04.

If you have multiple tabs open, it can start to slow down/stutter for some reason. It does this on windows as well, but seems to hit sooner on Firefox. On Ubuntu, 4 active tabs with flash can cause my system to start to stutter, where it might take 10 on windows, and that's only if they're playing. (on ubuntu, even paused videos seem to cause a performance hit, as do flash banners)
On Windows, Chrome handles many flash windows open better than Firefox. On Linux, Chrome doesn't support flash yet.

Thats why I don't use flash anymore to play content. I use an alternative that works very well! Said goodbye to stupid flash player a long time ago.

 

[LuckyTaxi]

my system has 3gb of ram running ubuntu 9 and yes FF is so freaking slow. what's an alternative for flash? i cant load flash based videos w/o my system crawling

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Originally posted by: LuckyTaxi
my system has 3gb of ram running ubuntu 9 and yes FF is so freaking slow. what's an alternative for flash? i cant load flash based videos w/o my system crawling

...Flash? Just kidding, there's also Gnash (not recommended, though).