I was anticipating 11.4 with quiet eagerness. 11.3 ran smoothly on my Sony Vaio FW350J laptop, but I was looking forward to the KDE 4.6 enhancements and the new kernel patch speed improvements that had made such a tremendous splash. Well, imagine my surprise when 11.4 boots much slower than 11.3 did. My wireless wifi activates with painful slowness. 11.3 was well-nigh instant. Firefox has long been my favorite browser, but we get one hideous interface. I thought well, she’s still beta, but now beta no longer. Yet the ugliness remains.
I love Opensuse, but these type of regressions get long in the tooth, if I might say so respectfully. I’ve done some googling - others seem to be experiencing similar speed issues, but they most commonly have Nvidia graphics cards. Mine is Intel so that’s not parallel. My 3D effects work nicely in any case.
Is downgrading to 11.3 my best solution for faster boot times, better Wifi and a decent looking firefox?
There was too much fuss around those patches, but everyone failed the very simple objective: it’s irrelevant for day to day traditional usage. Most people don’t run a 64 core computer like the one in Linus video, neither perform tasks that would take the best out of the patches. I’m not saying this is users fault, I’m point my finger at poor media and opinion makers who didn’t passed the right message.
Well, this is another topic that can be worked out. Ever tried to get a bootchart and optimize your system?
Firefox is a product from the Mozilla Foundation. There other alternatives.
Trying to be simple on this…
Boot times: Optimizing will be the key answer. I haven’t done optimizations, but my bootchart points me to 45 secs boot. I find it nice, but I can cut easilly 10/14 secs on it by removing I don’t use. Most users will also be able to such optimizations. For example, removing the bootsplash saves you 2 secs, do you care about those 2 seconds or the bootsplash? The list grows a bit.
About the wifi card… I know which one I have, but I have no clue on yours, so even if I wanted to help, you are being too vague… what chipset we talking about?
Firefox, really can’t help… That’s really a question of user preference. More options are available. But do you see any benefit by shipping old software? What would others say? It’s really hard to please everyone.
My wireless wifi activates with painful slowness. 11.3 was well-nigh instant. Firefox has long been my favorite browser, but we get one hideous interface. 
I thought well, she’s still beta, but now beta no longer. Yet the ugliness remains.