On my computer, I’m using 11.3, KDE 4.4.4 and Firefox 3.6.8.
Firefox is so s…l…o…w… It’s slow loading and it’s slow browsing. Konqueror takes 1, maybe 2 seconds to load, and another second to load the home page. Firefox takes a good 30 seconds to load. The only message I get when loading from a terminal is about not using a shared database. I don’t hear the disk churning like it would with a fragmented disk. lol!
I can’t believe everyone is having this response, the hue and cry would be enormous! Anything to try? Should I try loading another browser? I tried Opera on 11.2 and didn’t really like it, had problems with a lot of content. What about Sea Monkey (Gad, I HATE words with monkey in them!)
Konqueror won’t show a lot of videos and I have problems using the back and forward buttons. I’ll wait for fixes but in the meantime… What to use?
put a stop watch on it, is it a good 30 seconds, or only 29??
so, how many different add-ons have you added?
disable them ALL! try your stop watch again…how much now?
Menu > Edit > Preferences > Main…what is in the “When Firefox
starts” block? Change it to either “Show a blank page” or point to a
page on YOUR computer or decide on a quick loading external page
you might want, say Google.com, BUT instead of actually setting it to
go to Google, try 66.102.13.106 instead (and cut out that time wasted
via the DNS process). try the stop watch again!
other things you might investigate:
a. Menu > Edit > Preferences > Privacy
-dial history back to 0 days
b. Menu > Edit > Preferences > Security
-uncheck “Tell me if the site I’m visiting is a suspected attack site”
-uncheck “Tell me if the site I’m visiting is a suspected forgery”
-turn off those “warning messages” you can deal with
HEY! if you do those, be careful, ok??
c. there used to be lots of hints (somewhere on the net) about
speeding up Firefox…CAREFUL, and look for those which can be
applied to YOUR version of Firefox
d. i have no real idea which version of Firefox comes with 11.3, but i
can say: it is my experience that almost without fail each new Firefox
has more new features AND is a little bigger and a little
slower…consider using an older, smaller, faster version… (my
3.0.14 is also slow…but FAR FAR faster than my friend’s MSIE!!)
e. give the others browsers a try…i guess the closer they come to
giving all the features you now have in Firefox, the closer they will
be to Firefox speed (or lack thereof)
let us know how sweet is the spot you can find (features vs speed)…
I’m using Seamonkey 2.0.6 on openSUSE 11.2, Gnome 2.28, and it is faster than FF 3.6.8, but my FF isn’t as slow as yours loading, never slow browsing unless I’m using bandwidth elsewhere.
The only problem with SM is the browser sniffing issue. Most sites sniff for FF, so SM doesn’t work on them. One fix is to change the general.useragent.extra.seamonkey value in about:config to something like Seamonkey/2.0.6(not Firefox/3.6.8), another is the User Agent Switcher extension.
Why not just closing FF, renaming your ~/.mozilla directory and restarting FF ? This will bring the default settings back and tell you if an extension is causing the problem. Running firefox from a terminal (just type “firefox”) might also provide some information.
put a stop watch on it, is it a good 30 seconds, or only 29??
Well alright, I was rounding my figures. It is, as you say, only 29 and once in a while as fast as 28! (Don’t you dare question the accuracy of my stopwatch!)
I tried renaming my .mozilla directory as please_try_again suggested, and restarting FF. It’s still quite slow as compared to Konqueror.
I’m afraid to install the Google app mmarif4u suggested, they have such a bad rep for snooping!
I installed SeaMonkey and it is, as rafter22 said, a little faster, but only a little.
I installed Opera and it is acceptable, but I can’t remember why I took offense at it before.
I installed Epiphany. It FLIES! But, videos show some sort of problem, black flashes kind of like static. I have the same problem with mplayer. I would guess that’s what Epiphany is using.
I can, of course, get by with having Konqueror as my default and pasting videos to Firefox when I need to. I like Epiphany, but it sure isn’t as “pretty” as the kde apps! (I bet that starts a flame war!)
Maybe we should have started here: what computer do you have ?
I can imagine that FF would take 30s or more to start on an i586 but … you wouldn’t get openSUSE 11.3 installed (that easily) on an i586.
Opera has always been (significantly) faster than Firefox, specially on old machines where you can tell the difference.
Chromium is fast but it creates one process for each new tab/window. So if you open 100 pages in Chromium … (I never tried though).
I’m using a AMD 3000+ on an ASUS board with 2G ram. The disk(s) are SATA drives. Thing is, FF is much quicker in WinXP. That makes me sad! Perhaps I’m asking too much.
I do have a similar machine around … It’s a Sempron 3200+ with 4Gb ram … I’m just configuring an openSUSE on it. Let me start FF under KDE ( brrr! I hate KDE )
Ok, it takes about 8s to start on that old machine. Sounds normal. If you really want to test FF you should run it under a minimalistic wm like twm or openbox (without LXDE session). It doesn’t sound right that it is much faster under WinXP. Firefox is nowhere much faster than its own shadow. You should also run top to monitor if something else is keeping your CPU busy… however in that case any other application would take minutes to start.
I have noticed the same. I guess its some bug in new firefox. For loading it will take 30 s, even after loading it starts to pause while switching tabs. Check older firefox version, it will load normally.
29??
)