Firefox (Thunderbird too) SLOW to Launch/Load

English Applications
#1

Hi,

I can’t pinpoint when this started, but I don’t think I’m hardware constrained. As is, on a fresh session, FF 88.0.1 (64-bit) takes about 8 seconds to launch to a blank/empty browser frame with all add-ons disabled. Subsequent re-launch after closing out is 6-7 seconds. Then to load a bookmark to these forums takes about 6 seconds for the page to load.

In the same session/setup, Opera launches in less than 2 sec, and pasting this forum link into URL bar loads opensuse forums in another less than 2 seconds on Opera.

Over on the windows partition of same SSD, FF is snappy, launches in 1-2 seconds, loads pages fast. It seems that FF on Tumbleweed is the issue, though not sure how to diagnose further. As mentioned in the title Thunderbird seems very slow as well. In addition to Opera, System Settings, Konsole, Dolphin, Emacs, are all very fast /work well on TW for me.

This is all on a ThinkPad P14s, AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750u with Radeon Graphics/ AMD Renoir/16 GB RAM/500 GB SSD.

We also have less well equipped AMD tower PC running TW, and the system tools are fast on that, but FF is slow there as well.

Anyone else running into this? Any idea about settings/modifications that might help?

Thank.

#2

For me, also on Tumbleweed, starting Firefox takes < 2 seconds.

Leaving it open and starting a second (parallel) session from the console takes even shorter:

$ time firefox 

real    0m0.447s 
user    0m0.366s 
sys     0m0.032s

I am running from a NVME with:

/sudo hdparm -Tt  /dev/nvme0n1
 Timing cached reads:   25942 MB in  1.99 seconds = 13044.30 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 3716 MB in  3.00 seconds = 1238.26 MB/sec
#3

Hm, thanks. Your system is smoking mine…

For successive parallel console instances:


# time firefox
  
real    0m2.136s
user    0m0.675s
sys     0m0.036s

 # time firefox
  
real    0m2.187s
user    0m0.670s
sys     0m0.053s

 # time firefox
  
real    0m3.531s
user    0m0.683s
sys     0m0.028s

 # time firefox
  
real    0m2.454s
user    0m0.670s
sys     0m0.043s

 # time firefox

real    0m3.858s
user    0m0.693s
sys     0m0.045s
  
# time firefox
  
real    0m3.867s
user    0m0.659s
sys     0m0.068s

 # time firefox
  
real    0m3.902s
user    0m0.719s
sys     0m0.041s

For my filesystem:


# hdparm -Tt  /dev/nvme0n1p5 

/dev/nvme0n1p5: 
 Timing cached reads:   21536 MB in  1.99 seconds = 10838.34 MB/sec 
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1182 MB in  3.00 seconds = 393.66 MB/sec
#4

The cached read performance is similar, but the buffered reads are a factor 3 slower.

I am not sure you executed the test the same way I did, I left one Firefox instance open and timed to opening of the second one. That makes that a lot of things don’t have to be loaded.

As other browsers are faster, I would try to de-install Firefox and re-install again, that might defrag things.

#5

Thanks. My numbers above were comparable in approach, 1 window open, then a series of additional instances launched and timed via command prompt.

I did just remove and then reinstall FF, system restart, and no improvement. A first instance of FF takes 6-8 seconds to launch to a blank page via GUI/desktop, subsequent instances are 2-4 seconds via ‘time firefox’ at the command line.

If anyone has other ideas or wants to dump their FF startup numbers here for comparison, please do.

#6

I can’t help much but this seems like a good place to start my first post in this forum.


leekz@oS-X556UR:~> time firefox

real    0m0.196s
user    0m0.055s
sys    0m0.027s
leekz@oS-X556UR:~> time firefox

real    0m0.225s
user    0m0.094s
sys    0m0.044s
leekz@oS-X556UR:~> time firefox

real    0m0.269s
user    0m0.076s
sys    0m0.038s



leekz@oS-X556UR:~> sudo hdparm -Tt  /dev/sdb6
[sudo] password for root: 

/dev/sdb6:
 Timing cached reads:   17902 MB in  1.99 seconds = 8999.24 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1438 MB in  3.00 seconds = 479.22 MB/sec

Using Asus X556UR (worse specs than OP) with add-on SSD and using Xfce.
I did noticed somehow it starts up slower when having slow internet connection. There are issues complained everywhere on FF89, I guess OP can just wait for the next update to see if it solves the issue…

#7

Do you want to good deep? If so, I see two directions:

  1. Find out why your NVME is a factor 3 slower than mine. Mine is a Crucial P1, 1 TB SSD, CT1000P1SSD8 in a PCI Express x4 slot (PCIEX4)
  2. Profile the startup, see CPU Profiling Tools on Linux.

If you need any reference data for 2), let me know what you did run and I can run the same and provide you with the output.