Journal zogger's Journal: Firefox 3.5.5 11
Really can't tell if it is just me and my hardware and connection, but Firefox 3.5.5 (ubuntu tweaked version) is just the biggest bucket of suck since..a long time ago, browser-wise. Freeking maddening. Even with no script and ad block plus, I keep getting this unable to actually finally load a page. It gets so far, you can *see* most of the page, then poof, that disappears to be replaced with a generic error page that says:
"The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading."
Ya but the blasted page was ALMOST all the way there, I could SEE the dang thing, ya sunnava...*&^%^^&*!11!!!! Just happened right now with a preview, had to "resend"....
Then if I get some tabs actually loaded to where that stupid *&&^% swirly thing in the tab button stops swirling around, and *dare* to have to allow some javascript to, ya know, actually be activated inside that site, whammo, freeze ville.
If I look at the command "top", with just half a dozen tabs, no flash running, just a few of them with the main domain whitelisted in noscript so they at least are half way functional, I get a widely fluctuating CPU of between 15% and 100%, with FF right up there using it along with Xorg, they swap who's eating the most, and RAM usage with FF at like almost 300 megs *just sitting there*, doing nothing, like right now,(this is a brand new fresh instance of FF running to get the most conservative usage stats) and it shoots up fast with every new tab, with just one window total open. WTF?
And at best, two-three times a day have to kill the thing when it freezes, if I forget to just quit and restart it, you can let it sit ten minutes and nothing happens, will not take any input, have to force-kill it. OK, I just watched it through one preview page load here, 39% CPU jump exactly, just to submit a web page form and reload this one tab. And I have scripting turned off here as well, using the slashdot older "low res" version in preferences. Dang scary to even contemplate if I tried to run any Flash pages or allow ads to try and load. Any Flash vids I want to see from yourboobtoob, I download/convert in the background, then watch them. My net connection is around 3-4 times better than dialup at the best, that's it. Not broadband, but not dialup either. (half price of having a landline and a dialup account, that's why I have it, save cash)
This has been one step forward and half a kilometer back over the earlier 3.0.x series or even the 2. series near as I can tell, and this has been across a few different distros now with 3.5.x. So it has been a "fresh clean install" a few times now, they are all similar in usage pattern.
Now, I want to be fair about this and conduct this little non scientific "where does this suckage really come from" survey, is it really firefox, are you guys seeing something like this too, or just me and my ancient 1.3 duron with 1.5 gigs of DDR,(I guess I am assuming this is still adequate to do casual web surfing with) or have webpages/websites just gotten so complex and bloated that the entire net is bogging down lately, or what?
running the blob (Score:1)
I run the blob for my nvidia card already, doesn't seem to make much of a difference really. I don't have any windows stuff so can't compare.
ya, I'll probably go and do some distro hopping soon, see if anything might work better, although I doubt it. You can get to x,y,z distro forums..same old stuff.
I blame fast release cycles and must have emphasis on desktop effects. Perpetual alpha maybe beta ware.
I would *much* rather pay a few bucks a year to a distro that emphasized quality over quantity of offered a
reliability (Score:2)
I'm running firefox 3.5.4 on Gentoo without problems. In general, Gentoo is usually easy to maintain, punctuated by occasional pain. All in all, it's about the most trouble-free Linux I've run. Another nice thing is that there are really no "versions" for the Big Update. Gentoo is all about the little update, and keeping the packages up-to-date. As mentioned, sometimes the little update is a pain in the neck, like when it's gcc or X, and this morning there was a little dancing between device-mapper, ud
Re:reliability/ not as important as new shiny... (Score:1)
...and wiggly desktop effects windows and so on it appears nowadays.
I went to that "gnome-look" page the other day after reading about the big controversy in gnome land..
I am seriously reminded what richard nixon said about his trip to bohemian grove....
I keep thinking about that, going to arch or gentoo, trying to find better performance and stability and sanity over eyecandy, along those lines, for the gradual update thing.
But I ain't got the guts nor the skill probably. I have *tried* to improve my linux
Re: (Score:2)
Incidentally, I'm not even running one of the fancy desktops, just a straight window manager for myself and xfce (the lightest of all the "full desktops") for my wife.
I started with a borrowed copy of RedHat 4.0, and bought RedHat 4.1 from CheapBytes, all the way through to RedHat 8. That was when they tricked me, though I noticed something a little odd that it was "RedHat 8", not "RedHat 8.0". In my experience, the "x.0" was pretty flakey, the "x.1" was readily usable, and "x.2" was downright sweet. Whe
Re: (Score:2)
Corrupted Profile. (Score:2)
It sounds to me like it is a corrupted profile. Firefox will hang if it's profile has gotten screwed up. Try using the profile manager to create a new profile and see if that loads properly.
2nd that (Score:1)
Could easily be corrupted profile, try
firefox --ProfileManager
to create a new profile
Or a dodgy extension that hasn't been updated for ff3.5
Mind you I remember ff being kind of sucky, one reason I stay on trunk, that kind of plugin crap happens - but normally doesn't last long. Good if you can put up with the updating.
You could try seamonkey - it is in the repos and is much better behaved in some ways
If it makes you feel any better... (Score:2)
My Linux box which has similar horsepower to yours was also starting to feel a bit sluggish. I don't think there was anything wrong with the OS or with the browser(s), but with the web content which grows ever more bloated with both flash(y) ads and even content that has way too much. I love Mozilla and root for their success. But with so many people now switching from IE (which still sucks too) reliability is more important than ever. I've been using Chrome more and more and found it to be faster, but
Bloat 2.0 (Score:1)
yes. I think it is narrowed down to if a few tabs don't finish loading and really are trying to do a lot of "somethings" because of web page bloat, it just taxes the system too much and it locks up then. I was reading about having tabs be their own process or something, that is supposed to help eventually, so that one tab screwing up doesn't effect another one or the whole browser.
I keep thinking they need to make web masters work with 15 inch monitors on dialup with pentium II machines and 128 megs RAM, ma
Re: (Score:2)
If I ran a business that was dependent on web access that's what I'd do.
Unfortunately there seems to be too many layers of management between the people that run some businesses and the people who put together web pages for them.
Of course that could be easily fixed.