Firefox is Zapping my Happy Linux Buzz
But it has some quirks that some days make me want to slap Firefox silly, like when it crashes and there are multiple Firefox windows open, all of them vanish. This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder if Firefox isn't just a little too Windows-happy.
Konqueror, like any good Linux application, behaves differently. When I have multiple Konqueror windows open and one of them crashes it doesn't take the rest of them down. With Firefox it's all or nothing. The newest Firefox update on my main PC is so unstable it's crashing and disappearing several times a day, and I'm having flashbacks to Windows.
I've been thoroughly spoiled by my various Linux PCs: I can open and close applications all day long, and surf the Web, and check email, and run various system and network administration commands, and install or remove apps, and run remote graphical desktops via VNC, and open NFS and Samba shares, and do all of this whenever I feel like it, and nothing bad happens. Unlike Windows which must be babied along, you can't have too many apps open, and you certainly don't open and close things all over the place without suffering the consequences. So when Firefox behaves like a frail Windows application it stands out like the weakling at a body-building convention.
Another amusing Firefox quirk is inconsistent Ctrl+T behavior. This is supposed to open a new tab. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
The Location Bar History has gone insane. On normal browsers you click the little arrow to see a drop-down menu of the most recent pages you have visited, in order. I love this. But Firefox horked it and now it shows old pages I haven't visited in ages, and recent entries are nowhere.
The Google toolbar does not automatically clear seaches. What the heck is that about? I just love having extra work because Firefox thinks I need it. Konqueror on Debian automatically clears entries in the Google bar, and if I want to repeat a search there is a nice dropdown menu with recent searches.
People rave about how great having huge thundering herds of plugins to use is such a wonderful thing, and it is. But there is no easy way to tell which ones are FOSS and which ones are proprietary, and I do get tired of wading through mass pages to try to figure that out.
Another thing that troubles me about Firefox extensions is they bypass your distribution's package manager. One of the great strengths of Linux is having trusted software repositories. We can install whatever we want and not have to worry that's it's some nasty piece of malware. I have cron jobs that run updaters every day. No worries, this isn't Windows where updates break your system as often as they fix it. But Firefox extensions operate far outside of this safety net, just like Windows applications. This is extra-scary in this shiny new era of Web threats and Web browsers being the dominant security worries.
Probably the next update will fix the instability. After all, the infamous Firefox memory leak is mostly fixed, though not completely, even though the devs were bothered by us silly users calling it a memory leak when they said it really wasn't, but something else that behaved like a memory leak, and how were they supposed to fix something when we weren't even right about defining the problem? Or it was a feature, depending on who was doing the explaining.
About the Firefox "memory leak"
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_%28Firefox%29 only mentions Windows users.
Calling a bug a feature is rather Windows-ish, is it not? At any rate the Web is a better place thanks to Firefox, and for that I give thanks.
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The crashing problem is caused by the Adobe flash plugin. Install AdBlockPlus and you will reduce crashes by 99%.
Carla, I'm glad you wrote this entry because I've been feeling the Firefox pain in Linux (AND Windows) recently.
Now Firefox is no IE. Not that painful by a longshot. But on both platforms I'm having FF problems. Performance certainly degrades when running the same FF session all day.
FF's saving grace is the speed of its Javascript engine, and we all know that the Web these days is basically a delivery mechanism for Javascript.
But otherwise, in Windows I'm using the new Opera 10 (free but not FOSS, unfortunately) which is super, super fast on my 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB RAM.
I'm not as crazy about Opera 10 in Linux. The fonts are horrible, I can feel the Javascript running slower, and it doesn't handle all of my "frequently visited" Web-application pages as well as FF.
I know there are a bunch of FF derivatives out there that are built for speed. I wonder if any are stable enough to actually use.
Another thing, Carla ... when is your audio book coming out. I need it!
I was having the same problems with FF 3.5.2. The disappearing act is a hard one to handle. I have upgraded to 3.5.3 and as of yet no disappearing act for FF. Maybe they corrected it?
@Steven
Hmmm, I have the opposite experience: I find Opera is faster in both page loading and javascript execution and I like its fonts better than Firefox's fonts. Seems a lot is system dependent...
Ctrl+T works every time if Firefox is active. But if Flash movies are running and the focus is on them, then they might want Ctrl+T so they will capture. Just click on Firefox (not the page) to make it work again.
I've been running Firefox on Ubuntu for ages, keeping it up to the latest version, and I've almost never seen it crash nor have I had any ctrl-t troubles. Add-on problem, maybe?
What I find interesting about people criticizing Firefox is that the post always go " "I" am having this problem and "I" are seeing this bug and "I" can't stand Firefox therefore must be Firefox fault".
Meanwhile, lots and lots of people are NOT having the same problems, which seems to indicate that the problem resides not in FF but in the particular configuration of the person having the problem.
I have been using FF exclusively for the last 5 years or more, in a large variety of systems using Windows XP, PCLinuxOS, and even other Linux distros. Yes, from time to time I see crashes; yes, from time to time Firefox just freezes and I have to kill it; and in truth I have seen these more often in Linux than in Windows.
But that happens more seldom than not, so I can live with it.
I have also installed FF in numerous customers' PCs, and nobody has ever reported me significant problems with FF. The few time a customer has reported me a problem, it's usually caused by viruses, malware or just user's fault.
I agree with Carla that the fact that when FF crashes it takes all instances down is a failure; I agree that the location bar history is not really useful.
I'm not saying that Firefox is perfect and there are no bugs; that would be ridiculous. There are several bugs and some have surfaced in the latest versions.
But what I'm saying is that before blaming Firefox and accusing it of being buggy or flawed, check if the problems are not coming from somewhere else - addons, missing updates, even hardware.
Cheers.
well the combination testing karmic + firefox + uxa = the devil yesterday firefox crashed my computer even the sysrq keys didn't work. today update everything and firefox to 3.5.3 and i don't know why all is amazingly slow
"Konqueror, like any good Linux application, behaves differently. When I have multiple Konqueror windows open and one of them crashes it doesn't take the rest of them down. With Firefox it's all or nothing. The newest Firefox update on my main PC is so unstable it's crashing and disappearing several times a day, and I'm having flashbacks to Windows."
That's just because your 'multiple windows' are actually implemented entirely differently. For Konqueror, each window is an entirely separate Konqueror process. That's more robust (as you noticed) but uses up a lot more memory. For Firefox, each separate window is just another window owned by a single Firefox process, not a new Firefox process. So if Firefox crashes, of course all the windows die, because they're all one application.
I don't find Firefox crashes much of a problem any more, because it's got very good at recovering itself, even to the extent of restoring what you'd typed if you were in the middle of typing a comment or blog post or something when it crashed. But as Nick says, a lot of crashes seem to be caused by Flash. As he says, you can set Adblock to block all Flash unless you specifically allow it (or use a different extension which can do this, there are several), or you can use nspluginwrapper. This is/was usually used to let 32-bit plugins work on 64-bit Firefox, but it has another advantage - if you run a plugin through nspluginwrapper, and there's a crash in that plugin, it doesn't knock Firefox entirely on its ass. So if Flash goes titsup when you're using nspluginwrapper, Firefox keeps running. Neat.
It's pretty much the same here in OSXLand - it's slow, buggy, and generally painful. I finally switched to Safari. On Windows, IE8 isn't as bad as it's past generations - in fact, I've liked it better than the latest Firefox!
I notice a big gain in performance with NoScript running. I rarely ever have any crashes. Actually I don't remember the last time it crashed.
Firefox crashes? When. I have yet to witness a single firefox crash since version 1. Firefox is the single most powerful 'internet' browser available. Nothing else even comes close enough for FF to view in the rear view mirror.
Konq?? Like using a Space Shuttle to drive across the street. Way too much stuff you dont need. And then 1/2 of the websites arent correct anyway.
Chrome? Does not render websites correctly at ALL. Horrible interface.
IE7/8?? Seriously anyone who actually likes IE 7 or 8 should have their computers repo'd.
And you need a program like BleachBit to vacuum Firefox's SQLite 3 databases. Vacuuming is basically defragmentation which speeds things up (especially performance of the Awesomebar, which I love) and reduces the size of the files.
Personally, I liked firefox, and used it extensively, but around 3.0, it started to feel less like a tiger and more like a hippo. I still use it occasionally, but I'm almost done switching to Chrome/Chromium. If only there was a replacement for Firebug on Chromium, I wouldn't even keep Firefox around.
You like IE8 better than Firefox? What is this world coming to?
Nicely put, Carla. I've been suppressing similar irritations for a long time, culminating earlier this week in my abandoning Firefox for Opera. So far I'm impressed, and I may well stick with it.
Firefox's Linux failings apart, it has to be added that Mozilla's attitude towards Thunderbird hasn't done much to cultivate a loyal following.
I have switched to using Rekonq almost exclusively, with a few fallbacks to FF whenever absolutely needed (less and less as Rekonq matures) on my OpenSuse machine.
For some reason I was never that happy about Konqueror that tried to be everything and I like the division of responsibility between Dolphin and Rekonq better.
Hopefully Rekonq gets the V8 engine integrated into its Webkit JS soon and then we have a well-integrated KDE browser with chrome-speed and abilities!
I sometimes read comments by people saying that firefox is (sometimes) unstable. I haven't really experienced many Firefox crashs, neither under Windows, nor Linux. Perhaps it is more likely to crash on a Windows system that has an instability for whatever reason.
I agree that Firefox is a bit of a mess, just like Thunderbird. There are things that annoy me, but when you search Bugzilla you'll find dev comments that it'd be very hard to change the old codebase to fix it.
OTOH, I got so used to it and installed a few extensions that are quite important to me that it makes it hard to move away. Recently I installed opera again which is a nice browser. But it is a bit like using the then outstanding AWeb browser on my Amiga in the 90ies: all great until you want to use a plugin which required Netscape on a non Amiga. With opera it is a few extensions I have come to like a lot which prevent me from migrating.
I also don't mind extensions not being managed by the package manager. Although it can be done. Some extensions are available as debian packages. But I don't like that. In fact I am running Firefox as downloaded from Mozilla now. It can be nicely integrated into Debian and will autoupdate as soon as one is available from Mozilla. IMHO a browser shouldn't be deeply integrated into an OS. Debian already has the infrastructure that would allow it to create a package that makes it very easy for the novice to run any third-party webbrowser downloaded as a non deb package. Download e.g. firefox, unpack it and call this 'integration package' from the menu to tell it the path (or allow it to download it for you, if 'path' is too difficult for the user) of the installation. The package will then make a few calls to 'update-alternatives' and done.
The browser is like an OS in itself, very cental and important. Yet for that reason it should be the user who selects which browser is used. And if the OS breaks because it didn't expect quite that one then the OS is broken. Hence in this specific case I disagree with the Debian philosophy that they want no changes in a stable OS in order to keep it stable. The browser is not part of an OS in no possible way.
I have a great run with Firefox in Linux. I am looking forward to some much needed improvements like having each tab as a separate process so one tab doesn't bring the browser down. It needs work memory usage reduction too because it has become quite a monster.
Chrome will be interesting to try on Linux when it is finally usable. I am not sure I could change though because I use a number of extensions that I can't live without.
I used to love Opera ages ago when I used Windows - but it crashed so often and just wouldn't work with websites like online banking. Then they introduced the (useless) widgets thing...but they were so weak they just couldn't compare to FF (which explains why stupid analogue clock widgets are the majority of what is available).
Ctrl+W (on focus) often does not work.
I have been running Kubuntu 9.04 for a while and recently 9.10 Alpha*, I don't recall when the last time FF crashed on any of my 4 computers. I mainly use the packaged version. Are you guys sure it is not some other software causing your problems?
FF being slow: are you sure it is not the Intel Driver issue?
Unhappy with FF: Are you sure MS has nothing to do with that? :-)
FireFox is the best browser ever, Period.
I have never really experienced a crash using FF; however must say that the constant 'hanging' sometimes makes me feel like jumping ship back to IE "cringe"
When opening up processor and/or memory intensive sites it just seems to want to take a minute, have a cup of coffee and then co-operate...
Hi.
A while ago I posted (a comment on LT) about a similar problem... I upgraded to 3.5.3, it warned about my version 9 Flash, I then tried to upgrade to 10 (for sec reasons).
Voilà! It began to freeze every 2 to 5 minutes ("not responding" on Windows). Since we have a proxy + some gizmo for virus detection, I can only suppose Flash 10 tried to phone home, could not and then FF decided to wait like, er, forever.
I disabled many things, reenabled them and found out it was really Flash. Today, after removing Flash 10, I found 2008's version 9 in my PC -- lo! I'm a happy FF user again.
Of course, it's not safe, and I'll gladly update again if someone could kindly let me know what is happening with Adobe Flash. Then again, it might be some problem on my side. Alas, I don't have any control about it... 8-/