25 replies to this topic

[H.O.D]

I've been using firefox on Ubuntu for a while now and my biggest problem with it is that it takes a lot of time to start, especially when I use a lot of bookmarks in the bookmark toolbar. There were times when it took almost 20 seconds to start! After starting of course, there have been very less or no problems, but this made me start searching for a better browser for ubuntu. Then I found out that chrome was available for Linux! I wasn't expecting that and anyway downloaded chrome. It gave much better starting times but there were some features that made me miss Firefox.

So this made me continue my search.....can anyone recommend the for using in Ubuntu?

[rob86]

How many extensions do you have loaded on Firefox? I found that at one point I had 100 or so, and Firefox took a long time to load. I disabled them all and only enabled what I really need and now it loads in 1-2 seconds on an old computer.

[truefusion]

I don't know which browser is better, or which one can contain the most features while keeping a small footprint or loads up quickly, but i don't let that bother me. Yeah, the browsers take a while to load up the first time (on my system could be from 2 to 5 seconds—depending on the browser), but due to the fact that once you open up a program in Linux, closing it and re-opening becomes almost instant. If it is not almost instant, then i would have to question what program we are talking about and your system specifications. Firefox for me on its first-time load takes about 5 seconds. Chrome takes about 3. I'm typing this message in Opera, so i can't really tell you Opera's first-time load time right now. But after closing Firefox and Chrome, opening up them up again takes no more than a second. I should mention, though, i don't use that many extensions in Firefox (i currently only have 9—if that can be called not much).

[H.O.D]

I don't have any extensions for firefox right now - just 12 bookmarks on the toolbar. And yes only the first-time load takes a lot of time. After that if there is a need to restart the browser it occurs instantly. So I hope there's no system problem, and it's just a problem with the browser. I just need to figure out what that problem is that's all. I tried to install Opera also but it was taking much more time than firefox or chrome i don't know why that happened so for now I think I will stick to these two browsers only. Just need to find out why firefox needs such a long time to open, even if i have those many bookmarks. does anyone know if the problem will be solved if I move the bookmarks from the toolbar into the menu?

[jlhaslip]

Firefox was updated for me today to FF 3.5.7 but I didn't have this issue.
Do a System Update to see if 3.5.7 works better for you.

[onkarnath2001]

H.O.D, on Jan 8 2010, 07:09 PM, said:

I've been using firefox on Ubuntu for a while now and my biggest problem with it is that it takes a lot of time to start, especially when I use a lot of bookmarks in the bookmark toolbar. There were times when it took almost 20 seconds to start! After starting of course, there have been very less or no problems, but this made me start searching for a better browser for ubuntu. Then I found out that chrome was available for Linux! I wasn't expecting that and anyway downloaded chrome. It gave much better starting times but there were some features that made me miss Firefox.

So this made me continue my search.....can anyone recommend the for using in Ubuntu?

in my opinion,,its nothing other than firefox.it is a robust browser as well as an open source.since linux itself is an open source operating system and since linux is well known for its speed ,,so i think firefox must be used with ubuntu linux because it also provides a good speed and very rarely crashes.other option is opera or safari but firefox is better in many senses.like regular updates,so many addons, greater and better speed.good browsing data handling capacity,integrating so many other web related tools in its own and provides so many facilities that others do not..it also provides appearance setting what other browsers do not.and i never found it taking so much of time for starting.

[H.O.D]

Quote

in my opinion,,its nothing other than firefox.it is a robust browser as well as an open source.since linux itself is an open source operating system and since linux is well known for its speed ,,so i think firefox must be used with ubuntu linux because it also provides a good speed and very rarely crashes.other option is opera or safari but firefox is better in many senses.like regular updates,so many addons, greater and better speed.good browsing data handling capacity,integrating so many other web related tools in its own and provides so many facilities that others do not..it also provides appearance setting what other browsers do not.and i never found it taking so much of time for starting.

well my system is a bit ancient and I think that's one of the main reasons I'm experiencing this problem. some of my friends use ubuntu too and they have never faced this problem till now, and they all have higher speed systems.so im thinking this is only the main reason for this slowness. maybe an upgrade will solve the problem once and for all. but it's just a little too costly to upgrade RAM isn't it?

[jlhaslip]

Adding RAM is probably the cheapest way to improve your system's functioning.

I bought 2 - 1 Gig cards for my laptop on a special deal at Newegg for $15.00USD and had them mailed to me by a friend in the states. Locally, in Canada, they wanted around $125CDN for a 1 gig card.
Look at Newegg and/or Tiger Direct. They have special deals happening all the time.
Make sure the cards you buy meet all the specs for your machine. Check your RAM specs at crucial.com and your computer manufacturer's site.

What do you have for a RAM card now?

[knoppixusr]

H.O.D, on Jan 9 2010, 08:42 AM, said:

well my system is a bit ancient and I think that's one of the main reasons I'm experiencing this problem. some of my friends use ubuntu too and they have never faced this problem till now, and they all have higher speed systems.so im thinking this is only the main reason for this slowness. maybe an upgrade will solve the problem once and for all. but it's just a little too costly to upgrade RAM isn't it?

Perhaps you should try a distribution that is a little faster than ubuntu. I can recommend PC-linux OS 2009 for ease of use or Knoppix 6.2.
One word of warning about pc linux. I noticed the synaptic package manger doesn't support proxy authentication by default so it might be a problem behind a work firewall. Knoppix also uses synaptic but has an authentication button where pclinux doesn't.

Knoppix uses Iceweasle which is the debian modified version of Firefox but to me it is exactly the same as Firefox, all the same plug ins and extensions works for it. I have not noticed any difference in speed between Iceweasle and Firefox. I did read somewhere the reason it was created was because Firefox was not free enough for Debian and Debain's number one rule is that all the software has to be 100% free. source

[ragav.bpl]

Surely firefox is the only web-browser i would recommand you.

[Zagubadu·]

Yea the laptop my school gave all the students has linux on it and I'm very disappointed in it. I click on firefox and man does it take a while to open if I have like three tabs open from the last time I used it. But then again it could just be because they are crappy. Its an Asus Nebook.

[Quatrux]

If you want speed on Linux Ubuntu, try Opera web browser on your machine and you'll see how fast it works, somehow it seems that gecko doesn't like Linux?

Hmm, I just googled, and it seems that there are a lot of content about how Firefox is slow on Linux? So I really recommend to try Opera and see the difference, even though you'll need to get used to it if moving from Firefox.

More about it on www.opera.com

[shadowx]

IMHO google chrome is the most stripped down browser of them all and because of that it is lighter and faster to open up. However it suffers from a huge lack of features.

The problem you are having is most likely due to poor system specs. How much ram have you got in the machine and do you know its processor speed?

My laptop dual boots with Ubuntu and winxp and i have never had an issue with firefox loading on ubuntu. It has 1gb RAM and something like 2.4ghz CPU, if that. It's not amazing by any standards but linux runs smooth as anything, except when im editing my large picture files which can really bog it down to the point of hanging GIMP and the default image viewer. It's really not cut out for multimedia but then the system is fairly low spec for image editing on that scale anyway.

RAM is dirt cheap these days, even a 512mb card will give you a boost but get a single 1gb card and you will really notice the difference.

[jackbency]

According to me, its nothing other than firefox. it is a robust browser as well as an open source.since Linux itself is an open source operating system and since Linux is well known for its speed so, I think firefox must be used with ubuntu Linux because it also provides a good speed and very rarely crashes. Other option is opera or safari but firefox is better in many senses.

[Vistz]

I personally use Google Chrome. One of the main problems I had with Firefox was that when I first turned on my computer, Firefox took ages to load. Chrome was generally the faster. Also, I prefer the Chrome UI.

[Quatrux]

To add, maybe it also depend which GUI environment you're using with Ubuntu? or Kubuntu? on KDE it's much better to use Konqueror or Opera, maybe even Google Chrome? on GTK it could be better to use Firefox, but if it's slow, when I guess Google Chrome which is available for Linux for some time now!

Why not just try out different browsers, run speed tests on them on your system and use the one which satisfies you most.

I prefer Opera nor it's Windows nor it's Linux, but I use OpenSUSE with KDE.

[mahesh2k]

Avant browser is not mentioned at all. It is small browser and it is without any plugins and other load that most popular browsers carry. So this could be one good choice if anyone is really interested in stripped down version of modern browsers. It is fast as well. I don't know which browser engine it shares, perhaps same like mozilla.

[truefusion]

mahesh2k, on 26 October 2010 - 05:59 PM, said:

Avant browser is not mentioned at all. It is small browser and it is without any plugins and other load that most popular browsers carry. So this could be one good choice if anyone is really interested in stripped down version of modern browsers. It is fast as well. I don't know which browser engine it shares, perhaps same like mozilla.

Avant browser is based on the Trident engine, the engine that Internet Explorer uses; good luck trying to get it to run on Linux. People have trouble running Internet Explorer through Wine, i can only expect the same trouble with Avant.

[mahesh2k]

truefusion, on 27 October 2010 - 01:01 AM, said:

Avant browser is based on the Trident engine, the engine that Internet Explorer uses; good luck trying to get it to run on Linux. People have trouble running Internet Explorer through Wine, i can only expect the same trouble with Avant.

Ubuntu's old shipit CD's had this browser running for windows users. It used to load when CD autoruns on windows. Not sure how it worked under ubuntu or even worked at all. It doesn't look like IE like to me. But then again as you say it's having trouble under linux so i guess there is no point in it.

[Iniyila]

i usually use the browser which comes with specific distribution (like Konqueror in kde based and Epiphany/firefox in gnome based) but sometimes i think opera is just better than others i've installed this browser on every distribution that i have and i think it's faster in loading pages and it's faster in first startup. but it lacks of extensions (which makes firefox more flexible than other browsers)& So i'm using a combination for my works.

[q9c9p]

Pardon me for reviving such a old topic, if you are on ubuntu try out "Midori" web browser, is based on WebKit.
If you do web development you can also get Internet Exploder 6 to run with wine for testing websites you might be working on.

Ciao
q9c9p

[Vistz]

q9c9p, on 18 January 2011 - 10:06 AM, said:

Pardon me for reviving such a old topic, if you are on ubuntu try out "Midori" web browser, is based on WebKit.
If you do web development you can also get Internet Exploder 6 to run with wine for testing websites you might be working on.

Ciao
q9c9p

I've been experimenting with different browsers and I've come to enjoy Arora and SeaMonkey as well. I noticed that Google Chrome leaks memory like anything and Firefox is starting to get clunky. Arora and SeaMonkey are both simple and lightweight.

[danielhep]

I'm using Google Chrome on Windows right now, and I use the same on Ubuntu. Google Chrome is fast, efficient, and safe. I once did a full on, isolated browser test (I reinstalled the operating system image every time I tested a browser), and Google Chrome came out on top. Not only is it fast, it's also open source and expandable. It has a huge extensions gallery where you can add on to the browser as much as you want. It also has artist-made and Google-made themes for you to use which are also all free. A newer added feature is Apps, which let you open a new tab and have a bunch of web-apps that you can choose from. It's like Google Chrome OS in an application! It also scores 100/100 on the Acid3 test.

As a web developer and application developer, I suggest you use Google Chrome.

Edited by danielhep, 14 July 2011 - 02:34 AM.

[soniat]

sure its chrome..............but am sing the firfox for easy and variety of add-ons...