Why is Firefox such a beast??

Beartooth Beartooth at swva.net
Wed Sep 24 15:03:44 UTC 2008


	I'm running Firefox under F8 and F9 on five different machines, 
and it's a pain on every one of them, albeit in slightly different ways; 
but the differences differ, too. 

	The first thing they have in common is that it takes forever to 
launch -- when it does launch. The second is that it mostly doesn't. It 
will try, and the little blue dots will circle for a while, and the 
window list on the panel will show a mark for it -- for a while. 
Sometimes one or another window will flash up and disappear, usually too 
fast even to identify.

	Then it will either all go away, or I'll get a lasting window 
telling me it's already running but not responding. Sometimes after that 
Firefox will actually launch, sometimes not.

	If not, sometimes clicking the launcher again will bring it up; 
sometimes it comes up double, or even with two different sessions -- and 
shutting either will usually shut both. Other times it helps to do ps ax|
grep firefox, find one or several pids with question marks, kill them, 
and start over.

	It is consistently worse on some machines than others -- but not, 
afaict, on F8 more than F9 or vice versa, nor with Ffx 2 more or less 
than the other.

	I try to keep it as nearly standardized as I can. The best way is 
to add FEBE to any new install of Firefox, and then copy in a FEBE folder 
by scp or sneakermail, and run a restore. 

	But I have one machine (a Dell Poweredge SC 1420, formerly the 
server for a private list, and not yet fully wiped) which refuses 
adamantly to read media or to do scp; so there are hardly any extensions 
on its Ffx -- and it works better.

	Are there extensions that Fedora will allow but not get along 
with, or that don't get along with Fedora? Do I have too many? (The 
latest FEBE restore tab listed 79 items.) Or what?

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Fedora 8 & 9; Alpine 1.10, Pan 0.132; Privoxy 3.0.6;
Dillo 0.8.6, Galeon 2, Epiphany 2, Opera 9, Firefox 2 & 3
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.




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