Why is Firefox such a beast??
Craig White
craigwhite at azapple.com
Wed Sep 24 16:14:10 UTC 2008
On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 15:03 +0000, Beartooth wrote:
> 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.
----
slow startup is because Firefox looks at all installed extensions to
determine whether an update is available and then Firefox looks to see
if a newer version of Firefox is available. The more extensions, the
longer the startup delay. You can configure this...
Firefox => Edit (menu) => Preferences => Advanced (tab) => Update (tab)
----
> 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.
----
Firefox creates a 'lock' file -
in .mozilla/firefox/$YOUR_SALTED_PROFILE/.parentlock which is intended
to prevent multiple launches.
Multiple launches often occur when double clicking to start from a
launcher rather than a single click or 4 clicks when a double click is
sufficient.
I run into this far too often because I sysadmin a network with a lot of
less skilled computer users. This should probably be improved because
the cure seems to be as bad as the problem.
----
> 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.
----
pardon my ignorance, what is FEBE ?
----
>
> 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?
----
I find all of the language extensions to be pointless for my usage but I
can't tell if it's because my system/profile has existed for quite some
time and has been upgraded from like FC-4, FC-5, etc.
Craig
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