Firefox Faster In Wine Than Native (was Re: Firefox Running Slow in Linux)

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Arthur Pemberton <pemboa at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have been using the Fedora provided builds since F7.

Mozilla's upstream linux builds are materially different that what we
ship. I believe the Mozilla builds build in some libraries statically
and maybe some other compile time differences like pango support.

What would be fruitful is doing a comparison for specific tasks
firefox tasks using different firefox builds. Mozilla windows build on
native windows.  Mozilla windows build under wine running in Fedora.
Mozilla linux build running in Fedora. Fedora linux build running in
Fedora with pango support turned off.   The Fedora Firefox version has
a several language packs installed by default. Does the Mozilla build
have those as by default as well? Could there be a rendering slow down
due to that? I don't know. Thats why I want you to test the Mozilla
builds running of Fedora.

If you are going to do it, try to formalize the methodology so that
you are doing the same tasks in the same order from the moment the
first firefox window appears.  Also to make sure there isn't some
screwing library caching going on. Do full reboots between tests to
ensure library caches are cleared.

> * switching between tabs
> * zooming (I mean _really_ slow)
> * loading new pages often blocks the entire browser
> * reloading often (again, I do web work)
> * even basic loading of pages (is slower than other machines on the
> same network)

> If there are spefic tests that one would like me to do, I'll be happy
> to do them. It just seems unhelpful for me to file a bugzilla issue
> that "firefox is slow".

I don't know how to do accurate computer based timing on any of these
firefox operations. But if you are talking about human perceptual
differences on the order of seconds, it might be enough to screencast
your scripted set of actions so people can see the time differences in
the context of your task sequence methodology.  If the biggest
differences are between windows and linux firefox builds that says its
something we can drive into Mozilla discussion. If the biggest
difference is between the Mozilla and Fedora builds, that's something
we'll have to bring to the attention of our maintainer.

-jef