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why is firefox dead slow in linux?


sallam
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I used the bandwidth test at http://www.pcpitstop.com/internet/bandwidth.asp to compare W2K/IE6 with Mandrake10.2/FF1.04. The download test was run 6 times on each box (same day, roughly same time of day, not simultaneous). The two boxes are sharing an ADSL connection.

 

Mandrake10.2/FF1.04

448

142

515

1201

729

628

avg=610

 

W2K/IE6

427

459

405

546

634

192

avg=444

 

all numbers have units of kilobits/sec

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I am using adsl and I find that webpage download speed is little different between them although on average I would have to say Firefox on Mandriva2005-LE is a trifle faster than Windows2000Pro.

But then again I have made the suggested speed changes to Firefox and they DO work.

So BVC, I too know you have excellent computer experience. so there must be something weird in there somewhere.

 

Cheers. John.

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what are these suggested speed changes please?

I appreciate any details or links. Many thanks.

Address Bar -> about:config

 

Filter: ->

network.dns.disableIPv6 -> true

network.http.pipelining -> true

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests -> 8

network.http.proxy.pipelining -> true

 

The one I know of.

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It should be noted that the bandwidth test is much more dependent on your OS/Connection. The browser used should make no difference whatsoever. It is dependent on the speed that it takes the packets to get from the server to your computer, not the time it takes the browser to render the contents.

 

iphitus

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As AI says and also adding the line.......nglayout.initialpaint.delay integer 0 (that is the number zero). This is done in Firefox.

 

And in /etc/modprobe.conf add the following line.....alias net-pf-10 off (Note the spaces and that is a figure ten) save the change. You need to do this from root and the easiest way to do this line addition is to open a console from within your account and type in .....kdesu konqueror and enter. It will ask for your root password. Enter it and it will open konqueror but this time with root access. just type ... / .... in the address bar and it will give you access to ... /etc ... as root. Click on ...... modprobe.conf to open it in kwrite and type in the additional line, then save it and close out. Sounds lengthy but is really very very simple and quick.

Edited by AussieJohn
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I have faster browsing in winxp but i then lose the stability, the nforce drivers are terrible and the network always disconnects, not to mention they limit tcp connections or something so when running torrents it would kill my connection. So although linux is slower it's a hell of a lot more stable and doesn't disconnect every 8 hours, when i use the opera browser it's a lot faster though.

 

This is exactly what I have. I just got through repartitioning my HD to give Linux all my spare room, because I can't sustain torrents for more than a couple hours on Windows before getting kicked-off by my router. Always wondered why...

 

To the on-topic issue, I find page-loading can be perfectly fast in Linux, though not much faster than Windows. Where I do see a difference is in the first few seconds of a download: On Windows, it usually starts at around 2x the normal rate (say about 220KBps for 1Mbps ADSL) but then drops to the normal rate (110kBps). On Linux, it starts and remains at the normal rate. I guess you can call that 'stability' too...?

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Excuse me, but you cannot have REAL 220 K/s on 1Mbps ADSL.

128K/sec is the theoretical maximum (simply divide 1024:8 and you have it!), and that is achievable only with traffic shaping algos.

Windows XP if not tweaked reserves some 15-20% of that bandwidth "for stability reasons", while Linux doesn't, but most of the times this difference is not directly noticeable. Touching the windows registry releases that reserved bandwidth, and the speeds on both OS'es are about similar. The only reason one could be faster than the other is ipv6 presence and problematic network interface drivers.

Edited by scarecrow
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Well, admittedly I had no particular reason to believe it was the REAL speed, just what I witness on my progress-bars. I initially thought perhaps it was an artifact of the download commencing in the background (while I'm still clicking-thru the download confirm dialog in Firefox) but if so, it still doesn't behave that way in Linux. I'd still like to know why...

 

And can you really say it's impossible? I know nought of what happens down at the telephone exchange, but hypothetically, perhaps it takes a moment to throttle-down the connection from what it CAN do (up to 4Mbps, maybe more) to what you've actually paid for. Doesn't seem so implausible to me, although why this delay wouldn't occur with a Linux client remains puzzling.

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The MozillaZine Forums has a lengthy discussion of tweaks you can make to your user.js to increase firefox/mozilla performance. Note that changing user.js and making changes via about:config give the same result. The use of the user.js is preferred by me because I save this file and reuse it when I reinstall/upgrade firefox.

 

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=53650

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nah, it's the actual os. There's even differences between distros. Debian has always been, by far, the slowest. Mandriva is about the 2nd fastest and fedora/rh is #1. I'm installing fedora4 over ubuntu because of it. Those that have most of their experience with mandriva won't notice as big a diff than if they used suse or debian. Deb is horrid and Slack is not great either. Gentoo was good but my experience there is very limited. The fact that reaction time varies between the diff distros proves it is the OS. Keep in mind I have used all these and much more on both boxes and both cable and dialup.....so, give it up.... it IS the OS :D

 

I think all this is very OT but a mod (arctic) disagrees. So again,

:offtopic:

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