Swiftfox, a faster Firefox

[pgmario]

How would you like a faster Firefox?
I just stumbled upon http://getswiftfox.com/ , offering "an optimized build of Mozilla Firefox for AMD and Intel processors including Athlon XP, Pentium4, Athlon 64, Celeron, Duron and Sempron."

There are builds of the most recent official release (2.0 at the moment) and even newer branch and trunk builds:

• Swiftfox 2.0 = Same version as the Firefox shipped with Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft" (but faster, of course). I recommend you download this version if you want a browser for everyday use.
• Swiftfox 2.0.0.1pre (Gecko 1.8 branch) = This is where all security patches go. It will be Swiftfox 2.0.x.
• Trunk = Will be Firefox/Swiftfox 3 (Your extensions won't work with this.)

The latter three builds are updated almost daily.
I have only tried the 2.0 build so far, and it does not only feel faster, the test at http://scragz.com/tech/mozilla/test-rendering-time proved that feeling to be correct.
Rory made an extensive speed test of all versions and compared them to Firefox and Epiphany. You can find his post here.

Overview

1. Installation
2. Enable all plugins
3. Starter on your desktop or taskbar
4. Localization
5. If your extensions don't work
6. Speed up things even more


1. Installation:
EDIT: There is a repository online now, so that you can always get the latest version of swiftfox automatically. Just add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list and do a

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install swiftfox

---OTHER/OLDER WAYS TO INSTALL SWIFTFOX---
You can download Ubuntu-debs from http://getswiftfox.com/ubuntu.htm. Just download the appropriate file for your processor, go to the directory where you downloaded it to and type

sudo dpkg -i swiftfox*ubuntu*.deb

Installation without a .deb:

1. Go to http://getswiftfox.com/ and download a build of your choice (e.g. Swiftfox 1.5.0.7)
2. Extract the downloaded tar.bz2-file into your home directory, giving you a "swiftfox" directory.
3. If you have any Firefox windows open, close them.
4. Go to the "swiftfox" directory in your home folder (with Nautilus or in a terminal or whatever you like) and start the file called "firefox" (surprise). Enjoy surfing faster!

To uninstall, just delete the "swiftfox" folder.

-------------------------------------------

Swiftfox automatically used my old preferences, bookmarks, etc.

2. Enable all plugins
To enable all plugins (flash, etc.) from your original Firefox installation do (make sure to enter that trailing dot):

cd /path/to/your/homefolder/swiftfox/plugins/
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/* .

As long as you have one Swiftfox window open, all calls from other applications (e.g. your e-mail client) to open a new Firefox window/tab will open it in Swiftfox.

3. Starter on your desktop or taskbar
If you have a starter on your desktop or taskbar for Firefox and want to make it start Swiftfox:

1. right-click on the starter icon
2. choose "properties"
3. change the command to

   /path/to/your/homefolder/swiftfox/swiftfox

4. Localization
For information on how to localizeSwiftfox, e.g. to change the menus to be in German, Swedish, or any other language, have a look at this thread.

5. If your extensions don't work
If you use one of the branch or trunk builds instead of that of the recent release (2.0), some of your extensions might not work.
To re-enable them after you have switched back to 2.0 go to Tools>Extensions, right-click on the disabled extensions and select "enable".
You could also create a new profile for testing purposes: In a terminal, change to the Swiftfox folder and launch the profile manager with the following command (make sure to enter that dot in front of the slash):

 ./firefox -ProfileManager

6. Speed up things even more
If you want to speed up things even more, you could install the Fasterfox extension. This works in both Swiftfox and the regular Firefox. I don't use prefetching, but the network tweaks it applies are excellent.

[GoA]

How much faster it was? I'm currently downloading it to test it out, first run on normal firefox: 5.5 second: 6.4 third: 6.7.

EDIT: Swiftfox

First: 2.5
Second 3.24
Third 3.39.

That's about two times faster. Holy*.

And in normal usage it's also a lot faster than Dappers default firefox. Thanks for the tip.

[pgmario]

I added information on how to enable plugins from an older Firefox installation.

[NoWhereMan]

cool man, if only it weren't locked, that would be cool in dapper... maybe as an option?

[Lord Illidan]

Nice.. Is there one optimized for Intel now?

[pgmario]

Originally Posted by NoWhereMan cool man, if only it weren't locked, that would be cool in dapper... maybe as an option?

What do you mean by "locked"? That no new packages are accepted into Dapper? That's not too much of a problem, you can also install it under Dapper following the exact same instructions above.

Originally Posted by Lord Illidan Nice.. Is there one optimized for Intel now?

Not from Swiftfox. But I would suggest taking a look at http://forums.mozillazine.org/. There are more optimized builds under "Third Party/Unofficial builds".

[NoWhereMan]

Originally Posted by pgmario What do you mean by "locked"? That no new packages are accepted into Dapper? That's not too much of a problem, you can also install it under Dapper following the exact same instructions above.

Sure, and so I did, I meant it would have been nice if it could come bundled with dapper

[pgmario]

Originally Posted by NoWhereMan Sure, and so I did, I meant it would have been nice if it could come bundled with dapper

That would be cool, but I have my doubts this is ever going to happen, since it's unofficial and the official Firefox is already included. I would like to be proven wrong, though.

[NoWhereMan]

Originally Posted by pgmario That would be cool, but I have my doubts this is ever going to happen, since it's unofficial and the official Firefox is already included. I would like to be proven wrong, though.

universe repo?

[mjwood0]

This really is great! My rendering times at the site provided went from around 6 seconds to under 3 seconds. Really does seem faster too.

Plus, all the plugins seem to work just fine. Truely a great improvement!

Thanks!