Firefox 3.5 for Ubuntu - we're in for a treat!

[Mazza558]

Given that Firefox on Linux has always been unacceptably slow for most people (and one of the slowest pieces of software to ship with Ubuntu, other than OpenOffice) I thought I'd try the development version - Firefox 3.5.

Well, I can safely say that a lot of the irks people had before have gone. Switching tabs is now instant, scrolling is much improved, and, of course, pages load much quicker. I'd say it's on par with the Windows version (or will be when it's released).

[starcannon]

Thats great to hear, I've never had any of those issues myself. My firefox is fast, even with all the extensions that I use, same goes for Open Office. I've gone to the "firefox won't load this page correctly" examples when I see them. Mine always loads as quickly as my bandwidth will allow, and always scrolls smoothly, even on flash and java sites. Open Office takes a moment to start up, but once its up, its snappy and fine /shrug, I guess if these apps would read my mind they could go a bit faster.

[subdivision]

Firefox has never been slow for me.

Did you notice any difference in memory useage?

[Warpnow]

People make these claims about every version of firefox. So...no offense, but I'll wait and see.

Firefox is not slow on a new computer, but it is obviously a very heavy program when you run it side by side with other browsers on an older machine.

[Giant Speck]

Is there a repository for this?

Because I'm using


deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ppa/ubuntu jauntyAnd it's not updating at all. I'm stuck at 3.5b4pre.

[binbash]

Is there a repository for this?

Because I'm using


deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ppa/ubuntu jauntyAnd it's not updating at all. I'm stuck at 3.5b4pre.

http://www.ubuntu-inside.me/2009/05/daily-firefox-35-36-repository-for.html

[Happy_Man]

Not only that, the font rendering is massively improved. And when I say massively, believe me, it's a HUGE difference.

[Mazza558]

I have firefox 3.5 sitting at 82mb of memory with 4 tabs, and firefox 3.0 at 52 with just one. Draw your own conclusions from that, I guess.

[monsterstack]

Let's have some benchmarks!

Here are the scores for Firefox 3.0:
http://i717.photobucket.com/albums/ww177/stuffandstuffand/swiftfox.jpg

Here are the results for Shiretoko:

http://i717.photobucket.com/albums/ww177/stuffandstuffand/shiretoko.jpg

And for Swiftfox 3.5 too:

http://i717.photobucket.com/albums/ww177/stuffandstuffand/swiftfox35.jpg

Font rendering is so much better on the 3.5 series, too. Hurray for the Fox!

[Mazza558]

Not only that, the font rendering is massively improved. And when I say massively, believe me, it's a HUGE difference.

I already had perfect font rendering on 3.0 here.

[ghindo]

What is that benchmarking, exactly?

[OutOfReach]

Sitting at 157 MB with 20 tabs open (yes I'm using them all, I'm a busy person) very impressive. I was very happy, when I tried it out, that the scrolling had improved because, to me, that was one of the huge turn offs of Firefox. It is very stable too, it has crashed on me very rarely.

[monsterstack]

What is that benchmarking, exactly?

It's from the Peacekeeper (http://service.futuremark.com/peacekeeper/index.action) [futuremark.com] browser benchmark site. All tests were done on my computer. All tests also done with new processes before any shady memory leak happens, and without any other tabs open.

[Mazza558]

On acid3 it gets 93/100. Not bad by any means, though there's some catching up to do against webkit.

[Marlonsm]

Firefox has always worked well here.
The only issue I had was that the Firegestures extension was having some slowdowns, but it was solved when I upgraded to Jaunty.

But I'm still looking forward to 3.5!

[Mazza558]

Chromium (development version of Google Chrome) on my Ubuntu Laptop...

[DougieFresh4U]

So they are calling the 3.6 'Minefield'?

[monsterstack]

Chromium (development version of Google Chrome) on my Ubuntu Laptop...

Where might I get the latest version of Chromium? I want to give it a go. The version I have doesn't have options for navigating around shady web proxies.

[phrostbyte]

So they are calling the 3.6 'Minefield'?

Minefield is Mozilla's codename for any extremely early software release. It's basically the name they use before they come up with a codename.

[Mazza558]

Where might I get the latest version of Chromium? I want to give it a go. The version I have doesn't have options for navigating around shady web proxies.

There's a chromium PPA you can find by googling. Alternatively, get Ubuntu Tweak and enable it from there.

You can get Firefox 3.5 in the same way (Ubuntu Tweak).

[Giant Speck]

Well, after going through ten minutes of hell trying to get my extensions working correctly again, I have to say: nice!

[pwnst*r]

Not only that, the font rendering is massively improved. And when I say massively, believe me, it's a HUGE difference.

that's good to know, because on my new Kubuntu install fonts look like total crap compared to my windows box.

[MaxIBoy]

You guys ought to try the latest minefield build. The performance improvement is enough to make a strong man weep. Stylish and Flash stopped working, but Stylish isn't crucial, and Flash still works perfectly on Epiphany.

[MechaMechanism]

What is the expected release date for Firefox 3.5 Linux. Also I heard that Mozilla will now be releasing official 64 bit builds, is it true.

[zika]

Flash stopped workingwhen ... ? it works here (yesterday's nightly)

[dspari1]

Good. Because when Firefox in wine is running circles around the official Linux port, there's something wrong.

[Pasdar]

My system crashed yesterday trying to build it.

[monsterstack]

Good. Because when Firefox in wine is running circles around the official Linux port, there's something wrong.

Shurely shome mishtake? Winefox is slow and crappy on my system. As evidence somewhat in its benchmark results:
http://i717.photobucket.com/albums/ww177/stuffandstuffand/firefox-wine.jpg
http://i717.photobucket.com/albums/ww177/stuffandstuffand/swiftfox.jpg

[MaxIBoy]

when ... ? it works here (yesterday's nightly)I'll probably be able to just reinstall Flash to fix it. The package in apt got screwed up too, marked as reinstall-required. Minefield had something to do with it, because it broke right after I installed it.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Indeed, 3.5 has me honestly considering a (probably temporary) switch from epiphany-webkit! That's mainly because I discovered the awesome tree-style tabs extension which I immediately became convinced is the best way to use a web browser.
Now, if only I could set it as my default browser and still have deskbar willing to search bookmarks and history...

[clhsharky]

Firefox 3.5 is already in Jaunty repositories

[XubuRoxMySox]

I made my Firefox faster and much less memory hungry by changing two little settings.

In the URL box, send the browser to "about:config"

Then look for the setting called "browser.cache.memory.enable" and toggle it to 'false' (just double-click it).

Find "browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers" and set to '0'.

Helps alot on older hardware, speeds up Firefox on my Ubuntu machine!

-Robin

[cl333r]

It's true that Firefox 3.5 is faster than 3.0, but on my computer I have windows xp and Ubuntu, and the Firefox 3.5 from windows is considerably faster than the Ubuntu counterpart, so draw the conclusions folks.

[itreius]

It's true that Firefox 3.5 is faster than 3.0, but on my computer I have windows xp and Ubuntu, and the Firefox 3.5 from windows is considerably faster than the Ubuntu counterpart, so draw the conclusions folks.
Have to agree with this. The Win version feels snappier and scores much better in benchmarks.

[jespdj]

Well, I can safely say that a lot of the irks people had before have gone. Switching tabs is now instant, scrolling is much improved, and, of course, pages load much quicker. I'd say it's on par with the Windows version (or will be when it's released).
I've never seen any of the issues that you describe - Firefox 3.0 is not slow at all on any of the Ubuntu systems that I've used. Those problems must be because of your particular setup. Switching tabs is already instant on FF 3.0 and scrolling is also fast.

[Xbehave]

FF3 was ok here but ive been on 3.5 since the 2beta because its much snappier, the reason its faster on windows is PGO, but canonical seam unwilling to compile thier versions with PGO because upstream don't :S

[HavocXphere]

I've never seen any of the issues that you describe - Firefox 3.0 is not slow at all on any of the Ubuntu systems that I've used. Those problems must be because of your particular setup. Switching tabs is already instant on FF 3.0 and scrolling is also fast.
+1

I'm puzzled by the people reporting FF on ubuntu being slow. Certainly isn't the case here (9.04 x64) and start-up feels on par with FF on Vista, if not faster.:confused:

From my point of view the FF code is *capable* of running fast, so I reckon its got something to do with other people set-up.

Which site would one use to test FF performance?

[itreius]

FF3 was ok here but ive been on 3.5 since the 2beta because its much snappier, the reason its faster on windows is PGO, but canonical seam unwilling to compile thier versions with PGO because upstream don't :S
I already am using a PGO build on Ubuntu. :(