lucid and firefox hangs

[Ed W.]

Have OS 10.04.3 LTS and Firefox 3.6.24 and the browser hangs once or twice and hour. Rebooting will bring me back to the same website and unfreeze the browser. Nothing else I've tried seems to unfreeze it. Created xkill shorcut and it didn't solve the issue. Neither did trying Ctrl + Alt + F1 or Ctrl + Alt + F2. I really don't have a clue. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Couldn't find this using the search function either.
Thanks for any help.

[BC59]

Try installing a newer Firefox version


gksu add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable

gksu apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

[mikodo]

Try installing a newer Firefox version


gksu add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
gksu apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Why do you use gksu apt-get update, and then sudo apt-get upgrade?

I always have been shown to use


sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Basically, does it not matter which one uses?

[2F4U]

My understanding is that gksu is for GUI programs started out of a terminal. For terminal applications, just using sudo is perfectly fine.

[BC59]

According to Ubuntu documentation:

You should never use normal sudo to start graphical applications as Root. You should use gksudo (kdesudo on Kubuntu) to run such programs. gksudo sets HOME=~root, and copies .Xauthority to a tmp directory. This prevents files in your home directory becoming owned by Root. (AFAICT, this is all that's special about the environment of the started process with gksudo vs. sudo).

[Ed W.]

Thanks BC59, that seems to have solved my problem. Thank you very much. It's very nice of you to take the time to help out the noobs. Without people like you the world would be a much harder place.

[Zill]

Thanks BC59, that seems to have solved my problem...
I am pleased that you have now "solved the problem". However, I am concerned that, by simply upgrading Firefox, the original problem seems to have gone away.

Some problems with Firefox (and possibly other browsers) may be caused by user-installed add-ons or extensions. These can cause very strange symptoms, including freezing or crashing the browser. If your problems re-occur, I suggest the first thing to do is to disable all the add-ons/extensions and see if things improve. If so then just gradually re-enable them one-by-one to establish the guilty party!

See Firefox Help (http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox%20hangs) for more details.

Regarding Firefox 3.6.24 this remains the "default" version for Ubuntu Lucid 10.04.3 LTS. As I use a similar configuration myself on a daily basis I can confirm that I have had no problems at all with Firefox 3.6.24.

[Zill]

According to Ubuntu documentation:
"You should never use normal sudo to start graphical applications as Root. You should use gksudo (kdesudo on Kubuntu) to run such programs..."
Apt (and associated commands) is a terminal (CLI) application and, as such should be prefixed with sudo, not gksudo or gksu.

Of course, if a GUI package manager, such as Synaptic, is used then this should be started with the gksudo prefix.