Arch Linux

ganja_guru

Member

Registered: 2005-02-14

Posts: 464

firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

i couldnt figure out a better place to put this topic, so here goes..

ive been using linux for a while now, and ripped thru several distro's...i prefer it hands down windows ...but there's one thing that bothers me...well...three actually..and its the same in all distro's ive tried

firefox, thunderbird and opera

for some reason, these apps seem faster in windows..no im NOT talking about the time taken to load pages or the net speed in general...what im talking about is the way the gui behaves compared to windows...(so please...no advice to enable "pipelining"
 

for example, in opera and firefox, the tabs feel like theyre stuck with glue or something ...switching between tabs is fast, BUT not *instant*, the way it is in windows ( and the way it should be)..opening a new window also has the same *glue* effect...

NOTE: opera is much better compared to fox

same sluggishness noted in thunderbird compared to windows...but here its with things like "compose" or "reply"...the window takes longer than it should to open...FAST...but not instant..not in the blink of an eye..

oh yeah...and loading times are mildly faster windows(maybe a second and a half)

my hardware:

athlon xp 2400
1 GB DDR RAM
geforce ti 4600
asus a7v266-x

P.S ive done every possible thing to tweak stuff, (hdparm,nvidia drivers, arch packs, custom builds, athlon-xp specific builds, arch packages, custom kernels..you name it). I even recompiled gtk2 with athlon-xp specific optimizations...and built my own firefox using abs...but still...the *experience* is somehow smoother in windows

please help! thanks...

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

it has to do with the xpcom crap firefox uses to render windows... it's a windowing toolkit made to be crossplatform... in order to improve it, you'd have to change the underlying xpcom stuff...

for me firfox is slow starting off, but once it's up it works fine... I rarely close the firefox window...

---

http://phraktured.net

ganja_guru

Member

Registered: 2005-02-14

Posts: 464

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

thanks for the reply...do you know how to change it? or any links pointing me to it? how is your firefox experience compared to windows..?

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

thanks for the reply...do you know how to change it? or any links pointing me to it? how is your firefox experience compared to windows..?

well, in order to change the xpcom stuff, you'd need a very good understanding of C programming and ability beyond the people at mozilla... xpcom is part of their code...

compared to windows, I see startup to be alot slower.... but other than that everything else is pretty fast... once it has the libraries loaded, it's not too bad, but then again, I do run it on a fairly fast maching (P4/HT 3.0GHz)

---

http://phraktured.net

ganja_guru

Member

Registered: 2005-02-14

Posts: 464

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

well, in order to change the xpcom stuff, you'd need a very good understanding of C programming and ability beyond the people at mozilla... xpcom is part of their code...

oh is that all there is to it?...ill get to it once i finish rewriting the kernel 

anyway...i guess ill stick with opera...its qt based and is much faster...i would stay with konqui , but it has a problem handling the mplayer-plugin..

cactus

Taco Eater

From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰

Registered: 2004-05-25

Posts: 4,622

Website

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

I have a problem with firefox slowness as well, but I only notice it when I have around 10 tabs are so open..even scrolling becomes arduous when another page is loading in a background tab, and you are trying to interact with a foreground tab.
*shrug*

I figure it is just an exercise in patience, so, of course, I use my little scroll wheel like mad until it starts to work, then my page hops around like nuts.

---

"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

ganja_guru

Member

Registered: 2005-02-14

Posts: 464

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

hmm..things arent so bad for me...and i probably wouldnt have really bothered about this..but its faster in winblows !! :evil:

jerem

Member

From: France

Registered: 2005-01-15

Posts: 310

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

The fact is that graphics in windows are directly handled by the kernel, so that is why it is generally faster. The windows environment is part of the windows core...

In linux there is, well, linux and X. These are 2 seperate applications that need to communicate and that is the glue effect.

Try out nitro/ck/cko patch for the kernel. These patches are specially meant for desktop users and greatly improve the responsiveness of your system when using apps like firefox and co.

cmp

Member

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 350

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

to fight the long startup time: try prelinking firefox

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

to fight the long startup time: try prelinking firefox

ack, never! prelinking provides something like a 2% performance gain...

what you want is precached firefox... though I have no clue how to do it...

---

http://phraktured.net

cmp

Member

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 350

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

for my system I felt a performance gain, but that could be the placebo effect.

kth5

Member

Registered: 2004-04-29

Posts: 657

Website

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

i dun see a reason only to compare firefox and opera here, there are many other browsers. epiphany, galeon (both using gecko as well) and not to mention the damn fast konqueror (if you like to have kde installed that is) which incarnates the powerful KHTML engine which even safari on osx uses. makes me sad to see how everyone only gathers around these two as if we were running windows where there are no other considerable choices.

---

I recognize that while theory and practice are, in theory, the same, they are, in practice, different. -Mark Mitchell

ganja_guru

Member

Registered: 2005-02-14

Posts: 464

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

prelinking = too much effort and is only goingto improve startup time, and not application responsiveness....

epiphany/galeon = kde user. so its pretty slow and ill end up installing a lot of dependencies.

konq = like  i said, doesnt handle video well(nspluginviewer or somethiung keeps crashing)

for precaching...there's mozillaqs for mozilla...im not sure if it can be configured for fox

Dusty

Schwag Merchant

From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2004-01-18

Posts: 5,986

Website

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

Try dillo... its fast, but substandard features compared to firefox.

Dusty

---

** Arch Linux Apparel and more ** Arch Linux stickers, laptop bags, jewelery ** I wrote a book on Python 3 ** and one on mental health **

ganja_guru

Member

Registered: 2005-02-14

Posts: 464

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

i guess were stuck with using multiple browsers for a while till something better arrives..

cmp

Member

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 350

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

@prelinken being too much effort: 'prelink -a' - and I only mentioned it, because someone was arguing that firefox had a long startup time.
for me firefox would be perfect, if there wouldn't be this gtk-focus-bug, but I'm too lazy to recompile it.

ganja_guru

Member

Registered: 2005-02-14

Posts: 464

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

gtk-focus-bug? how do u get rid of it while compiling?

cmp

Member

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 350

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

there is a focus bug in gtk2, but you could recomple firefox against gtk 1. at least this is stated at the ion website.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

I would try hdparm though... IIRC if you want to use it at boot you should put it after the part of rc.sysinit that handles filesystem checks (please correct me if I'm wrong). Then again, I doubt that would help much, if the apps are slow and unresponsive.

As for Konq... I think Kaffeine automatically installs a media plugin for Konqueror, so you might want to try that. Also, there's a config file (I forget what it is, I'll have to check) that you can turn of IPv6 in for KDE... That will speed up Konqueror a little, I think, if you haven't done it already.

Hmm... Are you using the GTK-QT theme engine for GTK2? Maybe that slows things down... It seemed to do that for me last time I tried KDE and a GTK app.

ganja_guru

Member

Registered: 2005-02-14

Posts: 464

Re: firefox,thunderbird,opera *sluggish* compared to windows

hparm stuff is in rc.local

yeah, im running kafeine now..its pretty decent for konqi

i have a KDE_NO_IPV6 in /home/.xinitrc

i realised that about the gtk-qt theme engine during previous installs...i just have a .gtkrc-2.0 file in my home folder

does anyone have a gtk1 compiled firefox? what are the compile time options to enable gtk1