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haxit

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From: /home/haxit

Registered: 2008-03-04

Posts: 1,247

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Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

Title says it all. If someone could explain this, it would be great. Also I would like to hear some tips on how to improve firefox's preformace. Thanks.

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jacko

Member

Registered: 2007-11-23

Posts: 840

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

they use different rendering engines... that might have something to do with it.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

If you're talking about rendering speed, there's not much to be done... Gecko is simply a slower rendering engine than Presto.

If you mean responsiveness, try putting 'export MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1' in your .bashrc (or in /etc/profile if you're using GDM). That should help a bit, though it won't make Firefox as responsive as an ordinary GTK app.

Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

Every time Firefox comes out with a new release, there are always all sorts of claims about how fast it is, and what an improvement has been realized with the newer versions, etc...
Overall, I don't think it is any faster than it ever was.

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Army

Member

Registered: 2007-12-07

Posts: 1,784

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

v3.1 will be faster, really! But it won't jump out of your display of course But I did a comparison, heavily used 3.0.5 some minutes and 3.1b2 some minutes afterwards and it really felt faster in everything. But yes, Opera is a good browser and it's really fast, but it's not for everyone (I really tried to get used to it, simply doesn't work for me ... been a long time, maybe I'll give it another try now )

fwojciec

Member

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,411

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

Also I would like to hear some tips on how to improve firefox's preformace. Thanks.

Compile with profiling enabled -- like firefox-spookyet package in AUR.  Use the MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO trick (it really makes a  difference).  I've no complaints about firefox performance -- all pages open instantaneously, the only "slow" thing is initial start, but each consecutive start is under a second so I can live with that.

Opera is not an option -- it's not open source and I am never going to use a browser that's not open source.

haxit

Member

From: /home/haxit

Registered: 2008-03-04

Posts: 1,247

Website

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

Thanks for the quick and excellent answers

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Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

Addendum:
Did I mention I only use Firefox?
I can't get used to Opera either; it's awkward for me and never gets any comfy-er.

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smurnjiff

Member

Registered: 2007-06-25

Posts: 211

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

I use the vimperator extension so much that Opera isn't an option.

Wintervenom

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 1,011

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

Firefox is lady-in-front-of-you-driving-twenty-when-the-speed-limit-is-seventy-five-miles-an-hour-slow for me compared to Opera.  But I always end up missing the add-ons.  And "Free YouTube!" does not work with Opera's Greasemonkey.

Edit:  I got it to work by adding unsafeWindow = window after toremove = [], but now Totem doesn't want to work - with anything.  x.x

Last edited by Wintervenom (2008-12-27 14:38:09)

haxit

Member

From: /home/haxit

Registered: 2008-03-04

Posts: 1,247

Website

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

I love free youtube!

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windtalker

Member

Registered: 2008-03-17

Posts: 220

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

The only complaint I have with FF is it seems to crash a bit to often.
Opera is faster and I swap back and forth with it and FF depending on what I need to do at the time.

xisal

Member

Registered: 2007-10-19

Posts: 24

Re: Why is Firefox's preformance so poor compared to Opera?

You maybe try flashblock:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433

With gnash doesn't work well and crashes frequently.