Improving Firefox's speed?

davidm · 2010-05-16 20:32:29

There's a lot of information out there but so much of it seems outdated or even wrong that it gets very confusing. I figured I'd ask my fellow Archers about this one.

I notice that when I first load firefox it's very responsive. It stays that way for a long time until eventually it begins to get to a point where it takes from 0.5 - 2 seconds in between switching tabs no matter how many tabs I have open at that given moment. I suspect this might have to do with memory and the cache history.

I've tried various little fixes. In addition to the common ones I found a key named "places.database.cache_to_memory_percentage" within my 3.7 development version and changed the key value from the default '6' to a '3' thinking it might be what I need. I think it might have helped but I am still running into the problem.

What actually works these days? I don't want to disable the memory cache completely, I just want it to remain crisp and responsive. Perhaps this might also be related to the sqllite database as well -- however merely restarting firefox solves the problem and all is fast once again.

Last edited by davidm (2010-05-16 20:37:55)

FaN_OnLy1 · 2010-05-16 21:02:27

You could mount your firefox profile in a tmpfs (in ram), but this is quite tricky. This was first launched by a gentoo user, just search on google for firefox tmpfs.

Last edited by FaN_OnLy1 (2010-05-16 21:02:59)

karol · 2010-05-16 21:07:00

What gear do you run, what sites do you browse? What extensions / plugins do you use?
How much history do you have? I keep last 3-4 months. IIRC after removing about a year worth of history it got noticeably quicker but YMMV.

davidm · 2010-05-16 21:26:48

karol wrote:

What gear do you run, what sites do you browse? What extensions / plugins do you use?
How much history do you have? I keep last 3-4 months. IIRC after removing about a year worth of history it got noticeably quicker but YMMV.

Sure. I don't think it's really related to the speed of my computer though because it's fine when it's first started up. It's only that over time it gets slower and slower. All I need do then is quit and choose to save the tabs. Then restart Firefox and it will be fast once again with all the original tabs open. It's just annoying to have to restart it all the time (every few hours when working heavily).

I do use a lot of extensions so I suppose that it is possible that there is a leak. For the history I believe I have it set to remember no more than one day. I do open a lot of tabs though, on average maybe 400 - 700 a day with no more than 20 at a time. I mainly use Firefox for my work.

You could mount your firefox profile in a tmpfs (in ram), but this is quite tricky. This was first launched by a gentoo user, just search on google for firefox tmpfs.

I saw that option in the Arch wiki when researching this. It might be worth a shot but I somehow question whether it would solve whatever is causing this. My Firefox works great when it is first started. I'm very satisfied with it's speed (I run a PGO version). But as time goes on I either have to restart it or just deal with the slowness which seems to get worse as time goes on.

Last edited by davidm (2010-05-16 21:28:18)

thestinger · 2010-05-16 21:40:18

Before trying anything else, try disabling all your addons and see if the problem persists - I run adblock plus/noscript and they cause a massive slowdown in startup, loss of speed over time and page load time is a lot slower...

Also, you might be a lot happier with firefox-pgo-beta, the developer preview is a lot better than the current version in my experience.

Starting from a fresh firefox profile always seems to help me a lot when I start getting problems like this, I've started exporting my bookmarks and deleting it between versions. I think that changes between versions, etc. can result in a messed up profile (along with addons changing stuff).

Optimizing the sqlite databases helps with start time/UI delay a lot, but that doesn't seem to be your problem at all.

Putting the disk cache into tmpfs might help a bit with page load time, but unless you are clearing cache when you exit firefox, I can't see how performance would degrade because of that.

davidm · 2010-05-16 21:48:29

thestinger wrote:

Before trying anything else, try disabling all your addons and see if the problem persists - I run adblock plus/noscript and they cause a massive slowdown in startup, loss of speed over time and page load time is a lot slower...

I'll give it a shot. There are two extensions I absolutely need though or work is near impossible (NoScript and AutoFill forms) but I will get rid of the others and try it out.

Also, you might be a lot happier with firefox-pgo-beta, the developer preview is a lot better than the current version in my experience.

That's what I use except I modified it to use the latest nightly (when I actually get around to recompiling it).

Starting from a fresh firefox profile always seems to help me a lot when I start getting problems like this, I've started exporting my bookmarks and deleting it between versions. I think that changes between versions, etc. can result in a messed up profile (along with addons changing stuff).
Optimizing the sqlite databases helps with start time/UI delay a lot, but that doesn't seem to be your problem at all.
Putting the disk cache into tmpfs might help a bit with page load time, but unless you are clearing cache when you exit firefox, I can't see how performance would degrade because of that.

Thanks, that's my thinking as well. I don't clear the cache when restarting firefox beyond what it does itself.

Oblitus · 2010-05-22 15:17:42

Just letting you know that mounting the cache in your ram is a security risk....if you're paranoid.

Last edited by Oblitus (2010-05-22 15:28:34)

rwd · 2010-05-22 22:14:31

Extensions are usually the culprit in my experience, and the Flash plugin. You can get rid of the Adblock-plus plugin by using a hosts file, userContent.css and/or privoxy.

Last edited by rwd (2010-05-22 22:14:50)

Ranguvar · 2010-05-23 05:10:15

Oblitus wrote:

Just letting you know that mounting the cache in your ram is a security risk....if you're paranoid.

More so than storing it on a hard drive, where it may be accessed potentially weeks later, even after it has been deleted?

lymphatik · 2010-05-23 06:34:18

Ranguvar wrote:

Oblitus wrote:
Just letting you know that mounting the cache in your ram is a security risk....if you're paranoid.
More so than storing it on a hard drive, where it may be accessed potentially weeks later, even after it has been deleted?

No it's that if you have a virus in your cache. It can then play quite easily with anything in your memory, but if I remember well linux is normally protected against that.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-05-16 20:32:29

Improving Firefox's speed?

#2 2010-05-16 21:02:27

Re: Improving Firefox's speed?

#3 2010-05-16 21:07:00

Re: Improving Firefox's speed?

#4 2010-05-16 21:26:48

Re: Improving Firefox's speed?

#5 2010-05-16 21:40:18

Re: Improving Firefox's speed?

#6 2010-05-16 21:48:29

Re: Improving Firefox's speed?

#7 2010-05-22 15:17:42

Re: Improving Firefox's speed?

#8 2010-05-22 22:14:31

Re: Improving Firefox's speed?

#9 2010-05-23 05:10:15

Re: Improving Firefox's speed?

#10 2010-05-23 06:34:18

Re: Improving Firefox's speed?

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