Firefox 1.0.3Forum: Apps Topic: Firefox 1.0.3 started by: Melancholie Posted by Melancholie on April 28 2005,16:22
I have installed Firefox 1.0.3 (GTK2) both from the myDSL test area and with the installer from the official German Mozilla website. With both variants I have the same problems:1. Special characters like [{\~²³}] cannot be typed in (this ones I have copied out of Beaver ;-). So editing on Wikipedia gets hard work due to the need of those special characters! 2. When going backward with the cursor (to correct a written word for example), and going forward again, the cursor sometimes stops in front of the last letter. So sometimes it is not possible to go to the very end of a line (only when using the end button or the mouse). 3. After surfing the web for, lets say for 2 hours, the browser gets extremely slow. Even google.com needs many many seconds until the (small) site is loaded! When making a click everything lasts extremely long. Then it's like having a 10.0 Mhz computer. My hardware is minimum requirement: 233 Mhz and 64 MB RAM. But this cannot be the reason, because on Win98 the Firefox 1.0.3 browser works fine on the same PC! What may cause this slow down after some hours? --- Melancholie Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on April 28 2005,21:14
On point3, my vague guess is something to do with cache - with your win install you would have your cache on HD, but (if you are using liveCD?) the cache would be entirely in RAM under DSL, so your cache would be getting full (reaching the maximum memory), don't know exactly what would happen then, but the symptoms sound right to me. I think.You'd also have more stuff in ram for the general running of DSL. Don't know how ram useage would compare to an install of win98, but I'm guessing due to the nature of how liveCD's work that DSL's useage would be more? Maybe you could try going into the firefox settings and changing the cache size to something lower? Or creating a dos swapfile (do a search on the forum, I've never tried it...)? Or clearing the cache when things start going slow? Posted by ke4nt1 on April 29 2005,02:13
Yep, Thadda be my guess too.. Select "Edit > Preferences" in your firefox menubar Choose "Privacy", and click on the little + near the word cache. Set the cache for a smaller number, like 100k . Also, select "History" , and select a fewer number of days. See if that helps with the buildup and slowdown of your system. 73 ke4nt Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on April 30 2005,23:13
RE 3 again, here's something mikshaw just wrote in another thread (mp3s using up RAM, or something like that)"Take Firefox for example. If its cache is set to 50mb it will continue to write to that cache until it uses 50mb. If you don't have 50mb of free ram for the Firefox cache, the RAM will get used up. Since this is a file cache the system will not free it up automatically....it will smother." So Firefox will attempt to keep writing to RAM up to the amount that cache has been set to, even if there is not that amount of RAM free. So the system chokes. Change your cache figure and you should see improvements. Posted by firecat53 on May 09 2005,04:50
I've also tried 1.0.3 in both the tar.gz and uci versions and had them freeze after a short time of use. I reset the cache to a value well within the available RAM (256mb machine with not much else running). It mostly happened when I used any java applications (using the 1_0_5 dsl version), but not always. I waited a couple of minutes a few times before I had to turn off the machine. Anyone else having issues with 1.0.3 locking up or waaaay slowing down? Posted by Melancholie on May 11 2005,22:01
Well, I have reduced cache to 10MB, 1MB, 100KB, 0KB. It's always the same problem. And I also think that websites with Java and JavaScript does slow down the browser more than other websites. I am using a HD-install of DSL with a swap partition of 250MB (much, I know, but I have just 64MB RAM (and 233 MHz)). Although it shouldn't be necessary, I did set up a DOS swap file (64MB, I think). Now Firefox works fine! But I do not really know whether the DOS swap file is the reason or the use of IceWM (could this also have any effects?). With Firefox 1.0.4 (a hotfix which comes out in the next days, I think) I will check if it really is the DOS file that fixed my problem. But actually a DOS swap file should not be needed in my case. Or should it? --- Melancholie
Posted by cbagger01 on May 12 2005,00:10
swapfile / swap partition is a good idea if you only have 64MB of RAM.As for Firefox, I am stumped. I would give the opera.uci extension a try and see if performance improves. Also, try and keep track of your memory usage that is shown on the little dockapp on the right side of the desktop. Posted by Rapidweather on May 12 2005,01:30
I did see on the Mozillazine forums that Firefox 1.03 has a memory problem, where tabs are opened, but when you close them, the memory is not released. The Microsoft I.E. folks will tell you that their browser is better in this regard, expecially in S.P. 2, than Firefox. The forums report that the memory problem will get fixed by the 1.1 release. Yes, Opera is a better choice on machines with limited RAM and CPU power. And, a swap file (linux) is necessary, especially when trying to run Firefox on computers like that. Currently, I am running SuSE 6 on a PII with 128 MB ram, and a linux swap partition, and it uses memory very well, TOP reports 61624K free, with no swap currently being used. It is probably best to run a kernel that more nearly matches the machines capacity. SuSE is a 2.2 kernel. DSL, being a 2.4 kernel, is a heavier load, but worth it, if you can run it on your box. SuSE is nothing to brag about, it lacks multimedia and drivers, compared to Win 98. Posted by Melancholie on May 12 2005,16:12
Good to know that this is not a problem of DSL :-)So, thank you very much for this information! I had a look on the Mozilla Firefox website and forum too, but I didn't find anything about the firefox 1.0.3 slow down problem. But I guess that's exactly my problem! Especially when Tabs, Java, JavaScript are used, the browser slows down very quickly with only 64MB RAM. So I just have to wait for version 1.1. (But for those who have the same problem: a DOS swap file (System->Setup DOS swapfile) seems to improve performance of Firefox 1.0.3! Opera: Although it seems to be a problem of Firefox itself, I will give Opera a try in the next days. But honestly I do not like Opera because of its ads! With a resolution of 640x480 the advertisements are very annoying! --- Thanks, Melancholie PS: The weird thing I forgot to write: When I recognized a slow down I had a look on memory usage! 35% of RAM were still free and the swap partition was not used (or only 2% of it). But CPU usage was at nearly 100% in those moments! --- Melancholie |