Firefox faster in Windows than Ubuntu Why?

Hy i'm having a little big problem i can't understand why firefox is running faster in my windows install than in my ubuntu. The pages load quicker and i have no problems with multiple tabs wich i can't say the same when working in ubuntu for instance when i scroll a page it's like it lags it dosen't scroll very smoothly plus there is another very annoying thing when i have several tabs open and try to right click on a link many time the menu doesn't appear it simply select automaticaly an option like "save link as" or it opens evolution. This is very strange since i know for a fact that linux is faster than windows.

Oh and i almost forgot my pc is a very old PIII with 256 MB RAM and a geforce 2 with the restricted drivers installed

Thanks

flOOi!ghenTM said: Hy i'm having a little big problem i can't understand why firefox is running faster in my windows install than in my ubuntu. The pages load quicker and i have no problems with multiple tabs wich i can't say the same when working in ubuntu for instance when i scroll a page it's like it lags it dosen't scroll very smoothly plus there is another very annoying thing when i have several tabs open and try to right click on a link many time the menu doesn't appear it simply select automaticaly an option like "save link as" or it opens evolution. This is very strange since i know for a fact that linux is faster than windows.

Oh and i almost forgot my pc is a very old PIII with 256 MB RAM and a geforce 2 with the restricted drivers installed

Thanks

Which version of windows and which version of ubuntu?

I have noticed this too... Maybe it is because Linux > Windows :guitar:

(Or that Linux manages its ram better? I dunno)

Windows is SP3 update and Ubuntu Hardy

Windows is Student edition SP3 update and Ubuntu Hardy

Sry for double post

Perhaps it is because the Windows one will likely be for i686, whereas the Ubuntu one is i386.

Also, Mozilla don't care for non-Windows platforms.

Most likely but in that case it's very sad that a open-source app dosen't care about linux i mean WTF?

flOOi!ghenTM said: Most likely but in that case it's very sad that a open-source app dosen't care about linux i mean WTF?

Which is the bigger market? Also, Mozilla have shown distain for FOSS for quite a while now.

flOOi!ghenTM said: Hy i'm having a little big problem i can't understand why firefox is running faster in my windows install than in my ubuntu. The pages load quicker and i have no problems with multiple tabs wich i can't say the same when working in ubuntu for instance when i scroll a page it's like it lags it dosen't scroll very smoothly plus there is another very annoying thing when i have several tabs open and try to right click on a link many time the menu doesn't appear it simply select automaticaly an option like "save link as" or it opens evolution. This is very strange since i know for a fact that linux is faster than windows.

Oh and i almost forgot my pc is a very old PIII with 256 MB RAM and a geforce 2 with the restricted drivers installed

Thanks

Windows XP has much less hardware requirements. I believe XP minimum requirements are 233MHz proc with 64MB RAM. Ubuntu needs more. I tried to install Hardy on a 400MHz PIII with 256MB RAM and it absolutely crawled. That machine used to run XP pretty speedy.

Well from my experience with both OS's i have to say that overall ubuntu is faster there i no doubt about it my pc does work better with linux than windows my only issue is that obviously firefox is not not supported as well

I agree stchman's post.Windows Xp may faster than linux especially if you trim your installation(or vice versa, if you trim linux/or customize your linux well).Did you compile your firefox?Did you compile your kernel?This may make your firefox/system a lot faster.This is where linux is more powerful than windows.

anyways, firefox 3.1b2 is faster than windows, it is faster than firefox 3.0x linux also.

No i haven't tried to compile it but thanks for the suggestion and as a matter of fact i was thinking of installing 3.1

flOOi!ghenTM said: ...Oh and i almost forgot my pc is a very old PIII with 256 MB RAM and a geforce 2 with the restricted drivers installed

Have you thought of installing Xubuntu? It is more suitable for older machines.

flOOi!ghenTM said: ...plus there is another very annoying thing when i have several tabs open and try to right click on a link many time the menu doesn't appear it simply select automaticaly an option like "save link as" or it opens evolution.

Welcome to [[COLOR="Red"]the club[/COLOR]]("http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=972488")!

I thought of installing xubuntu but i never really got to it. First thing tomorrow and even compile firefox from source.

@ lovinglinux: well at least it's good to know it's a bug an not my system 10X

try swiftfox or iceweasel, they are better suited and based on firefox.

it could just be my hardware, but Firefox runs quite well for me, and i do find that Linux runs better (and boots faster + loads faster after login) than windows xp I even got the title bar to be translucent which i think is pretty cool (some obscure option involving metacity). I do know that freespire linux works great on old computers (namely one of the high school's few hand me downs that students are allowed to muck about with) and doesn't look too shabby either

i am not a expert! but

old PIII with 256 MB RAM

think you are below the min of ram for Ubuntu?

now if you can get your hands on a 512 or 1 gig memory module i think you will notice a BIG change in things

look at your system monitor and see how much free ram you have what is the speed of your pent? so it will work probably faster on different version of Ubuntu, but adding memory will make a big difference

from min requirements

Ubuntu is available for PC, 64-Bit PC and Intel based Mac architectures. At least 256 MB of RAM is required to run the alternate install CD

flOOi!ghenTM said: @ lovinglinux: well at least it's good to know it's a bug an not my system 10X

Yep, that's what I thought when I found that thread. But it is quite annoying.

Anyway, I don't have speed problems with Firefox, just the right click thing.

the.phantom said: i am not a expert!

but

think you are below the min of ram for Ubuntu?

now if you can get your hands on a 512 or 1 gig memory module i think you will notice a BIG change in things

look at your system monitor and see how much free ram you have what is the speed of your pent? so it will work probably faster on different version of Ubuntu, but adding memory will make a big difference

from min requirements

Well i'm thinking o buying a new one next year so investing money in more memory would be a waste. But for what hardware i give it ubuntu does a great job.

It is not a hardware problem. I have the same issues on all of my computers. On my desktop computer (4GB RAM and Intel quad core CPU) with XP Firefox is much faster and more responsive than on Ubuntu 8.10.

This has nothing to do with the javascript bug (aka super slow scrolling on javascript heavy pages).

It is more a Linux-Firefox problem and shows how much the Mozilla foundation cares about Windows but not Linux ... one more example is the ugly jpg zoom on Linux.

Overall the responsiveness of the Linux desktop has to improve. I don't care if a process is a few ms faster, what I care about on a desktop is responsiveness and imho that's the Achilles heel of the Linux desktop atm. Firefox behavior is just one example.

I've managed to cure the slow scrolling in FF by changing the theme. I was using nautipolis but I tried the default and the scrolling was as it should be. I'm now using classic compact and this is fine too. A prime example of slow scrolling was on the page.``` about:plugins

well i too have noticed this problem.alternatively u can try out opera which i think is quite good.

I'm not happy with Firefox speed on kubuntu either (see scrolling & painting issues in these forums), so I'll give Opera a try - that's the good thing about competition. All the browsers are trying to improve their speed/security.

Also, for yet another possibility, we can make Google aware of how much we want Chrome released for Linux:

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/linux.html

Do you have compiz running (Visual Effects) by any chance? If so then turning it off will help since it slows down firefox scrolling speed and overall responsiveness. Also, as others have mentioned, try running "free" in a terminal to check if you are not running out of RAM. If so then xubuntu will definitely help.

Tell us the output of "free".

I'm using XP, ubuntu and vista, but firefox in ubuntu is fasest!

firefox seems to get progressively slower as you keep on installing more and more plugins.... in windows and in ubuntu.....

try disabling all the plugins..... and then trying to use the defalut theme......

that should speed things up...

nebu said: firefox seems to get progressively slower as you keep on installing more and more plugins.... in windows and in ubuntu.....

try disabling all the plugins..... and then trying to use the defalut theme......

that should speed things up...

I think you mean extensions/addons.

Anyone can try this

firefox -safe-mode

Then see if it runs well.

I'm using Ubuntu 8.04 with Firefox on an HP zt3000 with 2GB of ram. I am dual booting with XP Home Edition SP2 and for me Firefox runs faster on the Linux side. But for me, I use "none" as a setting for visual effects...which after research revealed that this setting helps to increase the speed of your system among other things.