intuitive engineering

I used Firefox 2 with about seven plugins that I considered must-haves – things like Adblock Plus and Flashblock and Colorful Tabs and Tabbrowser and Remember Mismatched Domains. I recommended it highly, and if it had occasional crashes, they were few and far between enough that I never paid them a lot of attention.

Firefox 3. Not so much. I’ve been waiting since the product first came out for a resolution to whatever memory leak or looping code causes it to just lock up the entire desktop and churn away until I kill it off.

I’ve been using Opera, which I just find a bit odd, but mostly faster and mostly stable. I’ve downloaded Chromium for linux, Codeweaver’s proof-of-concept of running Chrome under wine on linux. And I downloaded and installed opera, chrome and even Apple’s safari on windows.

This firefox misbehavior seems to happen on BOTH operating systems. Here’s a shot of the current bahavior:


Tasks: 180 total, 2 running, 178 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 70.1%us, 2.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 27.2%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 2066104k total, 2023092k used, 43012k free, 296832k buffers
Swap: 1646620k total, 39812k used, 1606808k free, 972692k cached


PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
17146 dsm 20 0 373m 180m 35m R 143 8.9 71:52.02 firefox
4995 root 20 0 387m 53m 4744 S 2 2.7 137:35.74 Xorg
7409 dsm 20 0 32592 15m 11m S 1 0.8 0:09.48 konsole
5343 root 20 0 3304 1044 908 S 0 0.1 2:40.47 hald-addon-stor
7793 dsm 20 0 53516 32m 2236 S 0 1.6 9:09.60 synergys
1 root 20 0 2844 1688 544 S 0 0.1 0:01.84 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:03.72 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.32 ksoftirqd/1
8 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1
9 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:04.90 events/0
10 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:03.88 events/1
11 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
46 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.28 kblockd/0
47 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.30 kblockd/1
50 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
51 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify
126 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
160 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:07.48 pdflush
161 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:02.20 pdflush
162 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:02.10 kswapd0


and then after killing it off and restarting:


root@dali:/home/dsm/Desktop/programmes# killall firefox
root@dali:/home/dsm/Desktop/programmes# top
top - 14:46:04 up 10 days, 23:08, 1 user, load average: 0.96, 1.31, 1.25
Tasks: 180 total, 3 running, 177 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 6.9%us, 0.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 92.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 2066104k total, 1955112k used, 110992k free, 296928k buffers
Swap: 1646620k total, 39812k used, 1606808k free, 953204k cached


PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
17650 dsm 20 0 248m 126m 28m R 17 6.2 0:25.31 firefox
4995 root 20 0 387m 53m 4520 S 1 2.7 137:42.25 Xorg
7366 dsm 20 0 29972 11m 8668 S 0 0.6 1:29.68 kwin
7370 dsm 20 0 36764 18m 13m S 0 0.9 11:19.00 kicker
7793 dsm 20 0 53516 32m 2236 S 0 1.6 9:11.19 synergys
1 root 20 0 2844 1688 544 S 0 0.1 0:01.84 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:03.72 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.32 ksoftirqd/1
8 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1
9 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:04.92 events/0
10 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:03.88 events/1
11 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
46 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.28 kblockd/0
47 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.30 kblockd/1
50 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
51 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify
126 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
160 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:07.48 pdflush
161 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:02.20 pdflush
162 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:02.10 kswapd0


Yes – that first figure – 143% of the cpu. Dropping back to 17% of the CPU with the same tabs and sites loaded.

Whatever. I don’t WANT to pay attention to the browser – the whole point of firefox was to NOT have to pay attention, and they have completely ruined that in version 3.

There is something seriously wrong with firefox, that causes it over time to start misbehaving and to require a reload from scratch. And this seems to occur on both windows and Linux. It is no longer useful. It also seems to being misbehavior once it has downloaded just about any kind of update whether for the browser or a plugin.

I’ve been waiting for firefox three to fix this. Recently firefox 3.07 came out. I just got the window informing me that it has upgraded me to the latest!!!. Just this morning. And yet… And yet – it is still BROKEN.

When you go onto the internet and search for Firefox 3 performance or cpu or memory issues – the first ten or fifteen google results laud firefox three for its blazing performance. True – for awhile. Eventually it will force you to pay attention to it by hanging and chewing up your cpu to where your computer is no longer working.

I wish they’d fix it. But whether they do or not,

I can’t wait for Chrome to come out for linux…

–doug

Tags: browsers, firefox 3, internet.