But when it makes my computer grind to a halt and the hard disk go nuts in a way only recoverable by powering it off. It really messes up my day.
The latest ubuntu firefox release makes this web browser completely unusable, breaking after about 30 mins of continuous use. Mostly on facebook, is this the fsync bug? Strangley though it doesn’t crash X anymore… This is worse, I don’t just need to restart X, the whole computer needs rebooting.
CANONICAL PLEASE PUSH 3.5 TO REPLACE 3.0 ASAP!
Did you ever track this down to see if this was an nvidia specific problem.
I’m running Fedora 10 using firefox-3.0.11-1.fc10.i386 package on intel video hardware and I’m not experiencing these sorts of issues…and I’m a facebook junkie.
-jef
Fedora 11 has Firefox 3.5 for a long time already.
Jef: the last problem appears to have disappeared, which I assume was a nvidia issue, but never really tracked it down, when the update came last night, I started using firefox again for extended periods and this has caused a different problem to surface.
I’m thinking of switching back to fedora now, well, as long as I can get all of my hardware working in it.
Neo: I know this already… I normally use fedora, but ubuntu seemed to have better hardware support at the time I installed this laptop.
By better hardware support…do you mean out-of-the-box support for hardware using out-of-tree drivers like the aforementioned nvidia? Proprietary driver support is a double edged sword. Its great if it work…its a real pain if they don’t.
-jef
The symptoms match what happens when you run out of RAM (and swap).
BTW Ubuntu has Firefox 3.5 in jaunty-updates already, but you have to explicitly install the firefox-3.5 package. It doesn’t replace Firefox 3.0, it gets installed alongside, and it calls itself Shiretoko. Also, it has some kind with font rendering (ignores GNOME font hinting settings) and looks ugly
As far as crashing in Firefox 3.5 in Fedora 11 goes, it seems to crash daily instead of occasionally now, without regard for the oodles of RAM I’m boasting. This anecdote also applies to my girlfriend. Sigh.
I’m running Firefox 3.5 on Jaunty right now. I installed the packages firefox-3.5, firefox-3.5-branding and firefox-3.5-gnome-support (I suspect that Marius doesn’t have the last package installed).
It works pretty well (although I didn’t notice any obvious crashers in the 3.0 packages).
Marius: The font rendering issue is discussed here:
http://webupd8.blogspot.com/2009/07/fix-fonts-in-firefox-35-and-ubuntu.html
Haven’t tried it myself, though, as I haven’t had this problem.
@Marius: I have oodles of ram as richard puts it
@Everyone poking me to firefox-3.5 in jaunty, I have it installed, and have done for a while but for some reason I can’t seem to make it default! This is really really annoying as most often my browser is opened by clicking on a link.
pfft… Starting to get tired of dodgy browsers :/
If you tried ls -l $(which firefox) you’d see that /usr/bin/firefox is a symlink to /usr/bin/firefox-3.0 and you can fix that in a split second since there is a /usr/bin/firefox-3.5 as well.
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-3.5 should set Shiretoko to be your default browser.
@Kasper: Wouldn’t that be sudo ln -s /usr/bin/firefox-3.5 /usr/bin/firefox
Using 3.5 (well, Shiretoko) on Jaunty, and has been for some time. Quite nice.
To set firefox-3.5 as your default browser, go to System->Preferences->Preferred Applications. Select the ‘Custom’ option for the webbrowser and set the command as “firefox-3.5 %s”. Should just work.
It might also be good to do:
sudo update-alternatives –config x-www-browser
and choose /usr/bin/firefox-3.5
Yeah, its not really ideal, but hey…
Yes it would be. Goes to show how often i use ln, I suppose.
And of course, I have absolutely no idea if it will break anything if they do push 3.5 or when you update to Karmic. It probably shouldn’t… probably.
“pfft… Starting to get tired of dodgy browsers :/”
Had the same problem, so I put together a quick and dirty PyGTK GUI for Webkit. It lacks most of the stuff that normal browsers have, but it’s quite reliable and useful for the “quickly google for some API docs for function xyz” task.
If you suggest a good name, I’ll put it online
Right now it’s stored under yab (yet another browser), and I don’t want to publish it like that.
Rob’s suggestion is probably best, I’ve gone for that and it works
@Oliver how about GNF as in GNF’s Not Firefox
I’m having issues with 3.5. Unfortunetly there doesn’t seem to be a proper 64bit version out there. I’m stuck with the Shiretoko devlopment builds with have various problems, (no branding, Delicious keywords not working).
Didn’t have any major issues with 3.0 other than it being slower.
Might also be worth giving Chrome (Chromium) a go, the latest dev builds work quite well.