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Dear Firefox: I can't do this anymore. I'm done.

5 points by nonamegiven ↗ HN
Some time in the last week, Firefox (latest by auto updates) on Lubuntu (latest by auto updates) has been freezing up briefly, then coming back (in seconds). But once that starts, eventually it freezes the whole machine. The only thing that works is I can move the mouse around, but i can't focus on any other windows. I can't even ctrl-alt-F1 to get a console. Power cycle. There's no crash report after, as far as I can tell.

And yeah, I uninstalled a couple addons that were recently installed, no improvement. And no, I didn't disable all my addons (about 10), and I didn't start it in safe mode.

Rather than incrementally take away addons, which might reveal a symptom (note, not reveal the problem), I decided to see what happens if I don't use Firefox. And both problems went away, the freezing, and the need to troubleshoot the freezing.

So I've been using Chromium for a few days. I don't like it. But the thing is, Firefox does everything I want, most of the time, and Chromium does some of what I want, all the time. And my fan's quieter.

I tried to write essentially this same message on the Firefox support forum. I had to reset my password, and I'm still waiting for the reset link two hours later (I checked spam and my other account). So I'm sending this message through a friend, because you won't pick up the phone.

This seems to go in cycles. A couple years ago Firefox had a poor performance reputation, and they fixed it, and I was happy. But I don't want to go through the cycle anymore.

Eventually I'll probably go to Uzbl, but that's a bit more of a leap than I want right now, I'm in the middle of something.

Good luck, I hope you work it out. I need to move on.

7 comments

[ 14.7 ms ] story [ 51.1 ms ] thread
[dead] msalahat
Well , I used Firefox from while ago till last year for them same reson you mentioned above , I moved to chrome and I did not like it at the beginning and I thought it would not do all what I want , but actually I was totally wrong , everything you do on FF you can do on chrome and I think more also. Good Luck with your right decision :)
ndesaulniers
Why don't you file a bug about it in bugzilla, our issue tracker, where we actually check, instead of on some forum we MAY check?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox

Use "General" for the component, put the Version, Hardware, and OS.

nonamegiven
Fundamentally because it's been more than two hours since I asked for a password reset.

But really, because I'm not trying to fix this. This message was mostly for me, because I'm leaving what has been a fundamental part of my experience on the Internet, since Netscape. I wrestled with the decision to go with either Netscape or Mozilla, when that was a decision.

I just feel bad, and needed to say something to someone. Anyone. Which I've done.

If other people are having the same problem, someone who still knows their password will report it. And if it's just me, well, I'm just one of millions. The galaxy turns.

ndesaulniers
"I didn't get my password reset email yet, so I'm going to go try and score some karma on HN with Browser Wars link bait." is how I interpret that response.

This is an example of people taking open source for granted.

You have the power to modify the trajectory of your favorite browser (or OS, or any open source project, for that matter), even if you don't contribute code, you could give the maintainers a heads up by filing an bug in their issue tracker. Instead, you'll just switch to another browser and complain publicly when it does something you don't like or you don't get your password reset email. How selfish.

nonamegiven
""I didn't get my password reset email yet, so I'm going to go try and score some karma on HN with Browser Wars link bait." is how I interpret that response."

Not at all how I intended it. As for taking open source for granted, in this case Mozilla has hundreds of well paid people, they'll make it without my input.

It really was just a random goodbye, since I couldn't do it on their site.

gee_totes
Second that. People need to keep in mind that this is Hacker News, not Complainer News.
ubojan
I have experienced similar behavior with Firefox on Windows 7 recently. A lot of freezing and slowing down. Then I solved it by removing bookmarks from sync. I have a lot of bookmarks and it seems that syncing them is cause of freezing. If you use sync feature, try this or just unlink device (Options -> Sync).