[SOLVED] Extremely slow Firefox rendering

[torturedutopian]

Hi there !

I installed a clean LMDE 64 bits today.

My problem is the following : some rendering in Firefox is extremely slow -- not particularly when scrolling within pages, but things like maps.google.com when scrolling or zooming in and out. It's *very* slow, while it's perfectly smooth using a webkit browser, or when using the very same version of Firefox under Ubuntu or Archlinux.

Itried both the nvidia (9800M GTX) proprietary driver and open source driver.

Do you have any idea what may be wrong ?
(+ there's also a font rendering problem : anti-aliasing is not as smooth as in other GTK apps and the FF menu etc. fonts are not the right ones)

Cheers !

[DrHu]

The proprietry driver for Nvidia will bet better at rendering than the open source drive, just make sure you do not have both running (installed) at the same time.

Second, the Firefox application on your 64bit Linux is which a 64bit version using 64bit media (streaming) applications or extensions (plugins/addons) or 32bit ones, which would operate effectively and probably provide better support frm the original streaming applications, since 32bit has been the standard available for the longest time.

Also we lack some context here, it is not just the graphics card that is important for a 64bot machine, but also the amount of RAM on that system
--anything less than 4GB is a complete waste of time for a 64bit system, due the the system/user memory divisions, which is why in a 64bit system with only 4GB of RAM, the amount available to the user, and his/her applications is approx 3GB whether it is a Linux, Apple (OSX) or windows OS system. and the other 1GB for the system and its processes..

[torturedutopian]

Hi !

I really appreciate your taking the time to reply so extensively. However, the problem definitely lies somewhere else. I'm actually surprised I'm the only one to encounter it, apparently, because my installation is pretty clean & straightforward.

I used many distros and drivers (arch64, arch32, ubuntu64, ubuntu32, chakra, etc.) in the past and never encountered such a dramatic speed decrease.

* The driver is not responsible, because :
- other apps are fast (HD video, 3D apps, webkit browsers)
- the result is the same with the OSS driver and with the proprietary one with compiz enabled (which is itself very smooth)
- I remember it was even faster with a vesa driver

* 32 bits plugins are not responsible because maps.google.com doesn't use any plugin (and I don't think I installed any 32 bits plugin. Maybe the installer installs 32 bits flash by default, but there was no flash applet anyway)

* Memory is not an issue (4 GB here, and very little memory is actually used, no swapping etc.)

I think it has something to do with cairo, or something like that. I have no clue though, I'm just an user

Cheers !

[rivenathos]

Hmmm... I run the 64-bit of LMDE on 2 GB of RAM. OK, yeah, I know most people would say it was not worth it. However, I get much better video performance with 64-bit than 32-bit. I am scratching my head as to why a machine with much better specifications than mine is rendering poorly. I mean, mine is pretty darned good. I do not use Compiz or anything snazzy.

[torturedutopian]

Oh gees....

It seems it turned out there was a recent Google Maps update (at least on maps.google.fr) that makes it crawl under Firefox... Even under Ubuntu... I was pretty sure it was a Mint issue because it used to be extra smooth very recently and it's now pretty sluggish / jerky ony my computer (3 GHz core2duo + nvidia 9800M GTX)

Damn... Hmm... My thought is : did Google change it to make it crawl under Firefox on purpose so that more people switch to Chrome ? Wouldn't surprise me, now

Anyway... Looking forward to FF4 !!

You can blame me for jumping to conclusions !!