LDME Sluggish with Flash [PARTIALLY SOLVED]

[kc6ufm]

Now, on to my next issue...

I have:
LDME on an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ with 1gig RAM. Video is Nvidia GeForce4 MX440.

I am using FireFox 3.6.12

The system without the browser open is very fast and nimble. No delays, and blows away Windows (2K-Pro and XPP) on the same system.

It is when I open FireFox that things get goofy...

So long as I have no pages with Flash content open, the system remains quick and responsive. BUT, when got to a page with Flash content, the system slows way down. The more Flash pages I open, the worse it gets. Now, here's the part that throws me...

The System Monitor shows excellent network numbers. It shows no swap file usage. It shows memory use at around 75% or so. And it shows CPU use peaking at around 60% in most cases.

In other words, I see no obvious bottlenecks for the low performance.

If I close the Flash pages or FireFox completely, it goes back to normal performance.

It looks like the Flash plugin is the issue.

FireFox reports the Flash plugin as 10.1 r85. As far as I can tell, this is the latest version.

I tried the obvious in that I disabled the Flash plugin, and performance was normal: quick and responsive. Of course, I had no Flash content then. Enabling it took me back to the sluggishness.

A few examples of the sluggish behavior...

Freezing when typing in a text box. Like right now, the cursor will freeze and then jump to "catch up" to my typing some 30-40 characters later.

Clicking the scroll bars has a delayed effect, sometimes by as much as 10 seconds.

Clicking on a button or link on a page is delayed by 5 seconds or so before anything happens.

Clicking RELOAD or other browser button is delayed.

Oh, I almost forgot...the same PC with Windows (dual booted to Windows 200 Pro) does NOT do this. Performance is the same (slower than LMDE) all of the time.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[/Zoran\]

The graphics card is old, that could be the culprit, i'm just guessing. I had that same card on my very first computer, which was 6-7 years ago... .

[grey1960envoy]

The graphics card may be what the issue is ...Just my opinion however perhaps you might try a different distro ?such as LXDE might help

[gn2]

I've had similar problems, but I just put it down to using LMDE as a VM guest on a 64 bit host.

[kc6ufm]

Maybe I don't understand how Flash interacts with the OS, browser, and video card, but wouldn't it be sluggish in Windows as well?

I didn't mention that I also have FireFox on the Windows install, too. 3.6.something.

Also, hammering away with various graphic applications (I am not a gamer...solitaire is about the fanciest game I play!) doesn't slow the system down. It's clearly something between Flash and the browser.

Maybe I should try a different browser and see what happens then.

[/Zoran\]

we can easily test if this is browser problem if you install some other browser like opera and try it there.

[kc6ufm]

[quote="/Zoran\"]we can easily test if this is browser problem if you install some other browser like opera and try it there.[/quote]

OK...I just installed Chromium and that's what I am using to post this.

I went to all of the regular pages I have open, complete with a ton of Flash content, and the system is SCREAMING along.

So, I think (and I could very easily be wrong here!) that means this is a browser-to-Flash issue.

As an aside that might mean something to an expert who actually understands this, I opened FireFox to get the addresses of the various pages I frequent, and the system slowed down again, even inside Chromium. As soon as I had the addresses transfered over to Chromium, I closed FireFox, and the speed went back up.

I'm not sure I like Chromium all that much, but that may be just that it is different from FireFox, my browser of choice for the past several years.

Then again, they say that you can get used to hanging if you hang long enough.

Thanks!

[kc6ufm]

I've been "playing" with Chromium for a couple of hours now, and just like hanging, I could get used to it, but...

Isn't switching browsers a bit like putting lipstick on a pig?

I mean, yes, it got rid of the symptoms, but the problem is still there.

I'll mark this topic as Partially Solved, but it seems to me there should be a real solution someplace.

[/Zoran\]

Others seem to have similar problems, for example look at this thread:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=61765

And one thing in common is that they all use newer versions of firefox, i use 3.6.10, and flash works fine, everything works fine. I don't know if you upgraded or this version of firefox that you have came preinstalled, but if you can, try reverting back to an older version, remove firefox and install again from the software center. Also from my experience and from what i'm reading around you shouldn't update the system unless something doesn't work, take me for example, i installed a couple of weeks ago and of course i had tons of updates to be made already, but since everything works fine i didn't update, and eventually i disabled the update manager all togather , and even if some problem comes alone, i don't think i will updated, i will try to find some other solution on the web first. If you install the same version, try to install from the Synaptic package manager, if you have it i LDME i never used that environment. Hope this helps...