Firefox alternatives in Mint....

[ZenDJiNN]

Having been a Firefox user (In it's many incarnations) for a long while, i'm saddened to see it becoming slower & slower, and feel that it's now just becoming a "Memory Hog" of an app. Trouble is, there doesn't seem to be many alternatives out there, and the ones that are available are either really lightweight & great, but lacking features, or are so bloated that they're not worth considering.

Does anyone else find that this is the case, and if so, what alternatives do you use and are you happy with them?

I've been trying Opera, and i kind of like it, but the Widgets are AWFUL!!! Unfortunately, this is probably the main reason that i use Firefox.... the "Addons" are just sooo handy!

Anyway, all answers etc much appreciated.

Many thanks........

[ZenDJiNN]

Firefox isn't that bad, at least not as bad as you think, if you keep tracking its memory footprint (which isn't a effective indicator the first place) it's only about 20% higher than opera, what makes firefox seems slow on linux is all the plugins that are used, i.e. flash player and mplayer. Those don't play well with AIGLX or XGL and your compiz desktop. The biggest hinderance to speed right now is Compiz/XGL/AIGLX, and not firefox. And of course, Java VM the piece of **** also slows down firefox quite a bit, try adjusting your firefox options I guess.

Hi blu3ness, thanks for the reply.

I must admit that i do use a few plugins, probably at least 6 or more, so maybe i should just try a "vanilla" Firefox & see if that makes a great deal of difference. On the other hand, one of the main reasons that i use FF "With" all the plugins, is because they ARE available, and that's part of (for me anyway) what makes FF so good. (When it doesn't crash or run slowly that is)

I'll have a go at disabling some of the plgs etc and see if that makes a big difference.

You can also try swiftfox, which is a optimized version of firefox, it's for linux only and is compiled specifically for your CPU instruction set, I don't really see a difference but other people may think otherwise!
the link is

http://getswiftfox.com/

Thanks for the link..... i'll go get it & give it a go, you never know. I've used SwiftFox before & didn't really notice the difference, but it's worth a try.

Thanks once again......

[legion1978]

well mate, how wouldnt u expect it to gain in memory usage if u load widgets, extensions or whatever.. let the browser do its job and get a widget engine like avedesk or so for extra things
opera is a great alternative and has pretty good functionality/customizability without additional stuff.. your choice though

[67GTA]

Try epiphany. It is very similar to FF. It is in the repos.

[Zwopper]

Try epiphany. It is very similar to FF. It is in the repos.

I agree, the latest version is really good, and the plug ins are usable too.
http://www.gnome.org/projects/epiphany/extensions

sudo apt-get install epiphany-extensions -y

[red-e-made]

I'm using Firefox 3 beta 2 right now, and find it's not only slightly faster than Firefox 2, but in my case only using half the memory. And I have 13 extensions on it.

The thing of it is, Epiphany is fine, but without extensions like AdBlockPlus, DownloaderHelper, and CustomizeGoogle, it's pretty much useless to me. Opera has loads of widgets, sure, but a lot of them are frankly useless - just how many Chuck Norris facts do you need? Is flipping text upside down really as essential as ad-blocking?

If you're running KDE, Konquerer is fine. You can use Konqueror in Gnome, too, I've been told, but it requires downloading some other repositories to operate it. I don't like the idea of having to download other packages just to run a browser. The last time I did something similar was when I downloaded aMule, and that ended up being a bad idea.

Really, the best alternative for you is to use Firefox, whether 2 or 3, but with some adjustments in the about:config page. It's open-source for a reason. Take advantage of the customization.

Now, to get extensions running on Firefox 3, here's what you need to do:

1. First, after you download the tarball (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html), extract the folder inside of it, rename it something (I chose "firefox3") and put it in your Home directory. Inside that folder, click on the file named "firefox" and select "Run".

2. Open about:config, right-click, and add two new booleans: extensions.checkCompatibility (with a value of false) and extensions.checkUpdateSecurity (I originally gave this a value of false - I've since switched the value back to true, and have added new extensions without a problem, so I'm not sure how necessary this is).

3. Go into the .mozilla folder in your Home directory and copy the Firefox extensions in the extensions folder, then paste them into the extensions folder of your Firefox 3 directory.

After that, all your extensions should be working fine. Keep in mind, however, that that depends on what extensions you're using. Personally, I'm using the following, all of them working:

AdBlockPlus
Add to Search Bar
Content Search
Custom Buttons
Customize Google
DOM Inspector
Download Helper
DownThemAll
ImageZoom
PDF Download
Reload Every
SpamAvert
User Agent Switcher

[67GTA]

The thing of it is, Epiphany is fine, but without extensions like AdBlockPlus, DownloaderHelper, and CustomizeGoogle, it's pretty much useless to me. Opera has loads of widgets, sure, but a lot of them are frankly useless - just how many Chuck Norris facts do you need? Is flipping text upside down really as essential as ad-blocking?

You don't like Chuck? Thats just un-American Epiphany doesn't have as many extensions as Firefox yet. I haven't tried FF 3 yet. I've heard good things though. Maybe it will clear some of these things up.

[red-e-made]

You don't like Chuck?

Not since he started campaigning for Huckabee, no, but that's another story.

Epiphany doesn't have as many extensions as Firefox yet. I haven't tried FF 3 yet. I've heard good things though. Maybe it will clear some of these things up.

I would love to love Epiphany. With time they'll have all those extensions. But for now, I highly recommend FF3vb2, especially with the extensions hack.

[67GTA]

I tried Flock a while back. It is based on the Firefox engine, so most of the FF extensions will run on it. It was a little more graphically pleasing out of the box. I found that once you tweaked it, added the extensions, etc, it was as slow as FF. The only real difference I could find was all the peer/sharing add ons. Opera uses a little less resources than FF, but once you get used to FF, it is a little hard to navigate.

[red-e-made]

Flock may be a decent alternative, especially if you happen to frequent social networking sites. After downloading it and giving it a trial run, though - customizing preferences, installing the extensions I wanted, etc. - I found it pretty much runs as slow as FF2.

Guess I'm sticking with FF3vb2.

[molom]

How about trying Flock (Open source web browser based on FF with lots of cool additions for big time web service users)? - http://www.flock.com

It has a lot of nice extensions and extra stuff added that aren't in Firefox. It also has never crashed on me yet, and is a lot faster than Firefox for me. Both launching and actually running.

I'm using it, and it almost literally looks like it was specifically themed for Linux Mint.

It isn't packed yet, but if I could find out how to make a mint file, I probably could easily.

I haven't found such a cool browser in my life. But it looks kinda slow, because of how cluttered it looks. I think this could replace firefox for Mint. But a web browser change is probably one of the hardest changes Clem would have to make if he ever considers it. A thousand thanks for sharing that app. It reminds me of this app in terms of innovation ( getmiro.com ). Its a real nice video app.

Cheers,
molom

[red-e-made]

I haven't found such a cool browser in my life. But it looks kinda slow, because of how cluttered it looks. I think this could replace firefox for Mint. But a web browser change is probably one of the hardest changes Clem would have to make if he ever considers it. A thousand thanks for sharing that app. It reminds me of this app in terms of innovation ( getmiro.com ). Its a real nice video app.

Cheers,
molom

I just now ran FF3 and Flock side by side, each with the same 4 sites open in 4 different tabs. Flock used slightly less memory. Also, you can copy/paste your extensions and plug-ins from Firefox and into their corresponding Flock folders. AdBlockPlus, for example, appears to work fine.

I have to agree with you about the cluttered appearance, but keep in mind this browser was created with social networking junkies in mind. So if you have accounts on MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Technorati etc., then this browser actually simplifies things for you. If, however, you're like me and are allergic to blogs, then the social networking features built into Flock won't really be much use.

[McLovin]

i tried flock, it wont resize for me:( it opens in a small window and i can't get it any bigger. oh well.