Many open windows make Firefox scroll **very** slowly

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

As I open more windows or tabs in Firefox it becomes slower and slower,
finally unusable.  It can take as long as 20 seconds to scroll the
screen, which tends to scroll in large jumps, even when smooth scroll is
enabled.  The problem is worse when smooth scrolling is enabled, but is
bad enough even when it is not.  Other applications seem to have
scrolling slowed somewhat when Firefox has many windows open.  The
problem seems to be related to flash, since when I kill xulrunner/flash,
graphics performance gets better, but still does not always become
acceptable.  Swapping between Firefox windows and tabs is normal.

It looks to me like a memory swapping issue, but I have no evidence
beyond my gut.

Right now Firefox has 30 tabs open on all its windows.  Performance is
bad, though not intolerable.

The system is:

        4 processor x86_64 system 
        Fedora-19 with all updates installed, 
        Firefox-25.0, 
        Nvidia GeForce 8400GS with the proprietary driver.


Any ideas what's going on, or how to investigate?

Many open windows make Firefox scroll **very** slowly [a little OT]

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Tue, 2013-11-05 at 07:02 -0800, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:

>  As I open more windows or tabs in Firefox it becomes slower and
>  slower, finally unusable.... 
While we're at it, does anyone have recommendations for good graphics
cards?  Pointers to good review sites?

Thanks - jon

[kevin martin]

On 11/05/2013 09:02 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  As I open more windows or tabs in Firefox it becomes slower and
> slower, finally unusable.  It can take as long as 20 seconds to
>  scroll the screen, which tends to scroll in large jumps, even when smooth scroll is
> enabled.  The problem is worse when smooth
>  scrolling is enabled, but is bad enough even when it is not.  Other applications seem to
> have scrolling slowed somewhat when Firefox
>  has many windows open.  The problem seems to be related to flash, since when I kill
> xulrunner/flash, graphics performance gets
>  better, but still does not always become acceptable.  Swapping between Firefox windows
> and tabs is normal.
>  
>  It looks to me like a memory swapping issue, but I have no evidence beyond my gut.
>  
>  Right now Firefox has 30 tabs open on all its windows.  Performance is bad, though not
> intolerable.
>  
>  The system is:
>  
>      4 processor x86_64 system
>      Fedora-19 with all updates installed,
>      Firefox-25.0,
>      Nvidia GeForce 8400GS with the proprietary driver.
>  
>  
>  Any ideas what's going on, or how to investigate?
>  
>  
>   
FWIW, firefox looks like it has a memory leak.  With something just over 50 tabs
open, my firefox was using 1.4G RAM and rising (was
watching it go up using top).  After stopping and restarting it (with the same just over
50 tabs) it's using about 400Mb RAM and
holding stable.  But in a day or so I'll look again and see that it's eating RAM
for all it's worth...there's even a comment on the
mozilla website about this:  "Firefox's memory usage may increase if it's
left open for long periods of time. A workaround for this
is to periodically restart Firefox. You can configure Firefox to save your tabs and
windows so that when you start it again, you can
start where you left off. See Restore previous session - Configure when Firefox shows your
most recent tabs and windows for details.
".  This comment can be found at
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-memory-ram.  So every now and
again a
restart of firefox is necessary it appears.  Wish they would do something about this.

Kevin

Many open windows make Firefox scroll **very** slowly [a little OT]

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 07:05:38 -0800,
   Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh(a)pacbell.net&gt; wrote:
> On Tue, 2013-11-05 at 07:02 -0800, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>
> While we're at it, does anyone have recommendations for good graphics
> cards?  Pointers to good review sites? 
How are you planning on using them?

Are you willing to use proprietary drivers?

Intel on die video devices seem to have the best drivers right now. They 
aren't as powerful as what you get with discrete cards, but depending 
on what you need they might be good enough.

Radeon support has gotten better, but I think it is still a good idea 
to avoid the last generation or two.

Nouveau currently has some significant limitations with regarding to reclocking 
with recent nVidia cards. If you want one of those, you probably are going to 
want to use the proprietary driver. If you get a somewhat older card, the 
Nouveau driver should be OK.

Neither Radeon nor Nouveau have the level of OpenGL support that the Intel 
drivers do.

Many open windows make Firefox scroll **very** slowly [a little OT]

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Tue, 2013-11-05 at 09:20 -0600, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
>  >On Tue, 2013-11-05 at 07:02 -0800, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  >While we're at it, does anyone have recommendations for good graphics
>  >cards?  Pointers to good review sites? 
All very good questions...

>  How are you planning on using them? 
Very straight ahead: Web
browsing, some video, office suite, text
applications, very little gaming, minimal 3D support.

>  Are you willing to use proprietary drivers? 
Yes.  I currently
use the proprietary nvidia drivers.

>  Intel on die video devices seem to have the best drivers right now.
> They 
>  aren't as powerful as what you get with discrete cards, but depending 
>  on what you need they might be good enough. 
Nice to know, but I'm looking for a
(discrete) video card to upgrade my
desktop.  My current card is a GeForce 8400GS, with which I replaced
GeForce 9500GT when its fan burned out.  As I remember it, the GeForce
9500GT had less trouble with Firefox, but there have been many changes
to other software.

>  Radeon support has gotten better, but I think it is still a good idea
>
>  to avoid the last generation or two.
>  
>  Nouveau currently has some significant limitations with regarding to reclocking 
>  with recent nVidia cards. If you want one of those, you probably are going to 
>  want to use the proprietary driver. If you get a somewhat older card, the 
>  Nouveau driver should be OK. 
How old is old?  Where is a list of cards that work
well with the
Nouveau drivers?

>  Neither Radeon nor Nouveau have the level of OpenGL support that the
> Intel 
>  drivers do. 
I assume you mean Intel **open source** drivers.  No?

Many open windows make Firefox scroll **very** slowly [a little OT]

[Tim]

Allegedly, on or about 05 November 2013, Jonathan Ryshpan sent:
>  My current card is a GeForce 8400GS, with which I replaced
>  GeForce 9500GT when its fan burned out.  As I remember it, the GeForce
>  9500GT had less trouble with Firefox, but there have been many changes
>  to other software  
Perhaps your easiest solution, then, is to replace the fan.

I've got a donated graphics card which had a seized fan.  So, it's
graphics operations got slower and slower until the original owner
didn't like it anymore (the card slows itself down, to avoid cooking
itself).

I just aimed a case fan across the whole card, cooling the whole card
better than the original fan which only cooled one heatsink.

-- 
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64

All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point
trying to privately email me, I will only read messages posted to the
public lists.

George Orwell's '1984' was supposed to be a warning against tyranny, not
a set of instructions for supposedly democratic governments.