Speed up your Firefox (Linux)
Hmmmm, Mozilla. The fast lane? I don’t think so. If you’ve been keeping up with all the recent Firefox developments, you might have noticed that Mozilla has been boasting the dramatic speed increase of the newest version of Firefox (3.5, see http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html). Firefox has always been my absolute favorite browser, but even with the newest version, I’m finding it to be very sluggish on my Ubuntu desktop, my parents’ XP desktop, and especially my new Eeebuntu Netbook (more on that later).
I’ve tried many things. I’ve searched the Internet for suggestions and tips on how to speed up my browser. The thing I dislike the most is how long it takes for a browser window to open (on my parents’ old XP machine, IE opens in 3 seconds, FF in 10). There are many Youtube videos, and long lists of items to tweak in your about:config. Well, I’ve applied every single one of the changes in that list, and I didn’t notice any difference!
But there is a way, as I’ve found out today: optimized Firefox builds. I’ve tried Swiftfox before, in fact I use it on my desktop (totally forgot I was using it 
). Swiftfox (http://getswiftfox.com/) calls itself the “Optimized Mozilla Firefox Build for Linux”. Swiftfox is pretty good, but their binaries are closed-source, so I like an alternative better: Swiftweasel. Swiftweasel is basically Swiftfox with the proprietary-ness removed (also some neat features added, see their website).
I downloaded their binary, and wow! I’m typing from Swiftweasel right now, and it opens tabs instantly, loads documents faster than I could’ve imagined, and opens in a blazing 2 seconds!
You can download Swiftweasel at http://swiftweasel.tuxfamily.org/. I’d encourage you to check it out.
