How to Make Firefox Faster on Linux Mint

efthialex
  11 years ago
  88

Note

Before making any changes, please make a backup of .mozilla/firefox/--------.default/prefs.js for your own safety. prefs.js is a file that stores all of your history and bookmarks from Firefox.

 

  • First open Firefox.

 

  • Type "about:config" (without quotes) in the Firefox address bar and then click "Enter". This command opens a configuration page that allows the user to change advanced system settings in Firefox.

 

  • Speed up page loading/rendering time in Firefox. Right-click anywhere in the "about:config" window, click on "New" and then select "String". Name the string "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" (without quotes). Enter a value of "0" and then click "OK". This tweak decreases the amount of time Firefox waits to render a page from 250 milliseconds to zero. Make the same process and name the string "content.notify.interval" and enter a value of "0".

 

  • Force Firefox to release reserved system RAM when the browser is minimized. Right-click anywhere in the "about:config" window, click on "New" and then select "Boolean". Name the entry "config.trim_on_minimize" (without quotes). Change the value to "True" and then click "OK". This setting forces Firefox to only reserve about 10 MB of system memory while minimized.

 

  • Normally Firefox only sends one or two tunnels to the website. However, the more tunnels you use the faster you go. To change this, type in filter bar "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" and change the value to "150".
    Attention: The more tunnels you use, the more bandwidth you use, meaning you could use as tunnels as you want but that would probably kill the sites bandwidth if everyone did that. 150 is a very good value.

 

  • Type "network.http.pipelining" in filter bar, and set it to "True" by double clicking it.

 

  • Type "network.http.proxy.pipelining" in filter bar, and set it to "True" by double clicking it.
Comments
pinewheel 2 years ago

2017: Pipeline support was completely removed in Firefox 54. With the advent of HTTP/2 and other speed enhancements, pipelining of HTTP is no longer useful to maintain.


fquansah 7 years ago

Really Cool configuration tip.
Good work


Yarus-Arsene 9 years ago

Thanks a lot it works but the speed hast increase that much cause when streaming online the video stills buffers and take much time before reading and stops at time.
but when surfing the web the speed is much faster.thanks


teXew 10 years ago

2) for "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" 8 will be enough! - more is not necessary!

Iv tryed 8,4 seconds load page,tryed 10 3.5 sec load page,and when i tryed 15 iv got 3 seconds which is plenty fast for me.If i go above i get the same 4 or higher seconds resault,try which one works the best.
I havent increased the piplelining above the default,iv just set it to true and please be sure to ignore that TRIM command above,its not usefull.
Mozilla 27. Linux mint 16 Mate (64bit)


JVdiaz 10 years ago

very usefull, it does work, I have an older computer(intel pentium dual cpu at 2.0 GH, whit 993 on RAM) and firefox was taking forever to open pages and new tabs, whit this tweak now is running way faster than before, thanks a lot :)


baba 11 years ago

hey thankz man...it worked


limitingfactor 11 years ago

Good tips -thanks.
For info, I'm running Mint 14 and the pipeline.maxrequests parameter is defaulted to 32. I left that the same; I also didn't set content.notify.interval or config.trim.on_minimise, having read through some of the posts below. I set everything else as per the tutorial, and FF is definitely faster - thanks :)


Zymsmith 11 years ago

Seems faster with the tweaks...thanks for the post!


amad7 11 years ago

Thank you soo much for dat infooo!!!!!


efthialex 13 years ago

@DJCrashdummy:
Thanks for the tips.


DJCrashdummy 13 years ago

nice... some well known settings for most experts!
BUT:...
1) "config.trim_on_minimize" will only have an effect on windows-systems! - and it also can slow down your whole system if it's swapping all the time!
2) for "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" 8 will be enough! - more is not necessary!
3) values below 100000 (120000 is the default) for "content.notify.interval" can also increase the page-loading-time and slow down your system!
4) maybe you can also tweak "network.http.max-connections", "network.http.max-connections-per-server", "network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server" and "network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy"!? - i don't post values for these settings because everyone knows it better and has his own "right" settings!

--> for everybody who wants to know more about the "hidden" mozilla-settings look here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries


ivy_s 13 years ago

Nice one.


efthialex 13 years ago

@westcoastsunset:
I don't get offended, but in your previous comment you didn't mention the Bank of Amerika, you just say Banks. I'm from Greece and i have full access on my local banks. ;)

One more thing, you can report an issue, this is why this forum gives you the opportunity to comment. ;)


westcoastsunset 13 years ago

I'm not concerned about losing preference data. Yes I could have made a backup, but I would just have been backing up the default state anyway, which I felt was pointless. But I can tell you that on a linux platform, when I made the changes in the article, I could not log into Bank of America's website to check account balances. Not a big deal, I simply restored Firefox's default state. I also decided to research what some of these changes actually do and this is what I discovered about a couple of them.

You should not get offended If I'm reporting an issue with this tutorial or pointing out that some of them only have an affect on windows since the windows operating system has a vastly different memory manager.

I really could not log into my banks website and that should not offend you. I was simply trying to be helpful. I thought this was a forum to discuss issues pertaining to linux mint.

I know that it was these changes that kept me from logging in since I had another laptop running windows and I could log into Bank of America from there. I also have the chromium browser installed and I also had no problem logging into Bank of America from that browser on linux. Next time I will not be so helpful.


efthialex 13 years ago

@westcoastsunset

First you wouldn't lose your data from firefox if you had a made a backup, before making any changes.
Secondly, this tut work out for a lot of people, some of them are my friends and they don't have any problem.


westcoastsunset 13 years ago

config.trim_on_minimize only works on windows, does not have an effect on linux platforms. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Config.trim_on_minimize

I had trouble getting into my banks website when making these changes so i had to delete my prefs.js file. this will reset firefox back to program defaults but you lose all of your settings and homepage

It should also be noted that firefox is only capable of 8 network pipes, so a high value like 250 will have unknown effects. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.pipelining.maxrequests for more info


blueXrider 13 years ago

Forgotten fixes. I used this back in 2004. Thanks for the reminder. :)


stanlee 13 years ago

tx ;) !!!


DJ_KIM 13 years ago

ok, what do you do when the only monitor you have is one that the screen width/height is 800 x 600, and when you open FireFox, it changes everything to black & white and crashes? I have a "new" monitor on my Windows computer, but only have use of a very old monitor for the Linux at this time. Is it the monitor that is causing FF to do this, or is it just FF that don't like the monitor? Any ideas, help, suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

And especially thanks for this post, as it will come in handy in the future when we get a new monitor for the Linux.


sayan_acharjee 13 years ago

Awesome trick. thanks :)


Tolkayn 13 years ago

awesome tutorial =)


thirdeye 13 years ago

Just in case: it might be a good idea to backup the config file before making changes.

In your user home directory (showing hidden files)

.mozilla/firefox/[xxxxxxxx.default]/prefs.js


efthialex 13 years ago

@HATRED tipota file mu, eyxaristo gia tin ypostiriksi.


HATRED 13 years ago

euxaristo re alex :)


mdraja 13 years ago

thnx 4 sharing .....it's really cool


loukoumas 13 years ago

it's working!


KJK0 13 years ago

thnx!!!


Tonya 13 years ago

It works! Great! Thank you very much!


Boringbytes 13 years ago

Thanks for this tutorial, its been very helpful.


DarkTower87 13 years ago

Very nice! Thanks for the settings.


AbeFreeman 13 years ago

Very significant performance improvement. Makes previously pokey sites like Yahoo come up very quickly indeed. Thanks so much for sharing this info.


Ioseph 13 years ago

Awesomesauce


zaenal1234 13 years ago

very good.


efthialex 13 years ago

@mikefreeman Ask the Mozilla Team. ;)


mikefreeman 13 years ago

Very cool! Why aren't things like this default?


Elisa 13 years ago

Yep, for most geeks well-known settings :-)
Another tip to have a stable and unbelievable-quick light browser: get&install; Dillo :-))
Compile it from (it's easy, really ;)): http://www.dillo.org/download.html

Or try some compiled .debs ;) from:
https://launchpad.net/~d.filoni/+archive/dillo/+packages
...from that page u can add your deb sources as well...

Enjoy! ;)