this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
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Firefox

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I'm almost sorry to ask this, but does anyone have experience with Firefox on Linux taking a long time to open? I'm running Pop!_OS on a fairly modern machine. All other programs open pretty quickly, but Firefox seems to drag its feet on startup. Once it's open it's great, no problems with speed.

I have tried disabling extensions (ublock origin, sponsorblock, decentraleyes, i still don't care about cookies) and I have tried setting my default profile as one without any custom user.js (I have a profile with Arkenfox and one with Betterfox's user.js). Nothing I have done so far has seemed to make any difference, but Help->Troubleshoot Mode allows Firefox to open quickly, so there must be something that I can disable that is causing the issue... Any ideas? Thanks.

Edit: Seems like swapping to the flatpak version made things much faster. The Pop!_OS .deb version must be snap like you all said :) Thanks everyone!

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Do you know if its installed through snap? I've heard that can have issues starting up quickly. You can try the flatpak or the deb package.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Just checked, I'm using the deb package.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Okay, well switching to flatpak solved it. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I've always wondered why snap is so slow, I feel like launching a docker container with firefox in it would still be faster than snap.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Snap is basically a docker container with some frills.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If OP is on Ubuntu, it's a snap.

I personally don't have any issues launching Firefox, which is installed as a regular app and not a snap/flatpak. It's basically instant for me, maybe 2-3s if I have a ton of tabs or something. I haven't tried the flatpak, but I'd be surprised if it adds more than a second or so, because other flatpak apps launch reasonably fast.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

He is running Pop Os, they don't use snaps natively.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Snap is preinstalled though. Maybe something happened that caused it to get installed