I'm finally getting a bit fed up with Firefox, for a couple of reasons:-
It's seems incapable of working with eBay without going to 100% CPU and slowly grinding to a halt.
The last few updates have made it *look* decidedly clunky.
Arcane configuration parameters required to make it so it can open files on one's local file system.
So, I've been looking at alternatives and there's not much that seems any better (they have different issues in the main).
I've been trying chromium and it certainly seems faster than Firefox and doesn't seem to grind to a halt on eBay, but:-
I want a separate search bar
You can't change the keyboard shortcuts
Is anything else any better? I've been wondering about Vivaldi, same underlying engine as Chromium but apparently much more configurable. Has anyone here tried it? I'm just a bit wary of going 'off piste' as it were (not in the Ubuntu repositories).
Have you updated to the new FF 57? It is supposed to manage memory better, certainly on my old desktop it currently has >50 tabs open (using the Tree Style Tab plugin) without any problems. Some of those tabs have been open for weeks, including a few Ebay ones. I suppose looks are subjective but I didn'e notice a change, it's just a window to do stuff in. One thing that would improve it and is being worked on is the ability to hide the tab bar when using the tree style tabs in a side bar.
There are issues with some older plugins not working with FF57 but those few I use are all fine.
--
Phil Thane
www.pthane.co.uk phil@pthane.co.uk 01767 449759 07582 750607 Twitter @pthane On Tuesday, 5 December 2017 13:26:18 GMT Chris Green wrote:
I'm finally getting a bit fed up with Firefox, for a couple of reasons:-
It's seems incapable of working with eBay without going to 100% CPU and slowly grinding to a halt. The last few updates have made it *look* decidedly clunky. Arcane configuration parameters required to make it so it can open files on one's local file system.So, I've been looking at alternatives and there's not much that seems any better (they have different issues in the main).
I've been trying chromium and it certainly seems faster than Firefox and doesn't seem to grind to a halt on eBay, but:-
I want a separate search bar You can't change the keyboard shortcutsIs anything else any better? I've been wondering about Vivaldi, same underlying engine as Chromium but apparently much more configurable. Has anyone here tried it? I'm just a bit wary of going 'off piste' as it were (not in the Ubuntu repositories).
On Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 03:05:28PM +0000, Phil Thane wrote:
Have you updated to the new FF 57? It is supposed to manage memory better, certainly on my old desktop it currently has >50 tabs open (using the Tree Style Tab plugin) without any problems. Some of those tabs have been open for weeks, including a few Ebay ones. I suppose looks are subjective but I didn'e notice a change, it's just a window to do stuff in. One thing that would improve it and is being worked on is the ability to hide the tab bar when using the tree style tabs in a side bar.
Yes, that's (as in version 57) what sort of what prompted my moan, Firefox still ground to a halt on eBay *and* (to me) it looked rather clunky *and* just about my only extension ("It's all text") stopped working.
However after faffing around for a while I discovered that the eBay slowness could be cured by setting Tracking Protection to 'Always'.
There are issues with some older plugins not working with FF57 but those few I use are all fine.
I've found an alternative to "It's all text" called textern, it's still a bit rough at the edges but seems OK and will, no doubt, get better.
** Chris Green cl@isbd.net [2017-12-05 13:27]:
I'm finally getting a bit fed up with Firefox, for a couple of reasons:-
It's seems incapable of working with eBay without going to 100% CPU and slowly grinding to a halt. The last few updates have made it *look* decidedly clunky. Arcane configuration parameters required to make it so it can open files on one's local file system.So, I've been looking at alternatives and there's not much that seems any better (they have different issues in the main).
I've been trying chromium and it certainly seems faster than Firefox and doesn't seem to grind to a halt on eBay, but:-
I want a separate search bar You can't change the keyboard shortcutsIs anything else any better? I've been wondering about Vivaldi, same underlying engine as Chromium but apparently much more configurable. Has anyone here tried it? I'm just a bit wary of going 'off piste' as it were (not in the Ubuntu repositories).
** end quote [Chris Green]
I know what you mean about the clunk look in Firefox, it has been gradually creeping towards Chrome which still feels like an interface in development to me. I've stuck with Firefox and am quite enjoying 57, although that is helped by the fact that the one feature I needed from an addon has a forked option that I have contributed to (all be it only in the documentation so far). It has always, for me, been notably faster and more memory efficient than Chrome, and bar a brief wilderness period between the end of Netscape and Mozilla when I used Opera as the only real option on Linux, I guess I've stuck with it.
One alternative you may like to look at is Brave. I've heard a lot of good comments about that, but I've not tried it myself yet. It isn't in the standard Ubuntu repositories, but if you are running a reasonably up to date version of Ubuntu you can install the Snap. With 16.04 on you should be able to just:
snap install brave --beta
With 14.04 you will need to install snapd first as it isn't there by default, but it is in the repositories:
sudo apt install snapd
I've just tried it on my 17.10 install and it seems to work without issues, there is a bit of a pause on the first run - presumably while it sets things up. I'll have to have a play later.
Have you updated to the new FF 57? It is supposed to manage memory better, certainly on my old desktop it currently has >50 tabs open (using the Tree Style Tab plugin) without any problems. Some of those tabs have been open for weeks, including a few Ebay ones. I suppose looks are subjective but I didn'e notice a change, it's just a window to do stuff in. One thing that would improve it and is being worked on is the ability to hide the tab bar when using the tree style tabs in a side bar.
There are issues with some older plugins not working with FF57 but those few I use are all fine.
-- Phil Thane
www.pthane.co.uk phil@pthane.co.uk 01767 449759 07582 750607 Twitter @pthane On Tuesday, 5 December 2017 13:26:18 GMT Chris Green wrote:
I'm finally getting a bit fed up with Firefox, for a couple of reasons:-
It's seems incapable of working with eBay without going to 100% CPU and slowly grinding to a halt. The last few updates have made it *look* decidedly clunky. Arcane configuration parameters required to make it so it can open files on one's local file system.So, I've been looking at alternatives and there's not much that seems any better (they have different issues in the main).
I've been trying chromium and it certainly seems faster than Firefox and doesn't seem to grind to a halt on eBay, but:-
I want a separate search bar You can't change the keyboard shortcutsIs anything else any better? I've been wondering about Vivaldi, same underlying engine as Chromium but apparently much more configurable. Has anyone here tried it? I'm just a bit wary of going 'off piste' as it were (not in the Ubuntu repositories).
On Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 04:36:52PM +0000, Phil Thane wrote:
Have you updated to the new FF 57? It is supposed to manage memory better,
Yes, that's what has given me the rather cludgy appearance I think.
certainly on my old desktop it currently has >50 tabs open (using the Tree Style Tab plugin) without any problems. Some of those tabs have been open for weeks, including a few Ebay ones. I suppose looks are subjective but I didn'e notice a change, it's just a window to do stuff in. One thing that would improve it and is being worked on is the ability to hide the tab bar when using the tree style tabs in a side bar.
There are issues with some older plugins not working with FF57 but those few I use are all fine.
One plugin I use isn't supported, the one that allows one to use an external editor on text areas in forms.
Have you updated to the new FF 57? It is supposed to manage memory better, certainly on my old desktop it currently has >50 tabs open (using the Tree Style Tab plugin) without any problems. Some of those tabs have been open for weeks, including a few Ebay ones. I suppose looks are subjective but I didn'e notice a change, it's just a window to do stuff in. One thing that would improve it and is being worked on is the ability to hide the tab bar when using the tree style tabs in a side bar.
There are issues with some older plugins not working with FF57 but those few I use are all fine.
-- Phil Thane
www.pthane.co.uk phil@pthane.co.uk 01767 449759 07582 750607 Twitter @pthane On Tuesday, 5 December 2017 13:26:18 GMT Chris Green wrote:
I'm finally getting a bit fed up with Firefox, for a couple of reasons:-
It's seems incapable of working with eBay without going to 100% CPU and slowly grinding to a halt. The last few updates have made it *look* decidedly clunky. Arcane configuration parameters required to make it so it can open files on one's local file system.So, I've been looking at alternatives and there's not much that seems any better (they have different issues in the main).
I've been trying chromium and it certainly seems faster than Firefox and doesn't seem to grind to a halt on eBay, but:-
I want a separate search bar You can't change the keyboard shortcutsIs anything else any better? I've been wondering about Vivaldi, same underlying engine as Chromium but apparently much more configurable. Has anyone here tried it? I'm just a bit wary of going 'off piste' as it were (not in the Ubuntu repositories).
Have you updated to the new FF 57? It is supposed to manage memory better, certainly on my old desktop it currently has >50 tabs open (using the Tree Style Tab plugin) without any problems. Some of those tabs have been open for weeks, including a few Ebay ones. I suppose looks are subjective but I didn'e notice a change, it's just a window to do stuff in. One thing that would improve it and is being worked on is the ability to hide the tab bar when using the tree style tabs in a side bar.
There are issues with some older plugins not working with FF57 but those few I use are all fine.
-- Phil Thane
www.pthane.co.uk phil@pthane.co.uk 01767 449759 07582 750607 Twitter @pthane On Tuesday, 5 December 2017 13:26:18 GMT Chris Green wrote:
I'm finally getting a bit fed up with Firefox, for a couple of reasons:-
It's seems incapable of working with eBay without going to 100% CPU and slowly grinding to a halt. The last few updates have made it *look* decidedly clunky. Arcane configuration parameters required to make it so it can open files on one's local file system.So, I've been looking at alternatives and there's not much that seems any better (they have different issues in the main).
I've been trying chromium and it certainly seems faster than Firefox and doesn't seem to grind to a halt on eBay, but:-
I want a separate search bar You can't change the keyboard shortcutsIs anything else any better? I've been wondering about Vivaldi, same underlying engine as Chromium but apparently much more configurable. Has anyone here tried it? I'm just a bit wary of going 'off piste' as it were (not in the Ubuntu repositories).
On 05/12/17 13:26, Chris Green wrote:
I'm finally getting a bit fed up with Firefox, for a couple of reasons:-
It's seems incapable of working with eBay without going to 100% CPU and slowly grinding to a halt. The last few updates have made it *look* decidedly clunky. Arcane configuration parameters required to make it so it can open files on one's local file system.So, I've been looking at alternatives and there's not much that seems any better (they have different issues in the main).
I've been trying chromium and it certainly seems faster than Firefox and doesn't seem to grind to a halt on eBay, but:-
I want a separate search bar You can't change the keyboard shortcutsIs anything else any better? I've been wondering about Vivaldi, same underlying engine as Chromium but apparently much more configurable. Has anyone here tried it? I'm just a bit wary of going 'off piste' as it were (not in the Ubuntu repositories).
My initial suggestion would be reopen firefox in safe mode and then see if it works OK. I have NO PROBLEM with ebay at all with firefox. If it works OK, backup your bookmarks, unintsall it, purge it & do a fresh install.
The most secure & supported browsers are firefox & chrome/chromium. If you move away from these you're likely to get a browser that doesn't respond as quickly to security issues.
There are of course many other browsers. I used to use Opera all the time. It's closed source but standards compliant & seemed reliable. Many people are talking about Palemoon now - it behaves like firefox used to.
Not quite sure why opening files on your local machine would be an issue.
Steve
On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 11:01:49AM +0000, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 05/12/17 13:26, Chris Green wrote:
I'm finally getting a bit fed up with Firefox, for a couple of reasons:-
It's seems incapable of working with eBay without going to 100% CPU and slowly grinding to a halt. The last few updates have made it *look* decidedly clunky. Arcane configuration parameters required to make it so it can open files on one's local file system.So, I've been looking at alternatives and there's not much that seems any better (they have different issues in the main).
I've been trying chromium and it certainly seems faster than Firefox and doesn't seem to grind to a halt on eBay, but:-
I want a separate search bar You can't change the keyboard shortcutsIs anything else any better? I've been wondering about Vivaldi, same underlying engine as Chromium but apparently much more configurable. Has anyone here tried it? I'm just a bit wary of going 'off piste' as it were (not in the Ubuntu repositories).
My initial suggestion would be reopen firefox in safe mode and then see if it works OK. I have NO PROBLEM with ebay at all with firefox. If it works OK, backup your bookmarks, unintsall it, purge it & do a fresh install.
That's a point I guess, there might be something in my system that's causing the problem. I have very few Firefox extensions though.
The most secure & supported browsers are firefox & chrome/chromium. If you move away from these you're likely to get a browser that doesn't respond as quickly to security issues.
Vivaldi is pretty close to chrome/chromium, uses the same extensions for example, so will mostly keep up with their security etc. I think.
There are of course many other browsers. I used to use Opera all the time. It's closed source but standards compliant & seemed reliable. Many people are talking about Palemoon now - it behaves like firefox used to.
Not quite sure why opening files on your local machine would be an issue.
It's a security thing, *links* to files on the local file system are not allowed from web pages . I.e. you can open a link file:///tmp/myfile by entering that in the address bar but you *can't* have a link to file:///tmp/myfile on a web page, it is silently ignored if you click on it.
There's a messy workaround in Firefox using 'capability.policy' settings (that's what I meant by 'arcane configuration parameters').
On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 11:54:14AM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 11:01:49AM +0000, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 05/12/17 13:26, Chris Green wrote: My initial suggestion would be reopen firefox in safe mode and then see if it works OK. I have NO PROBLEM with ebay at all with firefox. If it works OK, backup your bookmarks, unintsall it, purge it & do a fresh install.
That's a point I guess, there might be something in my system that's causing the problem. I have very few Firefox extensions though.
Here's what top shows me almost as soon as I search for something on eBay:-
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 32209 chris 20 0 2419636 623696 153632 R 115.6 7.8 1:13.40 Web Content 11127 chris 20 0 2631504 363904 109840 S 33.2 4.5 5:41.42 firefox
After that, it continues similarly until I leave eBay, then it settles back to normality. Re-open an eBay window and it goes back up to using a large proportion of my CPU (core I5, fairly fast).
... and I just tried firefox in safe mode, as soon as I hit eBay:-
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1539 chris 20 0 2218152 403968 152128 R 114.3 5.0 0:12.06 Web Content 1487 chris 20 0 2226416 318996 142412 S 37.9 4.0 0:08.75 firefox
If I leave eBay and go to (for example) Wikipedia:-
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1539 chris 20 0 2304840 243044 126516 S 8.0 3.0 1:10.36 Web Content
it's actually quite rare that firefox/Web Content gets up near the top of the 'top' display when it's working normally, like every other process it moves around. It's just eBay!
After looking at this I'm amazed at how directly it's linked to eBay, I sort of thought it was eBay before but now I can just switch the heavy CPU usage on and off by opening and closing a single eBay tab. If I spend a lot of time searching eBay I think things get so clogged that the only way out is to stop and restart firefox. It's only when I've tried opening a single tab and moving to and from eBay that the connection is so obvious. When you leave the eBay page it takes several seconds for the CPU usage to drop back to low/normal levels.
I guess I could simply use a different browser for eBay but that's not ideal.
On Thu, 2017-12-07 at 12:23 +0000, Chris Green wrote:
After looking at this I'm amazed at how directly it's linked to eBay, I sort of thought it was eBay before but now I can just switch the heavy CPU usage on and off by opening and closing a single eBay tab.
eBay compromised by a bitcoin miner?
https://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/2017/10/unit42-unauthorized-coin...
It's relatively straightforward to compromise an advert exchange to deliver malware instead of advertising.
Or it could just be shitty JS. Something "busy waiting", perhaps? Have you tried running eBay with "NoScript" installed? (Will it even woirk? Dunno.)
BTW, I've had similar problems with The Daily Telegraph in the last few days.
On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 12:23:20PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 11:54:14AM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 11:01:49AM +0000, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 05/12/17 13:26, Chris Green wrote: My initial suggestion would be reopen firefox in safe mode and then see if it works OK. I have NO PROBLEM with ebay at all with firefox. If it works OK, backup your bookmarks, unintsall it, purge it & do a fresh install.
I went through lots of things. As I said Safe Mode made no difference at all. I also tried disabling Flash and that made no difference either. Searching for other people with the same issue produces *lots* of hits! However one fix I found does work for me.
I simply opened a 'Private Browsing' window in Firefox and using that window eBay doesn't cause the CPU usage to go to 100% (or more). So it would seem that it's some of the tracking that goes on in eBay was what was causing the issue.
If I do *everything* in a Private Browsing will I be missing anything?
On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 05:37:51PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 12:23:20PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 11:54:14AM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 11:01:49AM +0000, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 05/12/17 13:26, Chris Green wrote: My initial suggestion would be reopen firefox in safe mode and then see if it works OK. I have NO PROBLEM with ebay at all with firefox. If it works OK, backup your bookmarks, unintsall it, purge it & do a fresh install.
I went through lots of things. As I said Safe Mode made no difference at all. I also tried disabling Flash and that made no difference either. Searching for other people with the same issue produces *lots* of hits! However one fix I found does work for me.
I simply opened a 'Private Browsing' window in Firefox and using that window eBay doesn't cause the CPU usage to go to 100% (or more). So it would seem that it's some of the tracking that goes on in eBay was what was causing the issue.
If I do *everything* in a Private Browsing will I be missing anything?
Even better, I don't need a Private Browsing window, I can just turn off tracking by enabling "Tracking Protection" always and that sorts out the excessive CPU usage on eBay.
On 7 December 2017 at 17:37, Chris Green cl@isbd.net wrote:
I went through lots of things. As I said Safe Mode made no difference at all. I also tried disabling Flash and that made no difference either. Searching for other people with the same issue produces *lots* of hits! However one fix I found does work for me.
I simply opened a 'Private Browsing' window in Firefox and using that window eBay doesn't cause the CPU usage to go to 100% (or more).
Was one of the things you tried deleting cookies? If not then give that a try. Private Browsing would avoid sending any previously stored cookies back to eBay so it's plausible that a dodgy cookie is causing this.
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