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I wish Mozilla focused more on Linux support. I tried switching to Firefox multiple times, and in day-to-day use I always keep running into unfixable problems l

I wish Mozilla focused more on Linux support. I tried switching to Firefox multiple times, and in day-to-day use I always keep running into unfixable problems like bad font rendering, slow webgl performance, ui glitches etc. Problems like this never happen when I'm using Firefox on Windows, and honestly the state of Firefox on Linux is kind of surprising since it's the most commonly recommended and preinstalled browser on Linux distros. Right now I'm using Chromium but I'd be eager to switch if there was anything better which could provide me with a fast and stable browsing experience.

20after4 3y ago
I'm using Firefox on Linux¹ and I have experienced none of those problems. Although I'm not particularly happy with the direction that Mozilla has been headed, Firefox is certainly a vast improvement over Chrome or even Chromium. 1. Latest version of Firefox (not ESR), Latest Debian, both Intel & AMD graphics. I can't speak for NVIDIA graphics on Linux as I gave up on NVIDIA a few years ago.
- 20after4 3y ago
  Admittedly there were a few issues in the past, just nothing in the last couple of years that I can think of.
  - kgwxd 3y ago
    I was on Linux for about 10 years without a single issues with Firefox until it was turned into a snap package. Slow as hell startup times and other oddities. Removed that and installed from apt and it was back to perfectly stable. Font rendering was always different but I wouldn't say worse. In fact, now that I'm fully back on Windows, the font rendering on Linux is the only thing I really miss. Windows seems a bit blurry in comparison.
- i_love_cookies 3y ago
  It depends on how Firefox was installed, snap and flatpaks are becoming the default for firefox on a few distros every variant of each that I've tried has those issues I usually have to download the developer edition from the website and setup a desktop entry for decent performance
- stavros 3y ago
  Agreed, I have the same experience. I switched to Vivaldi lately because of tab groups, I want to switch back to Firefox because Vivaldi has various annoyances but tab groups are keeping me from going back.
  - iimblack 3y ago
    Sideberry extension solves this for me
    - stavros 3y ago
      I'll try that, thanks! The issues I've had with tree-style tabs previously was that I use a portrait screen, so horizontal space is at a premium, and I can't afford a thick sidebar always showing.
- culi 3y ago
  The font thing in particular is interesting because Firefox is actually generally ahead of Chrome when it comes to most things related to fonts https://wpt.fyi/results/css?label=experimental&label=master&aligned https://wpt.fyi/results/css?label=experimental&label=master&...
bitcharmer 3y ago
> I always keep running into unfixable problems like bad font rendering, slow webgl performance, ui glitches Been using Firefox on Linux as my daily driver and haven't seen any of that. Can you provide any examples?
- bscphil 3y ago
  Admittedly there are a lot of variables here, and this may not be a fair test at all, but it's interesting to me that Firefox on Windows loads many web pages much faster (relative to Chrome) than Firefox on Linux loads those same web pages (according to Mozilla's own metrics). Take a look at IMDb, Imgur, LinkedIn, Netflix, Outlook, Twitter, Wikipedia on the following pages. In all these cases, using Chrome's performance as a benchmark, Firefox performs worse on Linux (often significantly) than it does on Windows. I didn't see any cases where Linux performs significantly better than Windows. https://arewefastyet.com/win10/warm-page-load/overview?numDays=60 https://arewefastyet.com/win10/warm-page-load/overview?numDa... https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/warm-page-load/overview?numDays=60 https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/warm-page-load/overview?num... Wikipedia is a shocking case (because it's such a simple site). Chrome loads Wikipedia in about the same time on Linux as it does on Windows (unsurprisingly). Firefox takes almost three times longer! Again, I don't have any way to get enough data to verify these numbers. They might be incorrect. But if Mozilla's performance metrics for Firefox on Linux are screwy, then doesn't it speak in favor of OP's point that nobody has looked into the issue and fixed it?
  - bitcharmer 3y ago
    I didn't notice it before but I think you're absolutely right about these websites. Thanks for sharing
hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
I can’t report any of those issues, my biggest gripe is Ubuntu forcing a snap package on to me
- ahartmetz 3y ago
  You need Firefox from the Mozilla PPA.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
    Yes I know, but requiring me to add a PPA purely because canonical want to push snap is toxically bad faith
davidgerard 3y ago
> bad font rendering would I be correct in guessing that you're using the snap? It's pretty, uh, garbage. The Chromium snap keeps having font problems too.
- tigrezno 3y ago
  this is fun because the snap works perfectly on my machine, and it's fast as the native version. I think the snap version is far better than running it natively (more secure). A web browser is a hacker's dream.
  - davidgerard 3y ago
    I specifically mean the font problem, where the system fonts weren't making it into the snaps. Seems to have resolved in recent weeks.
GeoAtreides 3y ago
I have been main driving Firefox on Linux for the past six years, on Lubuntu, without any kind of problems. None whatsoever. It's fast and it's rock solid stable. Edit: some people mentioned it's Firefox snap that has problems. I'm using the apt-get package one.
secondcoming 3y ago
Crappy font rendering is a Linux problem. The appearance of the same font in different applications can vary wildly. It’s really shit.
- tadfisher 3y ago
  The appearance varies widely because everything has incompatible layers on top of freetype, some of which respect your Freetype configuration and others which take... _ahem_... liberties. It also doesn't help when Mozilla and Google statically-link ancient font libraries in the name of security.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    Isn't linking to outdated libraries a security threat?
michaelmrose 3y ago
You need a robust font selection. With few options installed the replacements selected autom6for some are kind of shitty. On arch you can install ttf-ms-fonts other options are available.
jjav 3y ago
> I wish Mozilla focused more on Linux support. FWIW I use Firefox on Linux every day and haven't particularly noticed any difference from Firefox on Mac. Works pretty awesome on both.

20after4 3y ago

I'm using Firefox on Linux¹ and I have experienced none of those problems. Although I'm not particularly happy with the direction that Mozilla has been headed, Firefox is certainly a vast improvement over Chrome or even Chromium. 1. Latest version of Firefox (not ESR), Latest Debian, both Intel & AMD graphics. I can't speak for NVIDIA graphics on Linux as I gave up on NVIDIA a few years ago.

20after4 3y ago
Admittedly there were a few issues in the past, just nothing in the last couple of years that I can think of.
- kgwxd 3y ago
  I was on Linux for about 10 years without a single issues with Firefox until it was turned into a snap package. Slow as hell startup times and other oddities. Removed that and installed from apt and it was back to perfectly stable. Font rendering was always different but I wouldn't say worse. In fact, now that I'm fully back on Windows, the font rendering on Linux is the only thing I really miss. Windows seems a bit blurry in comparison.
i_love_cookies 3y ago
It depends on how Firefox was installed, snap and flatpaks are becoming the default for firefox on a few distros every variant of each that I've tried has those issues I usually have to download the developer edition from the website and setup a desktop entry for decent performance
stavros 3y ago
Agreed, I have the same experience. I switched to Vivaldi lately because of tab groups, I want to switch back to Firefox because Vivaldi has various annoyances but tab groups are keeping me from going back.
- iimblack 3y ago
  Sideberry extension solves this for me
  - stavros 3y ago
    I'll try that, thanks! The issues I've had with tree-style tabs previously was that I use a portrait screen, so horizontal space is at a premium, and I can't afford a thick sidebar always showing.
culi 3y ago
The font thing in particular is interesting because Firefox is actually generally ahead of Chrome when it comes to most things related to fonts https://wpt.fyi/results/css?label=experimental&label=master&aligned https://wpt.fyi/results/css?label=experimental&label=master&...

bitcharmer 3y ago

> I always keep running into unfixable problems like bad font rendering, slow webgl performance, ui glitches Been using Firefox on Linux as my daily driver and haven't seen any of that. Can you provide any examples?

bscphil 3y ago
Admittedly there are a lot of variables here, and this may not be a fair test at all, but it's interesting to me that Firefox on Windows loads many web pages much faster (relative to Chrome) than Firefox on Linux loads those same web pages (according to Mozilla's own metrics). Take a look at IMDb, Imgur, LinkedIn, Netflix, Outlook, Twitter, Wikipedia on the following pages. In all these cases, using Chrome's performance as a benchmark, Firefox performs worse on Linux (often significantly) than it does on Windows. I didn't see any cases where Linux performs significantly better than Windows. https://arewefastyet.com/win10/warm-page-load/overview?numDays=60 https://arewefastyet.com/win10/warm-page-load/overview?numDa... https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/warm-page-load/overview?numDays=60 https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/warm-page-load/overview?num... Wikipedia is a shocking case (because it's such a simple site). Chrome loads Wikipedia in about the same time on Linux as it does on Windows (unsurprisingly). Firefox takes almost three times longer! Again, I don't have any way to get enough data to verify these numbers. They might be incorrect. But if Mozilla's performance metrics for Firefox on Linux are screwy, then doesn't it speak in favor of OP's point that nobody has looked into the issue and fixed it?
- bitcharmer 3y ago
  I didn't notice it before but I think you're absolutely right about these websites. Thanks for sharing

hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago

I can’t report any of those issues, my biggest gripe is Ubuntu forcing a snap package on to me

ahartmetz 3y ago
You need Firefox from the Mozilla PPA.
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
  Yes I know, but requiring me to add a PPA purely because canonical want to push snap is toxically bad faith

davidgerard 3y ago

> bad font rendering would I be correct in guessing that you're using the snap? It's pretty, uh, garbage. The Chromium snap keeps having font problems too.

tigrezno 3y ago
this is fun because the snap works perfectly on my machine, and it's fast as the native version. I think the snap version is far better than running it natively (more secure). A web browser is a hacker's dream.
- davidgerard 3y ago
  I specifically mean the font problem, where the system fonts weren't making it into the snaps. Seems to have resolved in recent weeks.

GeoAtreides 3y ago

I have been main driving Firefox on Linux for the past six years, on Lubuntu, without any kind of problems. None whatsoever. It's fast and it's rock solid stable. Edit: some people mentioned it's Firefox snap that has problems. I'm using the apt-get package one.

secondcoming 3y ago

Crappy font rendering is a Linux problem. The appearance of the same font in different applications can vary wildly. It’s really shit.

tadfisher 3y ago
The appearance varies widely because everything has incompatible layers on top of freetype, some of which respect your Freetype configuration and others which take... _ahem_... liberties. It also doesn't help when Mozilla and Google statically-link ancient font libraries in the name of security.
- flangola7 3y ago
  Isn't linking to outdated libraries a security threat?

michaelmrose 3y ago

You need a robust font selection. With few options installed the replacements selected autom6for some are kind of shitty. On arch you can install ttf-ms-fonts other options are available.

jjav 3y ago

> I wish Mozilla focused more on Linux support. FWIW I use Firefox on Linux every day and haven't particularly noticed any difference from Firefox on Mac. Works pretty awesome on both.