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It's been like that for months. Chrome and Firefox are just horribly slow to start. It can take 10 minutes before Chrome is usable. But after these 10 minutes, I can do whatever I want with it and it's fast. But that 10 minutes is just the worst.

With my machines at work, I never had such problem, only at home.

What I've done so far: - Not restore my previous session (with 4-5 tabs opened), doesn't change anything - I checked "top" to monitor the CPU activity during that time, it never gets higher than 6-7% - Wait a bit after login in to actually start Chrome (maybe the slow part is happening somewhere else) - I installed a package (don't remember the name) that apparently helps booting frequently used app faster

I asked that question before, and no one could help. And it was with previous version of Ubuntu (13.04). So that problem was not solved by upgrading.

What can I do to help diagnose the problem? To give you more information so you guys can help me.

Thanks

[EDIT] The problem seems to be with Ubuntu itself and not the browser. When I boot my machine and go do something else for a while and then come back and login. The speed is okay. So that first 10 minutes, the problem is the OS. Also, everytime I first try to save a file (start downloading or save a new file from a text editor), it can take a while before the file dialog popup. But only the first time. It's like there's some bad stuff left somewhere that needs to be clean up before.

Any ideas?

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Usually Firefox problems are from some Add-on misbehaving, but it could be something else too. Here are a few things to try:

Safe mode

To not load any add-ons you can try to restart in Safe Mode:

To activate Safe Mode, click the Firefox menu, point to Help, and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled. You can also enter Safe Mode by holding the Shift key while starting Firefox.

... If Safe Mode works properly, the problem is with one of your add-ons. You may want to leave Safe Mode and disable add-ons one-by-one until you identify the add-on causing the problem.

Reset Firefox

Firefox’s Reset feature will create a new profile folder, migrating over your bookmarks, browser history, saved passwords, cookies, and auto-fill information.

You will lose your extensions, themes, search engines, and site-specific preferences when you reset Firefox.

To reset Firefox to its default state, open the Firefox menu, point to Help, and select Troubleshooting Information.

Click the Reset Firefox button.

Other options

  • Disable Hardware Acceleration (In Preferences/Options -> Advanced tab)

  • Update Software (plugins / extensions / firefox itself)

  • Check your computer’s RAM for errors (Memtest86+ from live cd/usb boot menu)

  • Finally, you could try disconnecting from your internet / nework before starting the browser.

    It probably shouldn't help but it might. When Firefox starts up (especially if I've cleared the cache) it will try to connect to every site I have an opened tab for. It's NOT loading each tab (doesn't do that until a tab's clicked on), but it DOES try and download the site's "favicon" (little icon that goes on the tab bar / tab) and that could take a while. Disconnectng the network gives an instant "can't connet" signal and may speed up loading.

[See this nice page with pictures for more info

[These instructions work for Firefox 28 (the current version in Ubuntu trusty's repos)]

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  • I disabled the GPU acceleration. It helped a lot. Could it be because I'm using the original nVidia driver as opposed to the nouveau driver?
    – widgg
    Dec 22, 2014 at 16:34
  • If it's easy to switch to the other one, give it a try & see?
    – Xen2050
    Dec 22, 2014 at 22:34
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Click the menu button and then click help 
From the Help menu choose Troubleshooting Information.

If you're unable to access the Help menu, type about:support in your address bar to bring up the Troubleshooting Information page.

Click the Reset Firefox… button in the upper-right corner of the Troubleshooting Information page.


To continue, click Reset Firefox in the confirmation window that opens.
Firefox will close and be reset. When it's done, a window will list the information that was imported. Click Finish and Firefox will open.
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  • "You will lose your extensions, themes, search engines, and site-specific preferences when you reset Firefox"
    – Xen2050
    Dec 21, 2014 at 17:03
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I had this same issue on Google Chrome and starting it with new configuration folder solved the problem. 

mv ~/.config/google-chrome ~/.config/google-chrome-bak

Then restarted Google Chrome. (At this time it creates a new configuration for google-chrome)

In order to get my bookmarks I copied back the Bookmarks file -

cp ~/.config/google-chrome-bak/Default/Bookmarks ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Bookmarks
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