I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.x on SuSE 10.0 and Fedora FC2 and did not have a single crash for month. But I'm not using Yahoo Mail.
I recommend to install the Adbock and NoScript extension. Both increase security and may increase stability. Although, I can't promise it will fix your problem.

Tdot: I suspect your usage patterns are very different from mine. I can't use Yahoo! Mail without Javascript. The NoScript extension is the very last thing I ever want to install. It would reneder too many sites which are important to me useless.

Yahoo! Mail is a very popular site. If Firefox didn't crash there I'd have an annoyance instead of a serious prbolem. If I dropped the Hebrew language websites I'd have a lot fewer crashes still. Do you visit any such sites? I'd bet not.

Could the problem be Javascript? In a large part that is entirely possible, It still needs to be fixed before Firefox will ever be useful to me.

I use Firefox 1.5.0.2 on FC5 and Ubuntu Dapper very heavily and have not noticed any Firefox specific crashes. I know that the most frustrating thing to hear is "It works for me", so I'll tell you the things I have noticed that can make Firefox crash quite consistently:

- Flash. Flash 7 on Linux is so horribly broken that Macromedia (now Adobe) shouldn't be able to keep a straight face when talking about it. My primary platform is x86_64, so I can't get Flash and FF is very stable. I have Flash installed on my 32-bit machine and I get a fair number of Flash related crashes. Loading a page with Flash content on Linux is like playing Russian Roulette... it may work 5 times and crash the 6th.

- Java. Sun has been talking about open sourcing Java for years but until they do, the Java plugin for Linux is next to worthless. The reason: distributors can't rebuild Java or the plugin to match the compiler and libraries on each distribution. Symptoms of a mismatch include random freezes and crashes when a Java applet tries to use the Java->JavaScript bridge to interact with the browser.

Since you have to typically make a special effort to install either of these plugins on Linux, you would probably know if you did. If you disable these and it still crashes, then I'm out of ideas.

One thing: It looks like you are primarily using KDE. Almost all of my experience is with Gnome. It's one of those things that shouldn't make a difference, but you never know.

Yes, Flash and Java are installed. Yes, I need those for sites I visit. Java is, for certain, installed in Opera as well and it almost never crashes.

I don't generally run KDE or Gnome when I'm using an English language though both are installed on most of my machines to allow me to run specific apps that require one or the other. I mostly run XFCE nowadays. When using a Hebrew desktop I'm usually in KDE. I don't think this is at all desktop-environment specific.

Let me make one point really clear: disabling features and functionality is not an acceptable answer since I can get it all to work in other browsers.

The fact that it is a non english web site, doesn't make the problem less relevant. The usage numbers of Firefox are higer outside of the USA (If I remember correctly), and Mozilla should gurentee not to make localization and related issues less relevant. This bias will only work against it.

Right now, Firefox sucks on Linux in many ways - mainly integration with the desktop. For BiDi users, there's a nother issue: when using Hebrew (and maybe Arabic) key board, some of the most important keyboard shortcuts (Ctl+C, Ctl+A, Ctl+V) don't work. You have to switch back to English to copy and paste (using the keyboard). This is absolutely outragoues, and it makes Open Source look redicullous. If I can not copy and paste on an average Linux desktop, why even bother talking people to switch?

This post is mentioned on Linmagazine, btw. The problem with Yediot Haronot is well known and much discussed (not to say frustrating).

The problem is most likely plugins or extensions. I recommend not using java and flash in your general-purpose browsing and run another instance, e.g. 'firefox -noremote -p [profile]', that does have those extensions specifically for java and flash sites.
Personally, I never have a problem with firefox since I stopped using greasemonkey and google-toolbar.

As per the Yediot Haronot problem (seem more like a compliance issue):

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=322288

I don't have any of the issues with Firefox on Linux...
A while ago, I had some random crashes, but it seems to came from a corrupted Firefox profile (at least, I manage to resolve those crashes by creating a new Firefox profile. Of course, it's not the best solution at all).

However, a thing which is _really_ annoying (if you Firefox behave correctly :p ) is the difference of speed under Linux vs. Windows : it's terribly slow on Linux :/
Loading pages take a lot of CPU, displaying Page info window take much longer, etc. I really hope those things will become better one day ...

ps : running Firefox on both Linux (Debian x86 & x86_64) and Windows plateforms

Regarding the speed (or lack thereof) of Firefox under Linux, yes, I've blogged about that before. Opera, Konqueror, and even Epiphany, which is based on the Mozilla gecko engine, are all significantly faster at rendering web pages.

My complaint about Konqueror is all the KDE baggage that comes with it. Opera, at least until recently, wasn't Open Source. (Is it now? I don't even know.) Despite my defense of using propreitary software when there is no good or legal alternative which got me flamed roundly in my previous post, I do prefer to use Open Source Software whenever possible.

If YNet (Yediot Ahranot) has compliance issues (which wouldn't surprise me) I stil argue that the fact that it works properly under Opera and Konqueror means it *should* work under Firefox as well. Ditto Yahoo! Mail.

Ted, thanks for showing me the link on the Hebrew Linux Magazine website. Very nice :)

I'll stress my main point again: I have no doubt I can make Firefox work if I start disabling things or, better yet, simply stop visiting offending websites. The point is that other browsers work fine with exactly the same websites and functionality. That, by definition, makes Firefox an inferior browser, does it not? Firefox was the only browser that was gaining mindshare against IE. Doesn't anyone else see it's failings as serious?

I just hope Opera 9.01 starts gaining some traction.

I use firefox 1.5 in Ubuntu and Kubuntu PPC (and OSX). I have used both Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Mail Beta in each. Not a single problem or crash that I can recall. It's very fast on a 733 G4 w/just over 1 gig of RAM (although I think Camino edges it on OSX). Since I have Java turned off (always, on every browser) and there is no Flash plug-in for PPC Linux, I agree with other comments suggesting your problems are most likely related to one or the other.

The FlashBlock extension is worth looking into ... it lets you control Flash and won't have much of an impact on browsing. I've never found a reason to run Java in a browser, but I think there's an extension that lets you switch Java on from the Status Bar when you need it. Sorry I don't have a link.

And, of course, it's always important to support open source projects by taking the time to file bug reports. Although it's possible in this case that Adobe and Sun have some work to do too ...

OK, just for my own curiosity I cleaned out my plugins folder leaving only libnullplugin.so in place. That means all plugins are gone for now. I then tried to use firefox again.

It took a while, but YNet still crashes Firefox. It took much longer to crash Yahoo! Mail as well, as in I actually thought that might have been fixed. I then began adding plugins back, one at a time. Flash Player 7 makes things really, really unstable. It *is* part of the problem, but it isn't the whole problem. With plain vanilla Firefox I still had three crashes.

Bottom line: Yes, Flash for Linux sucks. Bad Adobe. Firefox for Linux? Still broken, even when used with no plugins at all. It's just not quite as badly broken. Clearly you can't just blame this on Sun or Adobe. Some of the blame has to go back to mozilla.org.

Finally, if we want people to migrate from Windows to Linux things that peolpe use everyday MUST work just as well in Linux as they do in Windows. That includes Flash.

While consulting with a large company not too long ago, my job duties had me fairly close to the Adobe Flash group. As has been widely publicized, they *are* working on Flash player 9 for Linux. I've heard it straight from them that they are aware of the stability problems and that improving stability on linux is high on the priority list of things to fix. Of course, that was in response to me saying that I could not recommend their new Flash tools for the client until they got their porting problems straightened out.

I don't spend much time on non-English websites, so I can't comment on that front. With regard to your regular crashes, I can only say that it hasn't been my experience. Over the past 6 months I have done very heavy and intensive JavaScript development on FF/Linux. Sometimes I switch to Opera because the error reporting is better, but in general, I have found FF/Linux to be the most stable. I can generally keep the same FF instance up for *days* through numerous development iterations. Eventually it will slow down from what I can only figure is memory fragmentation, but in my recollection it has never crashed. OTOH, I can generally crash Opera quite easily (or at a minimum reduce it to a weeping, crying mess). Now I'm not trying to argue from the position that it works for me so it must work for everyone, but I am trying to point out that it can work and in fact does for a great many of us.

Regarding Opera being more stable with the plugins, my gut feeling is that they did a couple of things to help here:
- Used the same lowest common denominator GCC version that Adobe and Sun used to build Flash and Java respectively.
- Statically linked in a lot of libraries

In theory, the same can be done for Firefox. I HAVE heard reports that Firefox with the plugins runs much more reliably on the older Linux distros (think FC2) which are built with these older compilers and libraries. What would be really nice is if someone built a binary version of Firefox, compiled in exactly the same manner as the binary only plugins that are out there... make it similar to Portable Firefox on Windows so that you could just drop it in your home directory and run.

Anyway, I'm done rambling...

the most likely problem is missing or corrupt fonts, or something in the plugins folder that shouldn't be their.

I have seen missing fonts crash a linux machine reliably. (by that I mean, every time a i started an app that used a specific font, the entire machine locked hard 100% of the time.)

Can you try with a completely new profile, and post the address of the page that causes the problem?

Caitlyn,

This also is an issue depending on how the browser is installed (as well as how java/flash/etc are installed). It could be caused by not having a symbolic link to the correct path for jre...the package could have been faulty when put together. Who knows.

I've had no problems using PCLinuxOS and FF with any of the websites you mentioned, NOR Yahoo Mail. I'm running PCLinuxOS .92 updated to current. Why don't you grab the recently released .93a at distrowatch.com and give it a try?

Currently with Kubuntu 6.06, my Firefox 1.5.0.5 is as stable as its ever been. I just arrived in the Kubuntu world, and its been really nice to have a distro which always works, especially after I suffered through some difficult Debian "Sid" months.

My baby uses Firefox for her Yahoo! mail, and has never had a problem with that site. I also have zero extensions installed, but I do have the plugins available with Automatix.

I've noticed some video (usually *.wmv) can cause Firefox to crash (when using the Kaffiene/MPlayer plugin) and that Java too has caused me many issues in the past, even when Java works in other browsers fine.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=366278&highlight=firefox

Good luck and let us know if anything comes of your issues.

My missus uses Firefox constantly, for eBay and much other stuff, and it doesn't crash. Mandriva 2006.0 Free, if you're curious.

For file management, I (and she) use Konqueror. Un-beatable! (-:

Currently up to mozilla-firefox-1.0.6, so I'll try updating that and see if it breaks.

Version 1.5.0.4 on Mandriva 2007.0beta (Thor) seems to run stably. Do you have a URL which reliably breaks yours?

I don't think this is a pure Firefox problem you are talking about. First of all, I'm using Firefox (always the latest) on a Debian Etch box. I can even remember when was the last time I had less than 3 windows with a total of around 60 or more tabs open at the same time. Additionaly I also have 16 extentions installed. I browse all kinds of web site, though I have to admit, Yahoo! mail isn't one of them. I prefer to stay away from Yahoo and Microsoft web sites in general. But, back on topic, my Firefox never crashed for months.

I do have an idee though what are typical weaknesses of Firefox. For one, if a single component or even and external process crashes it's very likely it will bring down the whole of Firefox with it. This often happens with badly configured media players, or mallformed data feeded to them. Sites using ActiveX compenents and do not have properly coded fall-backs for Linux, which does not have this sub-system (luckely), happen to crash Firefox from time to time, without any single point of failure to find. I still don't know why this happens, nor did I get any satisfying answer from the mozilla dev team on this problem. Just don't forget it's pretty easy for a web server to generate code that will crash Firefox (but Operara and MSIE aren't safe from it either).

Another common cause for Firefox to crash, if ever, are terribly designed web sites. Take it from me that the size or revenue of a company has no relation with the technical quality of their web sites, not even if they earn their money with them! Jsut have a look at the Leak Monitor plugin (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2490/) and you will get an idee of what I am talking about. Though these kind of leaks generally don't make Firefox crash on themselves, the can cause crashes in combination with other leaks or just by sheer number.

I was able to read my Yahoo! Mail messages on Firefox on my Slackware machine. I didn't encounter crashing when reading my Yahoo! Mail messages. I using 1.5.0.6.

I use Firefox 1.5.0.x on Mandriva 2006.0 and have not had any crashes like you mention at all - this us under KDE. I use Yahoo Mail with no problems and just tried the Yediot Ahranot site, only briefly - no problems at all, except that I can't understand much ;-/

One thing is that I clear my FF cache most days and this may lessen problems. There seem, from what I can see on various newsgroups, quite a few Firefox problems fixed by clearing the cache. It's certainly worth trying in your case.

Rob

i strongly recommend you install the crash recovery extension: http://sessionmanager.mozdev.org/crashrecovery/
this has been a lifesaver for me several times, since i usually have many tags open.

although i experience crashes rarely they do happen, and they do make me wonder about the quality of firefox, so while firefox may be better than IE it is certainly not the most stable application out there, at least not on linux, which i find rather disappointing.

btw: regarding the noscript extension, the point is not to block all javascript entirely (you can already do that now), but to control where javascript runs on a site-to-site basis. you start with 'javascript off' everywhere, and when you see missing functionality, you just find the noscript icon in the bottom left corner to get a menu to turn on javascript for the site that needs it.

the advantage is that you can turn it on very selectively. pages often include images from foreign sites (usually ads) coming with their own javascript that does nothing useful for the functionality of the site. with the noscript extension you can block those, while allowing javascript only for the main site that needs it.

ironically, this site right here needs javascript for the preview, but thanks to the noscript extension i can now allow it for www.oreillynet.com, while still blocking it for ad.doubleclick.net and ypn-js.overture.com.

I use suse 10.1 and ubuntu on a number of machines and the only crash I have experienced is with flash - once I remove flash plugins the browser never crashes - but lately I haven't experienced any crashes even with the plugin.

I suggest filing a bug with flash and ask them why they continue to treat linux as a second class citizen.

I recommend other technologies from flash just because of this subject. if they want their technology to be used on the net then they need to spend the money and develop for ALL platforms - period end of discussion.

It must be a frustrating bummer to keep getting posts that talk about Firefox running fine.

In my home we have used Knoppix(5.0.1)/Firefox(1.5.0.3) with several PCs/chipsets and have found it to be reliable, generally. Flash can be a problem.

Two of our users are non-technical. Still, we have have very few problems with Yahoo mail. We use various options and attachments, and still no crashes.

Our users include an adolescent who utilizes every possible opportunity to dramatize life's little frustrations. Number of complaints about Firefox 1.5.0.3 and Yahoo mail crashing: zero. (Yes, there have been rare complaints about other sites.)

This particular comment is cause for pause... "I've talked to friends who run Firefox on Windows and it?s stable on that platform, even on Yahoo! Mail. On Linux, however, it is totally unstable to the point of unusable."

While there are critical posts here and there, there is scant evidence in forums of this "total" instability. It is curious that one of your reputation and experience would use this rhetoric to support your complaint. One might suspect that it is frustration doing the talking, and not objective reflection.

At this point, certainly you can appreciate that many of us have no idea what the cause of your problems might be. However, if you try Knoppix, you might find that Firefox 1.5.0.3 does work OK.

I have used firefox 1.5.x on Linux for a long time and also rarely get crashes (one every few weeks maybe). However I:don't use Yahoo Mail so can't exactly compare.have two installation of firefox on my system. One with plugins installed and one without. I run normally without plugins they shutdown one and start the other when I really need plugins. This isn't about Firefox crashing but for security reasons (plugins can be a rich source of exploits). I guess this isn't exactly normal usage but I don't experence frequent crashes under either.

I've been using Yahoo! Mail with no problems at all. I now have v.1.5.0.5, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Again, I just haven't experienced any problems.

Caitlyn, it's not a fix as much as a workaround, but you might want to try Tab Mix Plus. It'll save off your current pages and snap back to them when you re-open in the event of a crash.

Lessee.. the URL is https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1122/

I run Debian. I have no crashes.

Firefox 1.5.0.2 on Centos 4.3 works just fine (no crashes) on Yahoo mail

Gee... I've been using Firefox for a couple of years, and most of what I see is improvements in reliability. I use Yahoo Mail, Earthlink mail, and Currently, I'm using SuSE 10.1, Gnome, Firefox 1.5.0.6 (just upgraded yesterday from 1.5.0.5), Biostar board w/nVidia chipset (integrated ethernet, graphics, sound), 1.8GHz AMD 32-bit processor, DSL connection and a router. The biggest problems I see boil down to one word "Microsoft" - mostly because of really lousy output from FrontPage.

Yes, there are some "quirks", and some things I might change, but the reliability seems to be very good. I don't use ANY browser on the Windows side, as I don't really want to have to re-install windows when something comes in and attacks that partition.
Count me as a very satisfied Firefox/Linux user.

Caitlyn,

I happen to have Xubuntu 6.06 available on a server at home. I'll try to remember to fire it up tonight and see if I have problems with Yahoo Mail. I tried for about 5 min to get Flash installed the other day, and it didn't work, so my install is still completely clean at this point. :)

Also, in reference to gee's post, there's a handy extension called the Preferences Toolbar (http://prefbar.mozdev.org/) that I find quite handy. Can allow you to turn on/off quite a few "features" on the fly. Can itself be toggled (visibility) via the F8 key as well.

This is odd. I'm running Ubuntu Dapper with Flash and Java and quite a few extensions and I'm not having any stability issues at all. And I use Yahoo! Mail Beta, and just checked an old non-Beta account over the weekend with no problems.

First off, this isn't a font problem. No other application is impacted. This isn't a distribution specific problem as it happens on three different distributions. "It works for me" is a thoroughly unhelpful answer as I can generate as many crashes as you like. Firefox being useless to me at the time I wrote this was not "rhetoric". If I can't even check my mail without an almost immediate crash that is truly unusuable, is it not? Now that we've eliminated 90% of the comments lets go back to the 10% that are actually useful.

1. Flash is a big part of the problem. Removing the Flash plugin reduced crashes by about 90%. That takes Firefox from unusable to just plain annoying. That's still in the not good enough category as far as I'm concerned. Also, now lots of sites tell me I'm missing a plugin. Let me remind you that Opera + Flash *DOES* work without crashes. While that may, as some pointed out, not a pure Firefox issue it also raises the point that Firefox is far less fault tolerant that Opera.

2. The issues with the Yediot Ahranot website are well documented and, as Ted correctly pointed out, a Bugzilla issue exists for it. Again, those who say "it works for me" are ignoring the fact that it doesn't work for a lot of people. Yes, it can be a website non-compliance or design issue. YNet doesn't crash Opera or Konqueror yet it crashes Firefox. That tells me, once again, that Firefox, as of 1.5.0.4, is insufficiently fault tolerant.

3. Having or removing other plugins (other than Flash) seems to have no impact. There is nothing untoward in my plugin directory.

4. I will upgrade to 1.5.0.6 next and see if that makes a difference.

I am using firefox on Linux and Windows and the last few releases have all crashed on both platforms. Media content seems to be a theme here with myspace pages causing the most crashes.

all of distros, you mentioned, have gnome support compiled into firefox. use build from mozilla.org ftp's. they work MUCH stable.

Caitlyn,

I know this doesn't help you, but I couldn't get it to crash. I'm running vanilla Firefox v1.5.0.5 on a server install of Ubuntu 6.06 with the xfce-desktop installed. Sounds like I don't use Yahoon Mail as heavy as you, but I bounced all around in it with no problems.

I did have a thought though... are you using an alternate theme of any sort? Believe it or not, I've seen a lot of discussions on the Mozillazine forums about bad or outdated themes causing probs with Mozilla browsers. (I guess if you've tried a clean profile, this is not an issue)

Anyway, sorry I couldn't confirm your problem on another system.

all of distros, you mentioned, have gnome support compiled into firefox.
use build from mozilla.org ftp's. they work MUCH stable.

Not so. Vector Linux 5.1 Standard doesn't even offer Gnome packages. They offer XFCE, KDE< and Fluxbox. Further, my crashing Firefox on Vector did come from mozilla.org. Nice thought, but not the problem here. Again, I'll report back once I've done an upgrade.

Im not sure why I even try to use Linux anymore? I am using XUBUNTU and have the same trouble with Firefox crashing. It may be because I have been trying to get Java and Flash Player to work too. I can certainly see why Linux has not caught on with the general public. These problems would simply drive the average person back to Windows, even with all its security holes. At least you can get your browser to work correctly.I think the Linux world should STOP creating more linux distro`s and get together and make one really good one!

I don't know how you setup your system, but I didn't encounter such hang at all, you are one in the million I think.

Caitlyn,
I have experienced similar crashes after installing Baghira theme for KDE.
I highly suspect a windowing theme, FireFox theme, extension or profile that is the culprit. Firefox became very stable after I uninstalled Baghira.

--
Hani
SuSe 10.0 (KDE)

I've also been using Firefox on Ubuntu 6.06 with compiz and XGL, not a hitch. Never had a crash with Firefox.

talk for yourself. have been using firefox on linux for a while and never crashed. not as fas a i remember.

A couple of things. Something someone already mentioned in the comments was a corrupt profile. Have you tried to make a fresh profile and see if the crashes continue? I've seen profile-related crashes before, so I wouldn't be surprised.

Another thing I would ask is if you see the same stability problems on more than one machine? It may be a hardware issue; maybe the RAM in your machine. I'm pretty sure Ubuntu installs an xmem86 option in the boot menu; maybe run that overnight and see if your RAM is okay.

Uninstall flash.

I recommend to use an official Firefox build on http://www.mozilla.com/ if you haven't done so. I often find the builds provided by distributions are broken and crash with unreasonalbe reasons, but official builds are more stable.

I don't see Blackdown Java mentioned here...might be worth a try if you're using Sun's Java?

I've noticed this problem ever since version 1.2 (or whatever came after 1.01) of Firefox. I use it on Windows (at home XP Media Center and Ubuntu Breezy and Dapper and at work - W2K server). I vote for the almost always crash on Y! mail problem (and I'm not using their beta). I'm suspecting the problem is with Y! mail and not with Ffox though as it works fine with most other websites I use. A coworker at work has also seen the exact same behavior.

Since firefox > 1.0.6, I'm often getting suffered from upgrade firefox. It just crashed for no reason, maybe the javascript on some webpage is stupid, but crash does't make any sense, and BTW: mozilla nerver crash on the same webpage.

I did what Caitlyn do exactly, reinstall, clean personally setting, restart, then crash on same page again, and mostly the crash issue were fixed in next firefox mionr upgrade, but could we just make this happen in every first major release, like what mozilla do?

Almost every Firefox crash I've ever had has been Flash or Java related. Installing "FlashBlock" and "QuickJava" to selectively enable them only when I need them has reduced my crashes to about once or twice a year, and I even use experimental nightly builds most of the time.

I use the beta of firefox 2.0 and that has been running fine for me, I didn't have problems with the 1.5 versions either. That said I browse without javascript or flash running (I have noscript allowing sites such as gmail and others I want). I also do not have the mplayer plugin as I don't like embedded video, preferring to download only the videos I want to watch.
In regards to a copy past issue someone mention on linux I have to say that I don't think I have used ctrl-C/V for copy and pasting from firefox as linux automatically copies what you highlight and a middle click will paste it.

I use the official linux builds from mozilla.org. Ubuntu's builds I've especially had problems with, which led me to adopt this tradition of never using the Firefox that came with the distro. They're slow, heavily patched, and built with experimental (unstable) features enabled.

I spend 8 hours a day working on a Fedora Core 5 system with Firefox and a couple dozen plugings installed. The brower is always running and can't remember at any point having an issue like this or any other sort. The same can be said for previous versions of Fedora+Firefox. One or two crashes tops.

I don't know what platforms you're running - Firefox on my 32 bit Duron system and 64-bit Athlon system running Dapper 6.06 LTR runs just fine, and has never had a crash since Dapper was released - all of my upgrade cycles went by smoothly. Perhaps there's a misconfiguration somewhere?

With the exception of some specific builds (1.5.0.5 for instance) I rarely ever have a Firefox crash. The three most major causes are bad extensions (ones I assume are Linux compatible but aren't), specific websites (which seem to be discussed at length here) and those inexplicable times when Firefox won't close properly (same happens everywhere I go). Yahoo Mail doesn't give me any grief unless I use the new beta version (which I can't find any reason to use). The situation for Java and Flash are the same across the board for all Linux browsers, and although I am not defending Firefox, I would sincerely like to know if people just aren't putting enough pressure on Mozilla to fix them?

One possible reason that I do not run into any more issues then I do with other Linux browsers is that I turn off all the caching I can in Firefox; I notice no slowdowns, but I am on a basic cable connection.

First, you should really be on 1.5.0.6. There are several known buffer overflows that could easily be exploited with the version you are running.

As for the crash, in my experience they are almost always related to:

1) Flash crashes - I'd recommend flash blocker. This requires that you click a flash cell to play it disabling the flash but not removing the functionality. Frankly, I don't know how anyone surfs without it as I can't stand all the adds done in Flash these days.

2) JavaScript memory leaks - From some of your followups, it sounds like you are visiting some sites that aren't careful about cleaning-up browser memory leak references. Both IE and FF suffer from these types of leaks and web designers (although they shouldn't have to) must be careful not to cause them. Really, it's an issue with most browsers and there isn't much you as a user can do.

Finally, as to your point "The point is that other browsers work fine with exactly the same websites and functionality. That, by definition, makes Firefox an inferior browser, does it not?", I'm afraid you are wrong. Firefox (and to a good extent Conqueror) is highly W3C standards compliant. The vast, vast majority of sites are broken to accommodate IE. The fact that IE works with said sites does not make it a better browser, simply a prevalent one.

For the record, FF is quite fast on my machine and never crashes.

WHY IS THIS ON DIGG! GDMN DIGGTARDS!

I use Firefox on Fedora Core 4 with KDE and access Yahoo Mail all the time. No issues at all.

What kind of browser extensions do you have installed? Those, like bogus device drivers in Windows, are often the source of memory leaks and crashes...

I just clicked on the link for that Israeli newspaper, and it loaded just fine. I can't read it, but there's no crash or malformed content as far as I can tell.

I can tell you how I got stability on Kubuntu. Yes I've noticed the same maniacal fun you are 'enjoying', and yes I was frustrated. Then I did the following.

1. Move $Home/.mozilla to $Home/mozilla and let the new version of mozilla create a fresh new "home".

2. Move back in my bookmarks and secured passwords, and/if needed.

3. Get rid of flash 7, buy crossover office and install flash 9 (windows version). (btw flash 7 bit no matter what OS IMHO)

4. Re-install those extensions you use. I too had a .mozilla dir that started life somewhere around pheonix and the result was a valiant but futile attempt by mozilla to keep up. This home had in fact been on MDK Debian and ELive Linux systems prior to Kubuntu. It really was time to clean house.

Hope the above works as well for you as it does me. BTW some sites will crash and crash hard mozilla, most of those sites I've found are using activeX heavily and This doesn't go to well or, they have been coded so poorly it's hard to call them html.

Some things to try, Knoppix, Kanotix, live distros to see what happens?
I hope you're running as a limited user. Open the control center (KDE)
and then Appearances and themes, then Colors, then check the Apply
colors to non KDE applications. Just a thought. You can also install a
control center applet called "GTK styles and fonts" and monkey with that.
Or as mentioned earlier, there is a problem in your /user/.firefox profile?
Try one of the Gnome desktop live distros maybe? I have Kanotix (live)
installed to hdd (the Easter addition) and it works OK on the sites.

I have a machine running Ubuntu and firefox crashed so much I had to start using Konqueror. how annoying.

I compiled firefox on a gentoo system using gcc 4.0 and I have never, ever had a single crash for any reason. Plugins and extensions work great, flash with sound via oss and everything. A suggestion to the author is hose your firefox installation and recompile it from source.

is it crashing when u open yahoo mail?
then the problem is with adblock extension, not firefox.

Also, make sure that your libjava*.so in your plugin folder is a link back
to it's home in *j2re* in /usr/lib and not a copy of the shared object file.

Bye

To be honest at this point, the common factor seems not to be the browser, the distrobutions, but the user. What are you doing that is killing Firefox?

It may not actually be that firefox itself is causing the crash... the mplayer-plugin, and sometimes the flash plugin has issues with certain websites forcing firefox to either lock, or just flat out close itself. Most of these "random" crashes i have found involve websites with embedded windows media video/audio formats, and some types of scripts that are all over myspace (stupid myspace kids copying and pasting things that they have no clue what it does). getting the correct codecs for the mplayer plugin can fix most of them, but there are still a few issues.

I'm going to add to the long list of comments in the hopes that my thoughts will be noticed and perhaps appreciated. In the same way that you chastize people for commenting that their installations of Firefox on Linux are stable and for further saying that they think that the majority of installations are likewise stable, you cannot say that Firefox "is totally unstable to the point of unusable" (Martin), because, in the same way, you cannot speak for everyone. This opinion piece of yours simply states your personal experience. In fact, I am having a hard time understanding your reasons for publishing such a personal experience, especially when it seems to mostly consist of frustrated whining. My advice to you is not about Firefox. I would simply ask that you consider more carefully what "news" you really need to share with the world.

Addendum: Unfortunately, I did not realize that the "website" text area in the comments box was automatically linked to. It redirects to a website that I have no affiliation with. My appologies.

Run a computer cluster w/Dapper Drake and Firefox is rock solid. Same at home on ~x86 Gentoo.

One of your extensions sucks or you have bad ram. Disable your extensions.

In the future, GOOGLE

I'm run Firefox on linux for a long time. On Fedora Core 3,4 and 5, SuSE 9 - 10.1. SLED 10, Kubuntu and Ubuntu. My current choice is Ubuntu 6.06.

The only time I have had stability problems with Firefox is when I've been running the official nVidia driver for my GForce 6600 video card. When I was, sometimes it would frezze the entire system and require a hard reboot to recover. It seemed to be a problem with handling fonts. I have never had a problem in Firefox with the xorg "nv" driver.

But even this problem seems to have dissapered with recent updates for Kubuntu and xorg. I am happily surfing with not only the official nVidia driver, but XGL/Compiz 3D desktop enabled as well. I'm using the latest Quinn packages.

I just went to Yahoo Mail and checked my accounts and to the Yediot Ahranot site and had no problems. I have Flash 7 and Java 5 installed and they have caused no problems of any kind for me.

If you are using the nVidia driver, I would suggest making sure all your system updates are current, or just going to your xorg.conf file and relplacing the line under devices that says "nvidia" with "nv", the xorg driver, and see what happens. If you aren't running any 3D games, the 2D performance hit is slight.

Just an idea. If you are not running the nVidia driver this last piece of advice is irrelevent:)

I've used yahoo! mail hundreds of times over the last 3 months with the new firefoxes on debian which I guess should be the same as ubuntu's and never a crash. You should disable the junks like javas and flash, they aren't neccessary for most sites and only bog things down. Install Adblock and Noscript if you want to allow certain sites access to java and flash (whitelist), otherwise blacklist all sites unless you deem they're reasonable.

To those who dismiss the crashes I have experienced or call me "one in a million" please think about this:

1. A bunch of people have commented that they have experienced the same problems I have. That means a significant but real minority of Firefox users have problems and mozilla.org does have to deal with that if they ever want their browser to be popular or even dominant.

2. Those who say things like "don't run flash" or "don't visit badly designed sites" are, at best, being unrealistic.

3. Imagine if you called for support on whatever and the response on the other end was "it works fine for me". Would you be happy with that level of support? I think not.

I've now upgraded to 1.5.0.6 We'll see how that works.

Not having Flash is a really bad idea. Too many sites I visit regularly use it. I've reinstalled the Flash plugin. If Firefox can't work with Flash then Firefox can't work for me, period, and I'll stick with Opera or Konqueror. They work, period.

For me it was the opposite problem... In Ubuntu, pre-1.5 versions of Firefox were horrendusly buggy, and prone to huge memory leaks. Since 1.5, things have gotten much better. I suspect it is related somehow to the specific things you do (Java, hebrew sites, etc) and that it's due to bugs in underused Firefox code. Hopefully this article will bring that to attention and it will be fixed quickly.

I'm using Gentoo on KDE 3.5.2. Didn't experience crashes with Yahoo!Mail.
Could it be your java version? The one I am using is Sun's JRE 1.5.0.06. Supposedly 1.4.x doesn't work with FF.
FF sometimes goes into a 100% CPU loop though. Happened on both Windows and Linux, so imo, is not really a Linux problem.

It's not just Linux. I use WinXP, fully patched, no bugs and FF crashes at least twice a day and requires a restart or process kill once or twice.

It's just going downhill.

was using f/fox 1.0.04 in breezy and kanotix rc4 for several hours a day
had no problem with either,reason i am replying is i use yahoo mail au
and have no problem tho i do use ad block and update.
both are deb ian sid based tho.
peter

I'veen using Firefox since the beginning. I ran all versions of Firefox 1.5 on Fedora Core 5 and am also a frequent user of Yahoo! Mail. It never crashed.

Just a note... before you blame the browser, I would suggest disabling or even uninstalling your extensions to see if that is the problem. I have 76 extensions currently installed, and had ZERO problems with the sites you mention. I am chalking this FUD to operator error.

Works fine for me under Ubuntu 6.06, I browse all sorts of sites. You probably have bad ram, or a messed up extension.

I'm actually an Opera user, but I use Firefox here and there to test out sites, and I haven't had any problems with it, even with nightly builds. The only time Firefox crashes is when accessing a page with java.

Strongly recommend you upgrade recently versions.
I'm currently running Firefox 1.5.0.6 on Ubuntu Linux 5.10 and It is very stable.

Its probably your extensions that are screwing things up. For me FireFox 1.5.0.5 is fast and stable and I'm using an ancient computer on a 2 year old installation of Gentoo.

I've never, ever, had a problem with Yahoo! Mail, and I've seen Firefox crash maybe a dozen times, at most. I'm running a fully-patched Fedora Core 4 install (kernel release 2.6.17-1.2142_FC4) with the mozilla.org build of Firefox/1.5.0.6. The following plugins are installed, and I don't use any extensions:

Java(TM) Plug-in 1.5.0_07
Shockwave Flash 7.0 r63

The only website that gives me problems is MySpace--it loads so slowly that it's basically unusable.

i can hardly believe it within 10 minutes of my posting a comment on this forum this site crashed firefox 1.0.5 running on kanotix rc4!!
http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/04/sun-mcnealy-education-cx_gl_0804autofacescan02.html
im thinking java but seems odd!
browser completly dissapeared not frozen!!

yeah. ff was quite stable before... I use ff on terminal/amd64/Debian testing and after I open more than 20 ish tabs it just eats all memory and slowly spirals all the system downwards. Heard that removing extensions might help. Tried - same results. Opera and Konqueror just renders some pages unusable. Im quite dissapointed in ff - I would say ff makes open source a bit ashamed. However Win version (my friends use it) works just fine with something like 50 ish tabs opened.

I am running Firefox 1.5.0.5 on Ubuntu, Slackware, FC5, and Windows.
I have flash installed and enabled, I have java working as well.
I also have a multitued of plugins installed.

I have about 37 tabs open, from slashdot, digg, this site, ynet ( though I can't tell what I'm doing ), a Zimbra webmail system, gmail, and Yahoo Mail Beta.

I have attempted to navigate the ynet site, but since I can't read it, I just randomly click links. For the past hour, I have not had the browser crash on me.

This probably doesn't help, but unfortunatly I can't replicate your issue, nor can a few others I know. Maybe it's a 1.5.0.4 issue that your having and the upgrade will fix it. Good luck.

I've been using Firefox (various versions from 1.0.x to 1.5.0.5) on Linux for over a year now. I've used it on SuSE 10.1, Fedora (FC4/FC5) and Ubuntu 6.06. No crashes. No problems. I use FF with Yahoo! Mail along with Noscript and Adblock (You can tel noscript to temporarily or always allow a domain.)

I have sites that I visit where java and javascript are a must. I also visit a lot of flash-enabled sites. No crashes.

Perhaps this bodes bad as it seems the user experience varies widely.

I use both FF and thunderbird to access my gmail.

It would seem that my experience is much different from yours.

apoligies for prevous post firefox version is of course 1.5.0.5
my bad.

You should try reinstalling Java and flash clean. I had the same problem and this fixed it right up. I'm also using Gnoome which may be the issue. I spent a few weeks using Galleon instead of Firefox until I resolved the issue. Really, every browser out there has its advantages and disadvantages. In the end it's all a matter of taste.

Wow. I haven't had firefox crash regularly since pre 1.0 releases. I use linux exclusively (Arch and Gentoo but the distro souldn't matter) and use firefox heavily most of the time with the tabbar full. It's a good idea to not load it up with plugins, I only have adblock+ and flashblock. One thing that is annoying, however, is that the javascript engine is incredibly slow for some reason. This has become annoying since AJAX is all the rage these days.

I agree with the people who blame Flash. You may need it for some sites, but you don't need it on yahoo. Use noscript to block flash on yahoo, and I bet you'll see your problems gone. Noscript is not all-or-nothing, you can tell it what to turn off and for what sites.

It is easy now to know who to blame since Flash and Acrobat are both produced by the same company. Even on Windows, even in IE, in every version including the latest, Acrobat Reader used to view PDFs inside a browser has caused crashes especially with dialup.

Have it occurred to you that maybe it's Linux that's broken? I use FreeBSD - and have no problem with Firefox.... OK, joke aside:

First: Don't blame Mozilla Firefox for broken Java and Flash. These suck, but they are not the responsibility of Mozilla. I have never EVER seen a flash application that provided added usability or information: Some few games are fun, but in general flash is a waste of time and annoying. In fact I believe anyone who waste time developing flash intros are not serious about their business, and anyone who waste my time with a flash application will not get my business. To me, disabling flash is an enhancement of the browser. The mere possibility is a reason to choose Firefox.

Second: There is still a lot of broken sites out there - these are mostly the sad result of the last browser war, eventually web developers just checked with IE and didn't care about buggy code. Some browsers are more tolerant in their interpretation of java script (IE), and some are possibly better handling errors (Opera?). But tolerance of buggy code leads to more attack vectors for badware.

The NoScript extension is useful. You can allow all sites, if you have problems with one site you can disable JavaScript for that particular site. Often you will see that the site loads scripts not only provided by that site, but also others. Then you can disable one by one.

Usually I disable foreing scripts - or actually, I am paranoid about security so I have java script disabled by default. Then I enable teh script when something doesn't work. In the beginning this may be annoying, but after a while Ive been to the sites I usually visit. And, the fact that I can disable stuff again enhances my productivity - time is not wasted on running buggy scripts.

You argue that untill it works properly people won't switch. Probably you are right. But should they? Let people waste their time - as long as they don't waste mine. Really, it doesn't matter what system you run - what matters is that the data formats are interchangeable - then anyone can run what they prefer.

Forget about Linux advocacy and open source, let people run what they feel comfortable with. The discussion that will make people independent of Windows and give them the choice is on open formats and open protocols. The succes of e-mail and the web relies on these - and not on any platform in particular.

I'm currently using Firefox 1.5.0.5 on Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 and I have not had a single crash. It could be your profile or an extension causing your browser to crash.

I had problems with yahoo mail! as well till I downgraded 1.0 something, basically back to the default version that came with scientific linux. This also meant that I had to spend 3 hours reinstalling my extensions, setting up passwords and configuring greasemonkey scripts. I run an older version of flash, as newer versions crash intermittently my 64-bit system.

Have you tried re-compiling without pango? this make some of the problems go away (apparently), though not the binary only plug-in problems. Your yahoo mail has pop enabled ?(it is if you have premium account), till the thing gets fixed, better use thunderbird.

You claiming that Firefox crashes all the time is just as subjective as me saying that it doesn't. So here goes: I've very rarely managed to crash Firefox on Linux, and i've been using the combo for 3+ years.

Hi, sorry, but just because you don't know how to configure your system correctly, or how to update your extensions, doesn't mean that FireFox is broken.

Look here for some helpful tips:

http://digg.com/software/Why_Is_Firefox_For_Linux_So_Terribly_Broken#c2612383

Try Debian and use the stable firefox from the stable apt-get repositories -- it never crashes!

Kinda late to the party here, but I'm surprised no-one has suggested you run strace and check the output.

strace -o /tmp/firefox.out firefox

You may get a lot of output but if you can consistently crash Firefox, it should indicate where the problem is occurring. If you don't understand the output yourself, you could post it and hopefully someone will point out what it says.

I've been using Firefox for a long time and it works fine. I use Yahoo! Mail a lot with no problems. I may not be helping here, but have you tried one of the bootable CDs like Knoppix or SLAX? If you can reproduce the crash using either of those, then I'd say the problem is on the website side, since the bootable Knoppix has been hammered to death for stability by now.

I guess it sucks when all you want to do, is browse your favourite site, not debug some problem. But I feel I can safely say that the vast majority of Firefox users do not experience the problems you are having, so it suggests that it's not a Firefox problem per se, but some combination of factors that causes the problem.

In reply to Ted's whine about cut & paste. It works fine under Linux. It just works in the normal X-Windows manner .. you highlight want you want with the left button and paste with the middle. All that ctrl-X/C/V rubbish is a MS-windows horror that I abhore everytime I'm forced to use MS-windows.

Thts exactly the reason why I begin to hate beeing in the computer business. There are a hell of possiblities why your firefox ain't working for you: bad hardware (ever checked your memory with memtest?), bad disk (ever heard of solaris zfs and theirend to end checksumming) and so on.
Despite this, your decision "pro linux has reasons": never have had any problems with windows, eh?!
Like it or not: human beeing make mistakes and software HAS bugs. Ever counted the typos you (or all the posters including me) have made in their posts?

Get over it - move on, post the bugs on bugzilla or switch to another platform. But stop posting stuff like: "totally broken"! TIt doesn't help anyone - including yourself.

Regards,

Frank

try swiftfox (getswiftfox.com)
Swiftfox is an optimized build of Mozilla Firefox for Linux. It is compiled for AMD processors including Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Duron and Sempron. The 1.5.0.6 release is based on Firefox 1.5.0.6.
It works faster and smoother than firefox. It picks up all the settings of your exising firefox installation too...

It is often the user who is in charge of software crashes... Not the software itself!

Try using swiftfox, a processor specific version, see if that solves your problems. Never had a problem with firefox crashing on ubuntu 6.06 LTS. Though I have disabled java, restricted javascript, and have adblock plus, filterset G and noscript extensions installed. You can allow sites to run unresticted with both adblock plus and noscript.

That said I don't have flash installed. Which as others have pointed out is broken.

I am using Yahoo Mail Beta in Ubuntu 6.06, and have never had a problem. I got a warning once, telling me there may be problems with the beta software on Linux, but it works fine. The only site that doesnt work is launchcast, and that dosnt cause it to crash.

I may not be able to offer any suggestions for fixing it, but I can tell you that I use yahoo mail in firefox uder linux quite often. I have never had the browser crash once. This story is inaccurate.

Use swiftfox although I never had problem with vanilla firefox on ubuntu, it works as well as on windows

I am using Firefox 1.5.0.3 on Ubuntu and Xubuntu Dapper. I can not confirm that my firefox built crashes on any website not even on Yahoo Mail. But it has some serious font rendering issues. It ignore many fonts particularly fonts for bidi, hebrew, arabic and Urdu Languages. Websites in these languages and fonts render perfectly on Firefox for Windows.

Long ago, I along with other friends who use firefox on different linux distros, filed a bug report (#321952) on bugzilla. but still we haven't seen any progress on that. We see similar bugs in Epiphany but Galeon seems to work fine. I am using Galeon to browse Urdu websites but it is really painful for me to use different browsers for different websites. So I am also considering to use Konqueror or Galeon as my primary web browser.

You're just too stupid to configure it correctly!
Firefox on linux is extremely robust and stable, and amazingly fast. Most sites crash firefox on linux due to the conversion to flash 9, while linux is still on 7. You just need to google around a little and it's quite easy to fix!

wow this lady has no idea what she is talking about it has been usuable in linux forever.

Check your extensions. I find that it not the browser but some really bad extension programming. Yank the whole thing out (firefox) and run it without the extensions. Put the extensions in one at a time and see which one hooks the browser.

I surf the same sites as you (maybe not as frequent as you), but I've never had any of these weird chrashes.
Maybe you have some kind of linux virus.
It's weird...

I use Firefox on Kubuntu, and while it does crash sometimes, it does not crash nearly as predictably or as often as your describe.

Try using ubuntu or kubuntu. It's not so easy as to say "firefox is unstable". The problem could be a library problem with your linux, or similar. Or may be your java installation... who knows: may be you need a sysadmin fixed your problem.

If you're running a ton of extensions, remove them all.

Looks like nobody reads the original message or any of the comments.

--

Phil

I use Firefox in my Debian Sarge (Stable), Firefox is solid as rock, using 1.5.0.6 downloaded from firefox site, I don't use the Debian's Firefox.

I'm big fan to say that the problem are the distros and they unstable enviroment (compared to sarge).

But I usually prefer to say that are some extensions that are a little unstable, so, I hope you check that your extensions dosen't be the problem.

Epiphany sucks, Flock is unstable by nature.

Not only for linux mind. Solaris and OpenBSD too. Ive just switched to seamonkey. I dont care for most of the swishy firefox features anyway.

Since you apparently have ready access to other browsers, perhaps you could just use one of them instead of firefox... it's not like anyone is forcing you to use FF. Use the right tool for the right job... FF is better than most on Windows, use FF on Windows... other browsers are more stable on Linux, use other browsers on Linux. FF may be the poster-boy of open source, but that doesn't mean its perfect, and it certainly dosen't mean that you have to use it.

But what about your favorite FF extensions? Deal with it. I'm sure you made due without them before FF. Which ones do you use that you cannot go without.

Speaking strictly for myself (from the comments, it's clear that others' mileage varies), I haven't seen a reliably stable release of Firefox on my Linux boxen (Mandrake 9.2, Ubuntu Dapper) since v1.0.7. These are clean installs -- no plugins, no extensions, no themes -- and they have been without exception slow and crash-prone. No apparent rhyme nor reason to the crashes. I'm sure that my systems are at least partly to blame; nevertheless, it has been extremely frustrating when FF showed such early promise. I've been using SeaMonkey for the last few weeks without much trouble at all.

Debugging problems between Firefox and Flash is by no means an easy task, as far as I can tell. The Flash plugin is closed source. The crash occurs within the Flash plugin (IIRC), but Firefox must be aggravating it in some way.

I use Yahoo Mail daily with FF 1.5 on SuSE, Ubuntu and Fedora and have NEVER had it crash. I would tend to think you are having some other problems. Perhaps memory allocation, or you installed some buggy extensions?

Please reference https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/helix-player/+bug/49299 There is a bug in in Dapper's helix player, that is probably the culprit of the problem. It will cause a crash, and I know it to be true - I filed the bug report.

If this isn't the problem. Have a local LUG remove the plugins and add them back in the name of troubleshooting, (while frequenting the site).

I'm using Firefox in Ubuntu for the past 1.5 years and didn't have any crash. Ubuntu is the default desktop at home and I use that to access Yahoo mail, hotmail, gmail etc and didn't have any problem. It never crashed on any website. It may not show or play certain things, but never crashed.

I use FF heavily most of the time more than 30 tabs at a time) for hours. On Kubuntu Dapper 6.06 FF 1.5.0.5 crashes on certain sites (eg. login into Alibaba). On my Gentoo, even with 15 extensions, it's no problem. I think it has something to do with javascript or java...

I've been using 1.5.04 on a mepis 3.4 box, that was recently changed to a full debian unstable box. In both distros I have not seen the problem you're reporting. I regularly check my two yahoo mail accounts, usually while doing several other things in firefox at the same time. Not once has it crashed.

You know I don't have that problem at all, I run Firefox 1.5.x on my desktop which is running Ubuntu 6.06 and on my laptop running SLED 10.1 and the browser works well just like it does on my work computer which is running Win XP Pro.

(Un)fortunately, Opera 9 has the opposite problem, stable and lovely under Linux, and buggy, and crash-for-no-reason-y on windows. Opera seem to know, but I haven't heard of a fix.
I like Opera, but the instability on my Wintendo is irritating.

I run Firefox on Gentoo x64, and I've used both the 64-bit and 32-bit versions, compiled locally, and the binary installs, 1.5.x (currently I'm using the x86 binary release 1.5.0.4). I've had no problems with Firefox crashing. Even the plugins I use (flash, java, mplayer) are stable. Have you tried compiling from the source against your libraries?

I had firefox crashes before, and it was due to the xim program that I use. I currently live in Taiwan, and use scim. There was an issue with the c library that was used to compile, and gtk something or other. The mention of the israeli site got me thinking about this. It was fixed in a later release, and it had alot to do with the base locale also. I do not seem to see this aspect mentioned. Due to gtk+ seems to be changing alot, it is worth checking.

I'm writing this using Puppy Linux and Firefox 1.5.0.6 . So far, I've experienced none of the problems you describe.

Firefox is slightly broken on windows too.
I use Yahoo mail all the time and on Windows it is fine there.
However there are a LARGE number of webpages, where if you try to print them, it crashes Firefox, all instances, all tabs. Poof!
It has been that way since release 0.9
Also this page, http://www.bracknellbridge.com/scorer/dshome.htm
contains JS that does nothing in FF but works fine in IE.

This is not a Firefox problem - I have personally installed over 30 different linux machiens (all of varying hardware) in a corporate environment (CentOS and Ubuntu Dapper, mostly), and none of them exhibit any of the bugs you've pointed out here. Sounds to me like your environment has issues, or perhaps you have extentions that are less than stable.

If the problem is with only Mozilla browsers, it's probably a plugin. I haven't seen these problems you are talking about with Firefox in Linux. That's not to say they don't happen. I just think there may be more to it than just firefox. Perhaps its a bad java vm or flash plugin. Maybe is an extension that you use and I don't. Maybe you would like to post more specs about what you are running.

sounds like a PEBKAC situation, for sure.

I use firefox on dapper 6.06 and to be honest, it crashes less there than it does on windows, and with this latest release of firefox that is to say hardly ever.

I've been using "SWIFT FOX" on mepis 6 for several days now. Everything runs brilliantly

i use yahoo mail on dapper with firefox and i've never had a problem. I think you are misleading people with your ignorance here. Try researching a bit before you publish

Caitlyn--I'm sorry about your luck. I have had no problems with firefox, and I use yahoo mail. I also do frequent various non-english sites without problems. I do confess, however, that I have a crash now and again--but certainly no worse than with anything else. Anyhow, just passing through--sorry you're having such a hard time with it!

There are comments here that should be deleted - racial slurs and obscene suggestions.
However, beyond that, there is something beyond depressing about these comments. I hope to see every blogger on this site address this in the next few days.
Meanwhile, it will be a cold day in hell before I run Linux since I know that every convert from Windows gives these idiots aid and succor.

Same problem here. It seems that Linux is the only OS that Firefox does this on. I use SUSE 10 with the latest Firefox version.

It's not entirely stable on windows either, twice now I've seen it's memory usage hover at 150 mb... for a web browser, this is entirely unacceptable, especially when IE hovers around 20-30 mb

Where are you installing Firefox? How are you uninstalling it? I would try installing it in your home dir, and running from there. Obviously do an ls -al to make sure you delete all your preferences first.

Regarding flash -- Flash is evil. It mighty be flashy too, but it's definitely evil. It would be a PIECE OF CAKE, for Macromedia/Adobe to put in a toggle on Flash, just like the Flashblock extension on Firefox. I asked a Flash evangelist why they don't do that? He told me straight up "Then people would be able to avoid our ads." And I don't think it's fair to say that living without flash is not realistic. At our university we block all flash all the time at the router level, as well as wiping installations of it from everyone's machines. I also think Flash will prove to be a huge security risk soon.

If you have to have flash installed, PLEASE take advantage of the flashblock firefox extension: http://flashblock.mozdev.org/. I've been on Firefox on Fedoras -- I'm always about 6 months behind Fedora Head on my desktop, so I just moved to 5 about 4 months ago. I've never had a FF crash on any version. But I don't have flash.

I just discovered Opera for Debian Sarge. What a relief! Firefox takes forever and it feels bloated these days. I can run Opera from my 600 mhz server down the hall and I still get better performance over the network than I would running Firefox locally. Flash isn't really that bad over the network either! I echo your concerns, Firefox for Linux is a joke.

Opera 9 FTW!

I have noticed alot of crashes on firefox as well as opera in linux. I'm running windows now due to gaming needs (Probably due to my own idiocy. I am sure I could run all my games under linux if I tried) and wireless problems (Broadcom! Bleh), but when I was running Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 I noticed them alot. Especially when I tried to run video or flash.

I am also using fire fox on windows and linux (ubuntu Dapper). On windows xp 2006 i prefer firefox 1.0.5.x and on linux system i sick of its behaviour. The plugins which were instelled automatically are not installed manually also i could not compose mail in hotmail and yahoo due to lack of flash player which later on i had to install by command line.
On the other hand in latest version firefox has very very bad support of Arabic based unicode languages. While previous relases were very good, good then windows version also i used ubuntu breezy 5.10 and experienced its quality.
Flock is also at same level as they say it is very good good then firefox also may be on windows not at linux. Thus i have to use 3 more browsers instead of one, Konqurer Galeon and Opera to see different websites.
I think firefox for linx if left orphan by mozilla to be used by linux developers in their own way. Mozilla should see firefox is loosing its "Fire Of Quality".

I have deleted comments containing sexual material, racism, and religious material not suitable to a family website open to all ages. All others I have left intact. I believe in leaving plenty of rope around and letting people use it.

Many of the commenters clearly didn't read the article or my subsequent comments carefully. Let's reviews:

1. This happens on three different systems with two very different hardware configuration. It's not bad RAM.
2. Each system runs a different distro. It's not distro-specific nor desktop enviornment specific.
3. Crashes running 1.5.0.4 continued with Flash and Java removed. It wasn't just Flash (thought that was a contributing factor) and it wasn't Java.
4. It's not just me. About 10% of the commenters report similar problems. A 10% failure rate in a major piece of code is not acceptable by any standard.

The upgrade to 1.5.0.6 last night fixed the crashing problem. That means the problem WAS in the Mozilla Firefox code. It no longer crashes at all, evemn with Flash reinstalled. That the good news.

The bad news: 1.5.0.6 moves like molasses running uphill in the winter, a complaint I've seen from Windows users as well. It goes to 100% CPU at times and eats memory like it's going out of style. I get lots of "script not responding" errors, I assume due to time out issues. My connection is a 3 megabit DSL line. So: broken code fixed at the cost of horrible performance.

Once again, this really isn't acceptable and makes a very strong case for Opera.

User error? Hmmm... too many users with the same issue. I'll admit my 12 years of Linux experience, my Red Hat certification, my years as a Linux/UNIX systems administrator, security analyst, and cosultant. I must be clueless because some of you who don't have an issue and/or want to blindly defend Mozilla say so.... but that will be another article about how the Linux community is often it's own worst enemy.

Yeah, I'm having the same problem myself. Even though I have the latest version of firefox (1.5.0.6) It crashes in my gmail and even when I try to search on almost any search engine

Posting in a blog is not a very efficient way to debug a large piece of software.

If you want to help debug, install the source and get to work, otherwise simply report as much crash info as you can to the FF developers and keep trying out the new releases.

There are plenty of other browsers to choose from -- you seem to be happy with Opera so what's the problem?...

I use Yahoo! Mail fairly regularly, though not frequently, and haven't had a crash since I can't remember. I'm running firefox 1.5.0.4 on FC5 and there's been no problems at all (outside of Flash and Java, OC). I think the problem you're having isn't specifically or directly related to firefox. You might want to give your system a good once over to make sure nothing's funky. One thing that might be worth checking is your RAM. Couldn't hurt even if your system is stable.

"Firefox went the way of IE, taking with it my browsing experience and All I got was this stupid T-Shirt"

ps: helloo lynx.

Save personal settings and deleting the profile sometimes helps me.

Saving personal settings and deleting the profile sometimes helps me.

Ms. Martin, I've been having the same problems, using FF 1.5.0.4 with Mepis 3.4 and Mepis 6, on a dial-up modem. I started logging the web pages that were giving me trouble. Ended up trying a different modem. Went back and checked all the web pages that were giving me trouble and they all worked. Haven't had any problems since I switched modems. Just wanted to let you know that this appears to have worked for me.

Although, reading over your posts again, my solution (switching dial-up modems) still doesn't get to the root of the problem. I was having the same problems on another machine, different modem, etc. Interesting that not many people are experiencing this. I didn't begin having this issue with FF until a few weeks ago, and not with every OS. Can't really put my finger on what the cause is -- sorry, I know this isn't much help.

I use FF 1.5.x series almost exclusively on my Mandriva 2005 KDE machine. I had issues under 1.0.x when I would visit sites using applets and I had Java 1.4 installed, it would crash my browser every time. As soon as I upgraded my JVM to 1.5, or 5.0, my Java problems ceased. I haven't really had any Flash issues, but I don't visit a lot of Flash heavy sites, or ones that use it usually block the Flash with the Ad-Block extension. I have installed whatever the most recent Flash player is though. And yes, I use Yahoo! Mail on a daily basis without issue.

I'm using Firefox with various versions on both FC4 and Gentoo, and I use Yahoo mail without a glitch. I wasn't all that happy with the mail beta from Yahoo, but that wasn't a Firefox problem. I leave it running for weeks, then restart it when I start to suspect a memory leak.

All I can suggest: I have 2 GB RAM. Perhaps it's a memory leak that's slow enough that I can live with it? I think such leaks have been dogging Firefox for some time.

++ kevin

Hi Caitlyn, read your article about Firefox and co-incidentally saw this article regarding PClinuxos and problems with Firefox
I have supplied the link and the relevant piece from the article.
Hope it helps
Fredd

URL: http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/8741

This just in:
Errata: Xorg Composite enabled by default.

Please go into the PCLinuxOS Control Center -> Hardware -> Configure Basic
Video Settings and click the box Options.
Uncheck the box that says: Enable Translucency (Composite Extenstion)
Click Ok, Click Quit
Log out and back in again for new setting to take effect.

Solves:
ATI 3D fglrx slow GLX, Nvidia 3D slow GLX.
Solves Firefox crashing on websites with Flash content with some video cards.

I use Firefox on SuSe 10.0 and Novell Enterprise Desktop with no crashes, lock-ups. I also use YNet and Israel Radio Tool Bar. I do the news' videos all the time with no problems. I would relate your problems more to you settings then I would to the actual browser. No where do I see anyone show what errors were created just saying I crashed does not show anyone why. Post some actual error data and just maybe I can give a solution. As far as crashes or what there could be a 1000 reasons why and it just might not be the browser problem but your computer settings. I would say if it is a java issue then its a issue with your java settings and not firefox. A browser no matter which one can only do what your computer settings allow it to do. I seen way to many Linux systems where they have java ported to say Opera but it was not to Firefox or visa/versa. Remember, not like Windows installing java on Linux does not mean it is auto ported to every browser or every browser auto recognizes the java installed.

Do people even bother to read comments before posting? The problem was solved by Firefox 1.5.0.6. That means the problem was indeed in the earlier Firefox code, not in Java or in settings or in Flash or in my RAM. It was broken code. Get over it.

1.5.0.6 doesn't crash but it's still slow as molasses running uphill in the winter and it does get lots of script errors as I've posted before. Conclusion: still broken, just differently. Hopefully 2.0 will be better.

Ms. Martin,
(Responding to your 8-10 post) - How strange. I was having similar problems to what you wrote about in your original post. I never updated to 1.5.0.6, simply started using a different modem, and haven't had a single crash in Firefox since, even hitting the same websites that were giving me problems before... And not noticing any slowness in Firefox at all now... I understand that you know more about these things than I do, but don't understand why the problem appears to be fixed without updating to 1.5.0.6. Interesting.

Caitlyn,

This is more of a philosophical question than anything else - but how do you know that the problem is actually fixed in 1.5.0.6? The reason that I ask is that there were a lot of people who didn't have any problem with 1.5.0.4 (including myself on a FreeBSD system), so it appears to me that it is a fairly subtle bug(s) that take some fairly special circumstances to activate. If that is the case, perhaps the bug is still there, but disguised by some other change (like maybe slightly different compiler or compiler flags), just waiting to jump out at some point in the future. It could be like a balloon - squeeze it at one place and it just bulges out somewhere else.

--

Phil

Firefox crashes on me several times a day. I've used Fedora Core 4 and 5 for about a year, and with versions 1.5+ i've been getting more and more crashes. Just yesterday i made a clean installation of ubuntu 6.06 on my second hard drive. Before i even installed anything else i went online to read some ubuntu documentation and firefox crashed on me twice; from a CLEAN installation and browsing very simple mostly text webpages. When i googled this problem a link to this page came up - i tried to open this page 3 times and FF crashed all 3 times; so i ended up using epiphany to finally get to this page.

Ok I am using Firefox 1.5.0.4 on SUSE 10.1 without any problems. Flash, AJAX, and Java have never been a problem for me. I have used the AJAX version of Yahoo mail regularly in the past before I got my email client set up without any crashes. In fact the only time I can remember it actually crashing on me was when I tried to access my router (I think that was from my other SUSE PC.) I am using US/English local. (PC is Compaq Pentium-M notebook)

I hear you. I've got a vanilla FC5 install running firefox 1.5.0.6, and I have a lot of trouble with flash content. Penny Arcade is running a flash ad right now that consistently shuts down by browser.

Attempting to research this problem on google is how I found this page, actually.

I'm running ff 1.5.0.6 (recent fresh install via yum) on Fedora 5. initially I could not get to run, and tracked the problem down to Google's browser synch extension (thanks google!). I removed that and ran ff in safe mode. I'm up and running, but I one curious error. The "Options" option from the Tools menu is missing entirely??

Sorry this is nonsense, I am using Seamonkey, Opera and XULRunner with Liferera (RSS with Gecko Engine) without any problems. On ArchLinux I cannot see any problems too, maybe it's a local problem. By the way my main OS is FreeBSD 6.1.

1.5.0.6 is very very crappy on OS X too -- lots of stalls, stutters, delays, lags....AND worse: dropped connections -- is it firefox or something else?

Whenever I post to blogger.com via firefox (which I have to do because safari is not wysiwyg compatible with blogger/blogspot.com -- or vice versa) My 5mbps dsl ethernet connection simply drops out of sight for minutes at a time. All the network status lights go from green to red. Then some to yellow, back to red, and eventually in a few minutes back to green again. But if I re-post, connection drops again.

Is that my motherboard/ethernet connection my configuration ? or is firefox or is it the modem or what? It always happens on firefox anytime I post an entry. And sometimes just during regular surfing on either browser but always with firefox and blogger/blogspot

Any insights appreciated. You are welcome to leave comments/ideas on my blog in the comments section and i'll be happy to give you/your blog credit and a link if you help me solve this problem!

much thanks.

Here's the deal:

1 - Most folks on both platforms do NOT have this problem (now including you on .6 + lin).

2 - I have this EXACT problem with about 50% of the flash adds penny arcade, order of the stick, and a couple other webcomics running .5 AND now .6 + Win32.

It is a FF+Flash plugin+something else error on multiple OSs. I'll try removing flash and shockwave again, as I got tired enough of reloading the sites and hoping for a non-crashy ad, and googled to find you and these others with the same issue.

Update - more info on this issue and how to resolve it for WINDOWS users who may google to your thread.

Flashblock saved me from the crashes as soon as PA loaded, but would still crash when I clicked to play 50% of the adds on the side. So the problem was still there. I uninstalled all flash players, shockwave players, and quicktime players, but Flashplayer 7 was still there and trying to crash me. So I looked into it and found that uninstalling does not always remove flash, and mozilla had tips for getting rid of old versions.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Macromedia_Flash

...
The Windows uninstaller may not remove the Flash plugin from all locations so you should search for the following files and delete, if found:

* NPSWF32.dll
* flashplayer.xpt
* GetFlash.exe
* GetFlash.exe.manifest
...

I found all 4 files in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins and deleting them did completely remove flash 7 so that it no longer even offers to crash me. A revisit to Adobe.com in FF and a click on their "get flash player" button got me a new version which does NOT crash me, even when I click on the flash ads in PA again, and again, and again.

So yes, its an old version of flash, rip it out, and get new (unless your FF installer rips all plugins out as perhaps the Linux one does).

I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.5 under Ubuntu 6.06 and have noticed some crashing - but no feedback agent pops up! (Maybe I've turned it off, will have to check).

I'm fairly new - no, make that extremely new - to Linux and so have a lot of experience with the Windows version. Main sites I need to look at regularly are www.popworldpromotes.co.uk (vote for The Knott!) and www.natwest.com (for banking obviously) and both of those just shut the whole browser without warning.

I can start it up again, but if I return to those sites, it all happens again.

I will try Tdot's suggestion of Adbock (Adblock?) and NoScript though and let you know if it fixes the problems.

I too run Firefox on Fedora Core 5, without any crashes. I check my yahoo mail frequently, without incident. I don't mean to frustrate, but said that to say this:

Like another user who has posted here, I run only gnome, rather than KDE. Perhaps there is an issue when using KDE after all...sorry I could not be more help. Hope you find your solution.

I like your "slow as molasses running uphill in the winter" descriptor! I've found that Firefox on Linux is like that, too, whereas a Wintel laptop from work using my home internet connection is heaps faster to load and render web pages.