Speeding Up Firefox in Linux

Firefox can be much faster on Linux! Let’s speed up Firefox on Linux system. Part 1 and 2 only config firefox, so it can also be used on other platform such as Windows.

1. Pipe-lining network connection

Most of us use a broad band width network, then why not pip line the connection from Firefox?

Type “about:config” into the address line and enter.

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining.ssl” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 25. This number means how many requests Firefox can make at most. It depends on the network. I am a crazy guy and I set it to 50 in my browser.

2. No waiting before action

Type “about:config” into the address line and enter.

Right-click on the page and select New-> Integer.
Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

3. Put cache into memory

If your memory is larger than 1GB, you can try this method. If you experience problem, please change it back. (delete browser.cache.disk.parent_directory)

Type “about:config” into the address line and enter.

Right-click on the page and select New-> String.

Name it “browser.cache.disk.parent_directory” and set its value to “/dev/shm/ffcache“. The Cache of Firefox will be putinto /dev/shm/ffcache/Cache.

4. Diable IPv6 support

If you experience very slow DNS lookup in Firefox, you can try to disable IPv6 support in Firefox and Linux if you don’t use it:

For Firefox:

Type “about:config” into the address line and enter.
Set “network.dns.disableIPv6″ to “true”

For Linux:

I test it on Fedora 12. On other systems, the configuration may be different.

# cp /etc/modprobe.d/dist.conf /tmp/dist.conf.bak0
# echo “alias net-pf-10 off” >> /etc/modprobe.d/dist.conf
# echo “alias ipv6 off” >> /etc/modprobe.d/dist.conf

Then restart you Firefox and try whether Firefox is faster and enjoy it :)