Having gotten completely fed up with issues on our development server, including loads of 10 or higher on a regular basis (the day the load hit 57, we just stopped trying to get anything done), I gave up and took the advice of my colleagues and wiped Windows off of my box at work and installed Ubuntu. With work, this allows me to run our app locally. If there are any performance issues, they're mine and I can't blame the people administering the dev box.
I was astonished that Ubuntu is even easier to set up than last time. Setting up dual monitors wasn't easy due to the old Intel graphics card, but everything else magically worked right out of the box. Evolution works fine with Exchange and for the first time that I recall, its calendar works, too.
My only real complaint is that I'm having trouble finding a decent browser. Firefox is dead slow, hangs constantly, and sometimes crashes. Sure, I can, and will, search for performance tips for FF on Linux, but honestly, it's an embarrassment that this bog-standard technology is such a pig on Linux. There's still some noise about Google Chrome on Linux. That might help and I'd certainly look forward to it.
Time to check out Midori.
Also: Midori's official page
I'm using Firefox as my main browser here on my Mandriva Linux Cooker system, and it's not slow, does not hang, and crashes very rarely (and when it does, it's probably due to the Flash plugin). So I'm very happy with it.
If Firefox is acting up on your system, it's probably due to a problem there, and not a general quality of Firefox. What is your version of Ubuntu? Did you try filing a bug report for it?
One thing that irritates me about Firefox is that its memory use increases over time for some reason, and so I need to restart it from time to time. But this takes several good hours to have an effect.
Restart extension
bart on 2009-05-19T10:24:25
You might find some use for this Firefox extension:It remembers the URL in all your tabs, and reopens them after restarting Firefox.
Midori is nice if you want a WebKit browser that doesn’t drag in the whole GNOME caboodle, but it’s pretty weak UI-wise. If you’re using Ubuntu with the default stuff you have GNOME anyway, so I’d suggest a look at Epiphany, GNOME’s own default browser which uses WebKit as well. That’s bound to have a more mature and practically useful interface than Midori at this stage.
Re:Epiphany
Ovid on 2009-05-19T14:05:54
That's bound to have a more mature and practically useful interface than Midori at this stage.
Particularly when the first thing I discovered is that the proxy settings are disabled in the Midori I just downloaded
:)
Use Opera.
You get your bookmarks, notes, custom searches, and speed dials synced automatically across several machines. And it's fast and lighter than FF.
Do you have the Flash plugin installed? I find that Firefox is much faster and more stable without Flash. You can enable/disable it on the fly from Tools=>Add-ons=>Plugins if you need to.
Re:Disable Flash
Ovid on 2009-05-20T12:50:58
Thanks for the tip! Bummer about disabling Flash. Unlike many here, I don't mind the richer content, though I get annoyed that it's often required. That being said, disabling that and a number of other plugins has dramatically improved Firefox's performance. So far it's only frozen on me once.
