Canonical Continues Working On Ubuntu's Firefox Snap Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Canonical Continues Working On Ubuntu's Firefox Snap Performance

Slow start-up performance of the Firefox web browser has been a frequent complaint on Ubuntu Linux since Canonical shifted over to using the Snap'ed version of Firefox by default. It's certainly what I find most annoying with Ubuntu as well, but at least Canonical engineers continue working on addressing the performance and other awkward issues with the Firefox Snap...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-Snap-Performance-2

[pkese]

As always with performance:
HW vendors giveth, Ubuntu taketh away.

[miskol]

Ubuntu and debian developers should use raspberry pi for testing purpose!
But in most cases they are just package maintainers

[adlerhn]

Snap only wants to upgrade Firefox when the application is closed. Which in my case is never. So my Firefox remains outdated while the rest of the apps in my computer are updated as usual. Well done, Canonical.

[down1]

Snap only wants to upgrade Firefox when the application is closed. Which in my case is never. So my Firefox remains outdated while the rest of the apps in my computer are updated as usual. Well done, Canonical.

If you never restart your apps you are perpetually using the older version of the application as the file is never released.

[V1tol]

If you never restart your apps you are perpetually using the older version of the application as the file is never released.

But when Firefox is updated normally (its own autoupdate or by system package manager) it shows a notification (for example when opening a new tab) that it was updated and needs restart.

[ssokolow]

But when Firefox is updated normally (its own autoupdate or by system package manager) it shows a notification (for example when opening a new tab) that it was updated and needs restart.

...which has been buggy and caused me to lose tabs entirely in the past (either by crashing private browsing windows when it accidentally fires up a content process with a mismatched IPC schema version before realizing the update has gone through, resulting in a chrome process crash or by having the notification accidentally remove the tab it appears on from the session store).

Prior to just using Flatpak (which provides the isolation and temporary persistence of old versions necessary to allow Firefox's multi-process architecture to behave the way traditional single-process apps work when you update them), I explicitly forced Firefox into "poke me when an update is ready to download but don't download without permission" mode.

[andre30correia]

Snap only wants to upgrade Firefox when the application is closed. Which in my case is never. So my Firefox remains outdated while the rest of the apps in my computer are updated as usual. Well done, Canonical.

always some excuse to criticaze, sometimes the jokes here are to much

[Smurphy]

Did I say it already, that I hate snap ????
First thing I do when I install Ubuntu is remove snapd and everything that looks like it.
I will have to move to a Debian base system on my server in the future I guess.

[zcansi]

Since the latest upgrade, I've been forced to use the snap version as well (they will no longer support a .deb version).

The upgrade nag system is *far* more annoying than Firefox's own system, and less functional. It does not help you restart the browser and restore your session, you need to take like 4 manual actions instead. It shows very frequent popup nags over your work, instead of waiting until you open a new tab like firefox does. When these show up on the lock screen, they cannot be distinguished from other notifications, so I can no longer tell if I have notification from any of my tabs. And to top it all off, it seems like sometimes it doesn't actually update when you close and reopen the browser, immediately showing the update nag again! This really sucks.

Also, I've noticed the integrated PDF viewer is now broken. It seems incapable of rendering fonts correctly, leading to a garbled mess.

I have a pretty fast system so I haven't noticed the startup time delay, but I'm not surprised. Snaps seem to be really half baked and I wish I could go back.

Edit: forgot two additional regressions with snap: the file dialog (for attaching / uploading files) no longer shows (image) previews (this is extremely valuable for making sure you are uploading the right file), and when opening a downloaded file, I get shown a useless application chooser dialog which is unable to remember my preference.