Ubuntu Achieves A ~50% Reduction In Start Time For Firefox Snap

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu Achieves A ~50% Reduction In Start Time For Firefox Snap

Canonical engineers have been continuing their quest to improve the start-up time for the Snap version of Mozilla Firefox that is used by default on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. With the latest improvements now pushed to the Firefox Snap, they are seeing around a 50% reduction in start-time for the web browser...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-Snap-50p-Reduction

[Alexmitter]

So they reduced it from 30 to 15 seconds, impressive. Now its only 7.5/15 times slower then any other package format. Great Achievement, awesome work Canonical, you absolute disgrace of a linux distro company.

[fagnerln]

The usage of LZO is OK! But the language pack sounds like a workaround, they should work on the root of the problem.

[Ironmask]

I love this video from Tidus about how terrible Ubuntu is now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMfqCzbSmQU
"Slow and Pointless" is my new motto for Ubuntu.

[MorrisS.]

How is it possible? Which are the particular features of snap programs?

[Britoid]

How is it possible? Which are the particular features of snap programs?

The entire Snap format is made for the IoT kinda thing, not for desktop apps. Everything is stored as multiple compressed disk images that get uncompressed/mounted at startup as a loop device (performance losses here all round).

Flatpak in comparison was made for desktop apps from the get go, hence the original name xdg (freedesktop) app and instead just relies on mount namespaces and folders with hardlinks (no performance loss).

[MorrisS.]

The entire Snap format is made for the IoT kinda thing, not for desktop apps. Everything is stored as multiple compressed disk images that get uncompressed/mounted at startup as a loop device (performance losses here all round).

Flatpak in comparison was made for desktop apps from the get go, hence the original name xdg (freedesktop) app and instead just relies on mount namespaces and folders with hardlinks (no performance loss).

Thanks. So, why to get apps for a different environment in the desktop environment?

[ac130kz]

And now they should throw away snapd

[V1tol]

Canonical is the best sponsor of "f**k that linux, back to windows" movement. I think someone should hack Google and for every search result about Linux place a banner "if you want to try Linux for the first time - pick anything BUT Ubuntu"

[MarkG]

So they reduced it from 30 to 15 seconds, impressive. Now its only 7.5/15 times slower then any other package format. Great Achievement, awesome work Canonical, you absolute disgrace of a linux distro company.

Totally agree. I installed Ubuntu 22.04 on my laptop, with it's Firefox and Chromium snaps forced on me. First time I launched Firefox I decided to count "mississippi's". When the count got to 15 with no sign of the Firefox window, I shut the machine down and reinstalled Linux Mint 20.3 with it's native builds for both Firefox and Chromium. It's been a month, and I'm still happy with Mint.