Those who use Firefox on a low-end laptop or any such low-spec machine, what tinkering have you done to get the best experience?
Firefox has been improving drastically in terms of performance with every release. It's pretty evident in recent months, which is very heartwarming to be honest.
I, however, do to some bad circumstances, have been stuck with a not-so-good laptop (8 GB RAM, a 6th gen processor in AMD A8 7410) and Firefox doesn't run that well on it. This is something that I've observed with Firefox- if you have a decent machine then it will run amazingly fast. However, on lower-end machines, performance can be a struggle AT TIMES.
Any tips on making this browser run at it's best potential on a weak system are appreciated!
It baffles me how many websites won't even show the actual, basic content without javascript. I don't care how cool it looks when the paragraph flies in from the side, I just want to read the damn thing.
Seems like I've finally found a fellow human being who uses a modest system like me, haha. Similar specs, and I too use a debloated version of Windows 10- it works very nicely.
Thanks for these recommendations- I'll try these out right now and see how it goes.
Thinkpad x200s (2009) with Core2Duo SL9400, 2gb RAM, 128gb SSD + AntiX Linux with herbsluftwm.
Firefox will not perform smooth here, but very usable. I watch youtube video from Yewtube on Terminal + mpv, browsing only on Lemmy, news on Newsboat RSS feed, Palemoon if some news sources are heavy, and download with wget.
IMO if you experiencing problem on Firefox with that spec, I think there's a problem with your Operation System or your OS is very hungry power. I recommended using Q4OS linux with pure profile installation for minimalist system out of the box in KDE environment. The performance are very good on my Thinkpad x260..
This. Switching to Lubuntu from Windows would be like doubling your RAM because Lubuntu is very lightweight. I'd bet your main problem is running out of RAM.
I would be more than happy to try Linux, but until now I just thought I shouldn't before I try it on a secondary machine, something that I don't have at the moment.
But right now, it seems that I am just missing out. Would try Linux Mint this week if possible!
If you have a USB stick you're not using you can install Mint on it and boot directly from the USB drive without modifying your actual OS, and see how you like it! The same is true of many other linux distributions if you'd like to explore, but Mint was my own first foray into linux and I think it's a comfy distro to start off with. I think you'll be shocked by how snappy it can be on a lower spec machine like that, even running from a USB stick.
As the another comment mentioned, you can run it from a usb to test it out first. And if you like it, you can dual boot it with Windows so you don’t need to remove Windows entirely if you still need it.
other frivolous measures tha could help: replace ur cpu thermal paste to avoid thermal throttling and make sure it makes good contact with heat sink+clean fan with brush
format the hdd and reinstall ur os (especially if its windows)