Seriously very slow. In windows xp they are quite fast but in Mandrake they aren't usable. Is there anything I can do about it? I really want to use Firefox.

Are they slow at loading? Slow to download pages? Slow when resizing the windows? Are all programs also slow, or is it just Firefox and Mozilla? Do you have any other programs running which could be slowing them down? Have you tried running the top command?

We need more details...

The loading times arent that bad. Loading pages is pretty fast too but the program itself is just very slow. For instance switching tabs and making new tabs takes a while. Not super long but it's just very sluggish, in windows that stuff is instamatic. It isn't using much cpu either. It doesn't matter if I run it without any other programs in the background or with alot.

I just wan't to know if this is normal for Firefox on (Mandrake) Linux. Opera is way faster and alot more responsive (on linux, on windows it's about the same).

No, that's definitely not normal. I wish I knew what the problem is but I can only offer guesses. What plugins have you got installed? Have you tried them without the plugins? If you launch them from a terminal do they print any error messages? Are they gtk1 or gtk2 builds?

I tried every Firefox build I could find. Though the newest mozilla suite (I think GTK2) build is alot faster, 1.7 rc1. I would use it but it has a nasty bug in it. Plugins make no difference.

I noticed the same thing in my Firefox, it is the loading times for the aplication itself.

Click the Starfox icon... wait... wait... Firefox starts !!!
In Windows my Firefox opens at light speed :/

I find the startup time is about the same for me. And, I've got at least 6-8 tabs open every time I open it.

That is, compared to windows frefox.

Today I tried Firefox in Gnome this time. It opened as fast as expected from Firefox, now is my opinion to be slow loading only in KDE.

The newest version of Mozilla (nightly build) seems to be way faster, even on my memory hogging kde. Since they fixed that nasty bug, I'm now happily (hihi) using it.

NVIDIA issue? It happens - and was my pain until I upgraded Mandy 9.1 > 10.0

Well I'm using the latest drivers...

Firefox is very slow for me too under linux. I have a dual boot linux/win98 200mmx system, and firefox runs fast in win98. In linux (fluxbox) it's sluggish. Also, I have an i586 optimized build in linux, whereas in windown I have the stock one from mozilla.com. Doesn't matter which build I try in linux, it doesn't come close to the performance under win98... What's the deal with that?

Well like I said it was only in KDE for me, not in Gnome.

But now it is running as expected.. Great !!!

I upgrade my Debian to 'Sarge' and also I builded a new kernel.

All is great now !

This is strange. I am running Firefox 0.8 in WinXP and Firebird 0.7 in Mandrake 9.2 with KDE 3.1. They are both blazing fast. I usually have about ten programs running in Linux and at least five tabs in Firebird, but I do have a lot of fast memory. Firebird/Firefox is a lot faster in my experience than IE, Netscape or Opera in Windows, and a bit faster than Konqueror in Linux (but that one doesn't have tabbed browsing --booo). Since I am using 0.7 still, maybe there is some issue with the Firefox release.