I have a questions to ask about browser speed. It seems to me that Internet Explorer is much faster at browsing the Internet than Netscape or Firebird or even Konqueror is on Linux. The question is why?

These aren't scientific numbers, but I have 2 dual boot system PC's that run Windows and Mandriva Linux and lets say for example, if I go to this site www.linuxquestions.org , it takes 5 seconds to get there (fully open up) with Internet Explorer, but if I use Netscape, Firebird or even Konqueror, it takes me 26-30 seconds to fully open up the entire browser page to this site.

I know that many sites are set up to use "ActiveX" and have unique plugins, but I was wondering is there anything I can do in Linux to get faster browser speeds? (I am using DSL)

I really would appreicate any posts that may reflect how fast it takes you to go from any website to this website and post your speeds that it takes to fully open your browser page.

I know Konqueror is slow as molaces, but why is Netscape and Firebird so far behind? I tried to mess around with my preferences settings but that did not help much either.

Thanks,

d-1

Well if you're talking about IE in windows versus the other two in Linux, I'd guess the difference is due to the fact that IE is more integrated into windows. I think part of it is always running in the background so when you start it, it just has to open a window and get to the site. For other browsers, when you start them they are actually starting being "off". In that way it might be a somewhat unfair race.

Well thanks for the tip. I made some changes to IE to make it much faster than it was before. I lowered the security settings and I thought perhaps there was something I could do with Netscape.

d-1

lowered the security on IE. there is a joke in there some place. i personally dont see the difference between the two. i know the K browser is slow but firefox seems to keep a good pace. what about opera or a simple self made browser?

Opera's the fastest on any operating system.
Check this out:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

Firefox also has a default setting which means there's a slight delay before it renders a web page. If you type about:config in the address bar of firefox, you will see all the settings. For example you can disable blink by changing browser.blink_allowed from 'true' to 'false'. To change the delay setting for rendering a page look for the nglayout.initialpaint.delay setting. Change the default setting from 250ms to 0.

My version of Firefox does not have the setting mentioned above, but I did read the following on another site:

*network.http.pipelining
*default value false, change to true
*
*network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
*default value 4, change to 8, not higher apparently, some debate about server load or something, see link below.
*
*network.http.proxy.pipelining
*default value false, change to true
*
*on Firefox 0.8 I tried setting the ngpaint delay to less than 250 milliseconds and ended up getting too many *rendering errors, text running out of table cells, javascript failures etc, so I put it back. If I understand that right, it's just *an illusion anyway, it makes it look like page renders faster, but doesn't really make the page come faster from begin *to end load. Opera seems to have this set very low, I noticed on 7x that displays repaint themselves as they load, *personally I don't like that affect, it's distracting.
*
*paintdelay doesn't seem to be present on 0.9.
*
*browser.turbo.enabled is apparently a leftover that does nothing
*
I didn't notice much difference.

I went to that Link and read it, but it does not mention what website he went to when he went and started from a cold start. There are sites that I can go to that open in in mere 3 seconds, maybe faster, when using Linux. But sites like this one, that has to do a lot of navigating and signs you in automatically can take me up to 30 seconds to fully load, whereas IE does it in a mere 3-5 seconds.

I have asked from you guys to post your times that it takes you to go from a cold start to this site and let me know how long it takes you.

I am running on a DSL line and my PC is an AMD Athlon 1400XP, 768MB RAM, using Mandriva-LE Linux.

d-1

Firefox took me 20 seconds to fully load the sign-in page to this website. Fully load means loads every picture, box, etc. After signing into this site on firefox, it takes me 2-3 seconds to fully open and turn the pages. With IE it takes me 3-5 seconds to get to the sign-in page.

d-1

I read the info in my post above in Linux format magazine. Apparently if you haven't got the nglayout.initialpaint.delay setting you can right click- new- and create it. It might not be any good though. Firefox is plenty fast enough for me. The scrolling settings also make a difference. In IE it seems like scrolling is a lot quicker. In fact you can set firefox to 'smooth scrolling' and it will work the same as IE.

What do you mean by nglayout.initialpaint.delay setting? How can you manually set that?

d-1

For me, IE took about 5 seconds. Firefox took about 30. That is going from www.msn.com to www.linuxquestions.org and waiting for all buttons and pictures to load until the browser says done basically.

Took me exactly 4 seconds from Yahoo to here (that's loading all the boxes, and all that crap). Firefox easily keeps pace with IE for me. I have Comcast broadband, and the difference in linux and Windows is zero. I dual boot WinXP and Mandrake 10.1 on my laptop, and the difference in browsing speed is imperceptible to me. Lucky I guess, sounds like a common problem.

right click. select New. Integer. and give it that name.

It does take a while for browsers to start on linux operating systems. I find Firefox slow in windows and linux. I always install Opera. Opera works better in some distros than others.

If you want a really fast browser use Dillo.