Slack 14.1, 64 bit: endless problems with the internet. They usually begin with Google (search, YouTube, Gmail) becoming very slow, and then simply halting. Sometimes other bookmarked sites are sluggish, often they are impossible to reach.

I have a second hard drive with Debian Stable, so I can close Slack and go to Debian (it's not dual-boot, it's two separate drives, each with its own connection to the mobo). Debian uses FireFox 24.5.0 ("Iceweasel"). Problems do occur with it, too, but they are perhaps 5% of what I get from ESR, so I attribute them to local glitches and to my ISP.

Your experience, comments, and questions are requested. TIA!

I was using ESR for a long while. After the Australis official release in version 29.0, the proverbial handwriting was on the wall with respect to the next ESR. I decided to move to the current version rather than delay the inevitable.

While I can use the new Australis interface, I am not obsessed with the flawed idea of "maximizing screen real estate" on a desktop system. I prefer the traditional look, with a menu bar, my bookmarks toolbar, and no hamburger nonsense. To get there I installed the Classic Theme Restorer add-on. With some fiddling and tweaking, eventually I restored the traditional look I prefer.

One huge challenge remained: getting the global search feature restored. Often when I research a topic I open multiple tabs and use the same search criteria from page to page. Pressing F3 to repeat the search is so easy. The Mozilla developers wrongly ended that ability. To restore that simple productivity feature I had to install two add-ons: GlobalFindBar and FindBar Tweak. Originally I still could not get the global find bar working, but I was using a beta version of FindBar Tweak. When I reverted to the stable version (1.4.18) and concurrently updated to Firefox 30.0 I finally got the global search restored. Once again pressing F3 works in all tabs.

I use Firefox 30.0 with the same add-ons and configuration in Slackware, LMDE, and SolydX. No stability problems that I notice. For many releases Firefox has started very slowly on all of my systems but no stability issues.

If you are curious, I also use NoScript, NoSquint, Status-4-Evar, and TabMix Plus as well as a few other add-ons.

That does not directly answer your question about ESR stability, but I thought the perspective might help you.

I've been using ESR for quite a while and it works fine. Make sure to carefully select your addons because that is the main source of problems.

I will update to the next ESR when it comes out, but I'm not looking forward to it. It seems the mozilla devs have been wiping their @$$es with the fox's face and other unspeakable things. The remnant chunks of the fox are now only held together by addons in a futile attempt to undo the unspeakable horrors that they have wrought ... RIP noble fox, there are plenty of forks to replace you when the time comes, which shouldn't be long.

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I am now using FF 30 and -current, because I rely heavily on FF Sync to keep my bookmarks across several machines (Linux and Mac), and they changed the way Sync works with v.30. Trying to use v.30 on the Macs, and older FF versions on Linux, was causing sync-ing issues.

Having said this, I am considering other browsers to possibly replace FF. I'm using xombrero and surf on my OpenBSD box.

Whew! It's a jungle out there...all I want is something that just works. (Haven't I heard that before....?)

I have found FF to less useful on several sites that use a lot of flash video than chromium on the same machine. (That would be my 2 core laptop. My six core main machine is less affected by that.)

There are a number of forums and other sites I have to use Chromium on. I have to order pizza from one company using chromium, a couple forums will just freeze up Firefox, its using way more cpu and ram than it should and they killed the ability to use your own sync servers.

I feel that the ESR release is much slower at rendering pages than the latest version, and seemed to lock up quite often. I updated to v30 using the download from mozilla mirror, and it seems to be working great so far (on slackware 14.1). Not bothered about australis however, my firefox (v30) looks just like the old 3.6.x using an addon.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...themerestorer/
Highly recommend it!

Is there any way to restore custom sync servers if I go to the newer version?

My experience with (currently) Firefox-24.6.0esr-x86_64 is similar to the OP post -- it frequently sits there looking at me "waiting for blah." "Blah" is frequently LinuxQuestions.org, but can also be NOAA.gov, Google.com, you name it. "Waiting" can be up to five minutes unless I get really pissed and stop all activity, edit, preferences, Clear Cached Web Content. Sometimes that doesn't do anything, so I shut down Firefox, Thunderbird, whatever else and exit Xfce, log out, log back in, startx and give 'er another go.

Generally, when this happens, I open a terminal and ping linuxquestion.org: immediate response while Firefox has the tab(s) with the spinning circle(s). Just want to make sure it's not a weather event (I have HughesNet satellite service). Sometimes it's unplug the router, count to 10, plug it back in and maybe it'll go. Usually it's shut down Xfce, log out, log back in.

There are two add-ons: NoScript (2.6.8.29) and Adblock-Plus (2.6.3) and the usual suspect Plug-ins (and the Java one is disabled).

When this happens, shutting down Firefox (and Thunderbird) and starting SeaMonkey does not help; the behavior is the same with the spinning tab box. That leads me to believe there's something, somewhere that Firefox does that screws up the running environment. Don't have a clue what, but almost always a log out and log back in fixes the situation (the other fix is reboot the blasted thing).

It's not HughesNet, it's not the router (connecting a lap top to the router and using it works just fine while the work station spins it's wheels).

I must admit that my systems don't get shut down for weeks or months at a time and Firefox and Thunderbird may run 24/7 (I don't always close them when I'm done for the day). Could have something to do with it, I dunno.

I do not want to migrate to any other browser or mail client (I cannot abide Konqueror, won't give Google Chrome the disk space and overhead and have no interest whatsoever in any other browsers). I do use SeaMonkey now and again just for shits and grins but that's it.

Anyway, awaiting a fix...

I've had pretty good luck with FF ESR on Slackware64 14.1, but, I shut down my systems daily when I go to bed(we get very frequent power outages, thank goodness for my UPSs).
I dunno I think both FF ESR and TBird are quite resource intensive so that might have something to do with it?

I second that "feeling." No data to offer, only that 30.0 feels snappier than 24.x.

I have experienced that with Firefox for years. I never have figured out what causes the stalls. I developed the habit of pressing Esc to halt the page load and then pressing F5 to refresh, and the requested page then appears immediately. I have no idea if the problem is the base Firefox or an add-on. Yet strange that the page load just spins forever on occasion.

I do the ping test and also a dig +short. Sometimes I open Opera, which I keep mostly as a test browser, and the page opens fine, all the while Firefox is still spinning.

I have not been using 30.0 long enough to form a new opinion but seems the stalls do not happen as often.

Try it without AdBlock-Plus:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problematic_extensions
Do you have the same problems when you run Firefox in safe mode?

You can try Adblock Edge instead of Adblock Plus. Try to eliminate addons as the source of the problem. In fact, the addons are causing the problem until proven otherwise.

That page seems to be way out of date.

Why would Adblock Edge be different for performance than Adblock Plus? Just curious, as I as probably many people here use Noscript and Adblock Plus/Edge (yes, I am using Edge). I am wondering what the theory is that plugins that strip out stuff cause pages to not appear at all or suck up more memory.