I subscribe to a low volume Linux Users Group mailing list. I recently received some tips on tweaking Firefox, and have been quite pleased with the results.
Firefox is pretty fast as is “out of the box”, and it can be made to be much faster. I have tried these tweaks and they seem to deliver significant performace gains without any noticeable adverse effects.
Performance tweak #1:
Step 1:
Open a new tab(CTRL + T), so you can flip back and forth from these instructions to the configuration details.
Step 2:
In the new tab, type or cut-n-paste about:config into the address bar.
Step 3:
Scroll way down the page until you find network.http.pipelining. Double-click that line so that it becomes bold and the value is registered as true. This will allow mulitple threads.
Step 4:
Double-click the line (probably the next one) that reads network.http.pipelining.maxrequests. In the box that pops up, try a number like 48, 64, etc. I am using 96 with good results.
Step 5:
Try a site that notoriously loads slowly, one that has tons of little graphics, etc., will be an ideal candidate. You should see a marked improvement.
Step 6:
Post back to unknown dog with your results or lack thereof.
I’ve made the tweaks and have been operating flawlessly for about 30 minutes now. I’m not really sure if it’s faster or not. I think it is actually, but I had no complaints about it before and I can’t think of any notoriously slow sites off the top of my head to really see what it can do.