Back on Firefox 3·0: I have had enough of the daily crashes
As of today, I am back with the reliable Firefox 3·0 on my desktop machine as well. Firefox 3.5 would generally crash daily, though I remember there was once a three-day period in January when it did not crash at all. (There were other days when it would crash two or three times, just to make up for it and keep its daily record.) In 2010, Firefox 3·0, on my Asus laptop running Vista, might have crashed once, if ever. (I kept things on 3·0 there, and was right to.)
I liken 3·5 to the Nissan Sunny B210 or Datsun 120Y: a car which offered no improvement over its predecessor and, in some cases, was even worse.
I waited till 3·5 had been out for some time before I even considered it, thinking that Firefox had ironed out the bugs. I think it must have been around November when I “upgraded”. What a big mistake that was.
I noticed no speed difference and had to put up with the regular crashes. And, judging by feedback, I was not alone.
One helpful netizen suggested Flash could have been responsible and she may be right. However, rather than change to another type of browser, I decided the best course was to “downgrade” to 3·0. which worked with Flash, Java, or whatever else could be thrown at it in the course of daily browsing.
Another asked if the crash occurred at the same time each day and, if so, could it be the Firefox automatic updates? After a week’s study, since I got into the habit of Tweeting each time Firefox crashed at one period, I had to conclude that it was around the same time (evening NZDT), but not the same hour. It varied by around four hours.
Thankfully, Mozilla keeps a copy of it on its website, probably because it realizes that 3·5 is buggy as heck. I only found the link by accident last month and vowed to put restore 3·0 on this machine. Mozilla even continues to upgrade it—this is 3·0·18, which is a few sub-versions newer than what had been on this machine last year.
I can’t tell you how bored I am of seeing the Firefox quality control agent come up every day asking me if I could explain what I was doing at the time of the crash. Well, chaps, I was browsing. And, after today, I hope to only see that window very rarely.
I’m not even going to try 3·6 at least till August or September 2010. But I think that’s just the next type of Nissan Sunny, right? It stays with rear-wheel drive but has more modern colours?
I had the same experience. FF3.5 and then 3.6 kept crashing, up until the point it wouldn’t even start up anymore. For now I am using Chrome, while waiting for a new FF version. I’d rather use FF than Chrome, but I do need a tool that works.
Ton, I have heard good things about Chrome, but Google worries me these days. Would you consider returning to an earlier Firefox as I did? I got used to all the Firefox extensions.
Jack: One thing I have noticed about the Debian distributions of GNU/Linux is that almost all of them are sticking with versions of Firefox under 3.5 (I believe I have 3.017 with Mint.) You can get 3.5 but it’s got the code name of “Shiretoko” and is therefore not the standard install.
Chrome is good and solid for Windows but is still in beta stage for Linux. I use it all the time for speed although currently, there are display problems (mostly with CSS and frames, it appears).
I’m sorry you’re having such an awful experience with Google: I know people that have other bitter things to say but as far as Linux, Google gives me things I can use. Microsoft seems intent on framing Linux as a competitor (perhaps out of necessity but Balmer sure likes to badmouth) and Apple acts like it couldn’t care less.
Your Linux idea (I think it was yours) of trialling it via a DVD drive is still something I want to have a shot at, but for time. The Debian practice of sticking to 3·0 is very telling.
I briefly had for a short time Google Sync on my Dashboard—yet another oddity that I neither requested nor wanted. It disappeared by itself as well! I really wish Google would behave as it did mid-decade.