Just upgraded from kubuntu 21.10 to 22.04, my firefox apt was forcefully converted into a snap. From what I measured on my machine:
Firefox100 (deb):
First launch time (after system reboot) - 2.7s
Second launch time (firefox launched and then closed) - 2.7s
Firefox100 (snap):
First launch time (after system reboot) - 15s
Second launch time (firefox launched and then closed) - 4s
I’ve been spending the last couple of hours trying to get a working .deb version of firefox, as I personally don’t think trading performance for security and faster updates is a deal.
I have been doing some rudimentary test, maybe this help you:
I have noticed that after an updated of the firefox snap the first startup time gets worse for some reason there is a degradation in that, what a did is a complete remove of firefox snap remove --purge firefox and reinstalled fresh with new profile and everything. That help me reduce form a 15sec first start to a 6sec and form 6sec second start to 2sec.
Did a fresh snap install with a new profile and everything, but the snap launch times are still rather high (about 15s after a computer restart, otherwise 4s, tested 3 times and without any add-ons or firefox profile modifications)
However, it probably has something to do with the (first) error message I get when I launch the firefox(snap) from terminal after a computer restart: This error (something related to libreoffice, which is installed as a .deb anyways), does not appear when I launch firefox(snap) for the second time(launch time 5s), or if I launch firefox-esr (installed as .deb, launch time 2s) before launching firefox(snap).
If there is any place better to report this, please let me know.
Thank you
There’s a high variance in startup time according to my anecdotal experience. This would certainly benefit from some methodical profiling. There’s not much missing for it to be close to flawless.
Too bad didn’t help you as per @ppd there is a high variance in startup times. In this link is the only tread in the snapcraft forums that try to talk and dig in this topic of slow startup times but, it did not take traction.
In this link are the results of my test using different laptops maybe this help to get attention to this. @ppd maybe there could be the place to gather son results using methodical profiling. I have see updates affecting the startup time, even if you use something like TLP or CPU Auto-freq affects the startup time of snaps and firefox snap.
Thanks @edurojas! We take the startup time problem very seriously, and we have launched a cross-team effort to try and improve the situation, so expect news and results in the near future. Stay tuned…
Thanks @oSoMoN that’s great! I guess when the time is right the team will announce if they need help with the tests, I will be able to help in whatever way I can.
Fix the Firefox load times so new/inexperienced users don’t conclude Linux is slower than Windows. Snaps should not be forced deployed unless the load performance hit is only a small fraction.
I already had customer testers install 22.04 and just state the browser is hideously slow to load. They cancelled all 22.04 upgrades. Once Ubuntu 22.04 switches to Firefox snaps then they will be switching to Debian 11.X. The POC migration to Debian 11 has already started for that customer base.
These type of first impression experiences are really sad and devastating for the Ubuntu and even Linux Community as a whole.
Maybe somewhat off-topic but note that LibreOffice snap is very slow (I do use NVMe…).
The big difference with FF is that the start-up times are noticeable even > 1 launches.
Ubuntu Desktop Team Indaba - May 27, 2022 on Ubuntu OnAir Ubuntu Desktop Team Indaba
Testing is in progress for Firefox Snap.
Testers are requested to help out.
Firefox snap broken in Guest Account on Xubuntu 22.04 (Jammy)
My laptop is sometimes used by visitors. They want to browse the internet. So I setup the guest-account. I found out that the Firefox snap is broken on guest-accounts.
When opening Firefox nothing happens. When starting FF from the command line of the guest-account I found out the following:
$ firefox
2022/07/12 00:46:01.906615 tool_linux.go:82: cannot open snapd info file “/snap/snapd/current/usr/lib/snapd/info”: open /snap/snapd/current/usr/lib/snapd/info: permission denied
Did anybody solve this problem? How can it be resolved now that the .deb packages are abandoned?
Ok maybe so, but the damage is done. They also set up a POC to move their entire server farm to Debian stating Ubuntu performance is just not acceptable and we don’t want to risk these type of performance issues on servers. They won’t even consider any snap on their installs moving forward.
This error (something related to libreoffice, which is installed as a .deb anyways), does not appear when I launch firefox(snap) for the second time(launch time 5s), or if I launch firefox-esr (installed as .deb, launch time 2s) before launching firefox(snap).
as per