This has been bothering me long enough that I figured I’d check to see if anyone else is having the same issue, and more importantly, if there’s a fix.

Some websites, like Google Earth or various weather radar sites get so slow that they are unusable in Firefox.

When I load the same sites in Edge, it’s blazing fast, as I’d expect.

Even Librewolf chugs on these sites.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

ADDITIONAL DETAILS: First, thanks for all the input, guys.

I wanted to say that I’ve tried a fresh FF profile, and the same slowness happens in Google Earth.

I also confirmed that hardware acceleration is enabled.

This problem isn’t on all websites. For example, playing www.slowroads.io actually gives a higher framerate on FF than it does on Edge. So it seems to be that certain websites just suck ass.

Some of you have said that Google Earth on FF works perfectly fine… on linux. At least it seems not to be a FF problem. LOL

EDIT: Opera browser is just as smooth as Edge with G Earth.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION?? Ok, so even though I was able to confirm that hardware acceleration was enabled, and the GPU was active while using FF, and the about:support showed that webrender was enabled, I noticed that on about:config the gfx.webrender.all setting was set to false.

So, I enabled it, and tried again. Google Earth seems much smoother (not as good as edge, but better than before), and Tube Archivist no longer seems to freeze while a video is being played.

Could this be the reason for my issues? If so, why was this option set to false by default?

  • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    7 months ago

    I have zero issues with Google Earth, using Firefox on Linux.

    Sounds like Firefox might not be using GPU acceleration on your system for some reason. Graphics intensive websites (particularly 3D) work better if they make use of hardware acceleration and generally run better with it enabled. You can check if hardware acceleration is working by going to “about:support” and checking the “composite” line. If it says Web Render (without software written there in brackets) it’s hardware accelerated. If it’s disabled you may need to dig into settings to turn it on. It can also be related to out of date graphics drivers in Windows (I see elsewhere you’re on wndows).

    Another possibility is if you have extensions that are interfering with the the website. Adblocks and privacy extensions can mess with Google sites (which are heavily data scraping). One way to test this is to open the website on private mode (assuming you haven’t enabled all extensions in that mode) and see what happens. Or disable all your extensions on that one site and see what happens.

    But the core point is, Firefox is perfectly able to run such sites without issue. So the problem is likely to be with your set up somewhere.

    • Showroom7561OP
      1·
      7 months ago

      You can check if hardware acceleration is working by going to “about:support” and checking the “composite” line. If it says Web Render (without software written there in brackets) it’s hardware accelerated. I

      It does say “Compositing WebRender”.

      I’m going to try a fresh profile to see if that happens. I do have the same issue on multiple PCs (all windows), so I must be doing something that’s creating this issue on all my installs.