Firefox on Linux is now effectively broken. Since installing the new Flash 10 player for Linux (which will become very necessary for everyone, very fast, due to some of the major changes Adobe has introduced that require quite a few apps, such as our Flash uploader, to be built for Flash 10), my browser now crashes every 10 page views or less.

I am fully up to date with the most recent Firefox version, the most recent Flash version, and have tried almost every trick out there to get this to work (http://google.com/search?q=flash%2010%20linux%20crash lists a few). Nothing works. My web browser is now effectively broken.

By the looks of it, this is also a fairly widespread problem. Whoever decided this software was release quality is a complete asshole, as it now looks like I'm left between choosing to uninstall Flash completely, or suffer constant crashes.

Has anybody else out there found a solution that works? I'm using FC9, Firefox 3.0.3, and flash-plugin-10.0.15.3.

 


Comments

dude
12/19/2008 18:31

Try a nightly firefox build or the new FF beta. I'm running flash 10 just fine, but it's Ubuntu Intrepid, not Fedora.

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Dinlax
12/19/2008 18:57

Wasn't 3.0.5 just released?

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Victor Trac link
12/19/2008 20:06

Firefox has a lot of problems, but before categorically saying that FF on linux is broken, have you updated to the latest packages for fc9? Since you are still on FF 3.0.3, perhaps not.

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Emilis link
12/19/2008 20:27

Haven't noticed any problems on Ubuntu 8.10.

Firefox: 3.0.5+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.10.1
Flash: 10.0.15.3ubuntu1~intrepid1

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Peter Cooper link
12/19/2008 20:31

Not sure if this is a Linux thing or a Firefox thing. Since upgrading to Flash 10, Firefox has had similar reliability issues for me on latest OS X.

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Jach
12/19/2008 21:01

Tried compiling from source? I only run into trouble with my Gentoo build when I overload my RAM (poor thing only has 256 MB) and then I just killall -9 it.

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Kyle Mathews link
12/19/2008 21:42

I've had much better luck as well with Firefox 3.1. Before, like what you're experiencing, my browser was crashing constantly but with 3.1 it only crashes when coming out of suspend.

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anon
12/19/2008 22:25

Go for Opera

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Mark
12/19/2008 22:46

So don't you mean Flash 10 on Linux is broken, then? If Flash is crashing, that certainly isn't Firefox's fault.

But for what it's worth, I've noticed that Flash 10 is *much* more stable on my Ubuntu system than Flash 9 used to be.

Try using nspluginwrapper — that way, if Flash crashes, you won't lose the whole browser, and you can often just hit "reload" to restart the child process. Also, consider Adblock+ and/or Flashblock.

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bogdan
12/19/2008 22:48

Had this problem a long time ago with flash 9. I was running 32-bit fedora on a 64-bit processor and besides flash crashes all the time, my mouse would lock up. Never had problems with the 64-bit fedora though :)

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SameProblem
12/20/2008 00:22

I'm having the same problem, i really have problems with any heavy duty stuff. It works fine for plain text websites, but these days they are hard to find.

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Jalada link
12/20/2008 01:40

I've always found that performance of Firefox on Linux (specifically Ubuntu) is not on par with performance on Windows on the same machine, though I haven't experienced your crashing issues.

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Randall link
12/20/2008 02:44

Opera is rock solid. I leave it up for days and days and it's rock solid. And when windows crashes, Opera comes back up.

I like Firefox's tab behavior better. I don't like that Opera takes over the double click event.

Speed dial actually is very awesome. Opera is really nice, a really solid browser.

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WorksGreat
12/20/2008 03:01

I take care of 70 machines all running Fedora with the newest Firefox and Flash 10 and I haven't had a single problem. I think Firefox on Linux is perfecting fine. Something is wrong with your setup. I have you tried removing your .firefox dir or the .macromedia dir in ~/ to see if it is something with your profile?

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jj
12/20/2008 05:08

For me it was Flashblock. since I disabled it, I hand no crash

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Jim
12/20/2008 10:46

I had this same problem with flash10 firefox.i386 running on fc9.x86_64. The browser would crash on every flash page! It even crashed when flashblock was blocking. I had to down grade to flash9.

I now use firefox.x86_64 fc10.x86_64 and flash10.x86_64 (beta) without constant problems.

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Tim Trueman link
12/20/2008 10:46

Their 64-bit version is super buggy: http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-1008

Note their workaround is "Don't use the 64 bit Flash player."

I used to use Linux as my primary OS (Ubuntu specifically) but I've had to switch to Mac because of many issues, this being one of them.

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Nerdz Studios link
12/21/2008 03:19

Us users of firefox here at Nerdz Studios have had crash problems with Firefox (running on XP) but after three crashes to problem has gone and now I'm left with lots of ads that pop-up in new windowns randomly. I did a sweep of my computer with Avast but it still occurs. Mayby Mozilla is loosing it? After all, it is free.

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roddo
01/03/2009 02:24

I'm using Mint Elyssa and FF's flash plugin stopped working. I would get a blank off-white space inside the normal flash screen, so the plugin was installed but just not working properly. First thing I did was install all updates in synaptic, to no avail. What I then did was download the .tar.gz install file from Adobe, and copy the .so file out of it to the
/usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree folder, after backing up the existing .so file.
Indeed the file is newer (and slightly larger) than the original. After restarting the machine flash now works again. Apart from that problem I have found Elyssa to be completely stable and certainly more predictable than XP on the same machine.



















elyssa

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Kwan Lowe link
01/08/2009 08:39

Yup, flash10 definitely is unusable on Linux. With the plugin enabled I'm crashing or locking up every few pages. For example, loading Facebook Pathwords immediately hangs the browser. I've been using the AddOns window to disable Flash except when I visit YouTube! or need to view a particular flash page. With Flash disabled I've visited hundreds of pages without error.

It appears to be related to sound, since a gdb trace shows it hanging on opening /dev/snd devices, but not positive yet.

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Paul Hickey link
01/15/2009 06:11

After days spent trying to get the correct plugins/extensions (java, flash, quicktime, etc.)installed for Firefox 3.05 x86_64 just so I can visit sites containing todays most common content, only to discover how predictably it will hang my system, I am looking for a new browser. I've been a loyal user since Redhat 5, but it is just too frustrating and difficult. Especially since other browsers work right out of the box. This is on FC10 on a notebook w/4gb ram. It seems like a windows tactic where the program was released too early and eventually they will correct all the bug reports they receive. A fine browser gone bad.

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Planet Green link
02/14/2009 17:43

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JK
04/27/2009 20:39

As someone already pointed out, it seem to be hanging on the sound devices even though I (try to) leave the page with flash.

lsof /dev/snd/*
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
firefox 3664 jk mem CHR 116,5 6423 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
firefox 3664 jk 81r CHR 116,2 0t0 5737 /dev/snd/timer
firefox 3664 jk 84u CHR 116,5 0t0 6423 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
firefox 3664 jk 85u CHR 116,9 0t0 6517 /dev/snd/controlC0

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Eric link
08/26/2009 13:34

Try google chrome- tab behavior and spell checker, auto reload are all native- and you can drag tabs into new windows and back into another window. Very stable, very fast. I like it better than firefox and removed firefox the day I installed chrome.

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