Greg Laden's Blog

The first idea is to replace Firefox with Swiftfox. Swiftfox is a "buld" of Firefox optimized to run on a particular processor. If you use an Intel or AMD processor, you can get such a build.

A "build" is simply this: You develop a computer program (write the program, essentially) then you compile and link the code (the meaning of "compile and link" is not important). You end up with a particular "build." In theory, you can build the software to run on a particular system (Mac, vs. Windows vs. Linux) or to have any one of a number of different subtle features. Most of the time a fairly complex piece of software includes, internally, a number of conditional bits and pieces such that the software figures out exactly what version of some system it is running on, and adapts appropriately. This is why some software will crash on one person's computer but not another ... even if both computers are running the same system, there will be differences in the exact version of the system, the graphics controller card, the processor, etc. that will cause a difference.

These internal conditional bits and pieces allow the software to run on a wide range of systems, but they come at a cost in terms of time and program size. Swiftfox leaves out some of this code because it is built specifically to run on Linux running on a particular processor. It should therefore crash less often and run faster.

I can't tell the difference, but people who measure these things say the diffrence is real.

The Swiftfox web site is here, but you should go to your standard installation system (synaptic in Ubuntu) and look for it there.

Installing Swiftfox does not remove Firefox, but the newly installed Swiftfox will absorb your stuff (bookmarks and such) from your Firefox installation.