Firefox has let me down. I haven't previously used it that much in Linux, but I was forced to today with my current computer problems. I notice that on my Fedora box (Core 3), it's started crashing with regularity. I had several instances of it running, some with multiple tabs, and they suddenly all disappeared. Now when I try to reopen it, sometimes it will open, and after I open up a couple tabs, and switch to another one, it gets blown away. The last time, it died even before it finished loading the first page.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem is? (If anyone's wondering, I'm posting this from another Windows machine.)

[Update a few minutes later]

I decided to upgrade from 1.0 (which was a preview version that came with the Fedora install) to 1.04, which is the latest version. We'll see if it's more stable. So far, so good...

Just use 'yum update' if you need to update something else in the future.

I've been using firefox since version .9 on a wintel box and can't say that I've had that severe of a problem with it. Although even with the the current version right now there are a few things that can cause it to unexpectedly crash to the desktop. Like right clicking on an image and then selecting the option to 'View the Image' can cause an application error and crash.

Also, there are times when it will take an extraordinarily long time to load. Apparently, the browser cache is set by default at a size of 51 megs. When this cache fills up it purges it out before loading the frontend hence the long wait after executing. In essence version 1.0 has a memory leak cause normally an application is supposed to dynamically release unused memory from the disk cache. You can check your current cache size by typing about:cache in the address bar and hit enter. You will see your current file cache sizes and maximum storage limits. One way to fix it is to lower the cache size so that it consumes less space. It will purge more often but being a smaller size should take less time. Type in about:config in the address bar, hit enter and then type in browser.cache in the filter field. Depending on what version you have it may say browser.cache.memory.capacity or possibly browser.cache.disk.capacity with a value of 50000. You can half that value or even go so low as 16384 to see if tha that helps. Note that this helps for version 1.0 I believe they have resolved the cache issues with 1.04 but I do still notice the delayed startup time occasionally.

Other good tweaks for most any install of firefox on a fast computer with a fast internet connection are:

network.http.pipelining, true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests, 8
network.http.max-connections, 48
network.http.max-connections-per-server, 16
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy, 16
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server, 8

I am using Firefox 1.0 on Red Hat. But I am using Enterprise Workstation 4.0 not Fedora. I have noticed some people here at work using Fedora 3 and have some problems with evolution. So it could be Fedora, but I don't know as I have never used Fedora.