Hi, I am one of the the other people who are experiencing Firefox freezing up the whole desktop computer, requiring the computer to be turned of (hold down the power button or throw switch at the power point).
We believe the issue is related to various ads that show on some web pages. Our current solution is not to open those pages, and to use Chromium. We have several computers in the house. Only one computer has a major issue, and they are the only user who goes to the page which is known to lock-up. They also use three monitors, Debian 12 with KDE (now using X11, as Wayland had more frequent issues). Your reporting of your issue has encouraged me to test run our suspected web page on other computers to replicate the lock ups. Is there anything in your user Firefox setting you need to keep? For example pinned pages, remembered passwords, and/or bookmarks, or any other user settings that you need? If not then I recommend wiping all user settings for Firefox and then reloading Firefox. I had to do this one time a year or so ago. It was sad to loose my many bookmarks but it did clean out my Firefox. Below is how I wiped my user settings, maybe someone can tell you a better way? I think I used something like: $ rm -rf .cache/mozilla/firefox $ rm -rf .mozilla/firefox rm -rf can be a bit dangerous if you make a typo, so maybe a safer way to do this is to use a file manager, turn on hidden files, and then delete these "firefox" folders? If firefox still freezes your computer when you first load it up, I would: # apt purge firefox-esr # systemctl reboot (log in again) # apt install firefox-esr If Firefox still freezes on initial load (i.e. before you go to any of your web sites), I suspect a hardware fault. I think firefox can use direct hardware for making pages faster. "Firefox on Fedora supports hardware acceleration on Linux so let's look how to configure it and diagnose potential issues. " https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Firefox_Hardware_acceleration https://wiki.debian.org/HardwareVideoAcceleration George. George. On Tuesday, 28-01-2025 at 08:07 Maureen Thomas wrote: > Hi Andy, > > I use Thuderbird for my email and have no problem with it. Yes, the > Firefox I use is the ESR version that comes with debian. It happens > when I open Firefox and it just freezes before I can even use it. I do > have to pages pinned to it so when it opens those pages are opened. I > don't even have time to unpin those to see if they are the problem. > This started after an update for Firefox from Debian. > > I am not familiar with Top. Thunderbird stays open while I am on the > computer but I tried to load Firefox alone, after I booted up and it > still froze the computer. > > > On 1/27/25 3:26 AM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > > On Sun, Jan 26, 2025 at 08:11:48PM -0500, Maureen Thomas wrote: > >> I am using an updated Debian 12 with Thurderbird and Firefox. Since the > >> updated firefox I can not use it as it freezes my computer to the point > >> that > >> I have to hold the off button on the computer for about 10 seconds before > >> it > >> turns off. I am using Chrominum and I hate it. I have a VPN but I still > >> don't trust anything from Google. I forgot how to remove the update and > >> use > >> the older version. At 74 I am forgetting a lot of things I did before, I > >> mean years ago. I hate to keep bugging you guys but I refuse to use > >> Winblows. Can someone please help me out. > >> > > Hi Moe, > > > > Are there any other symptoms? How much memory do you have in your computer? > > > > Does this happen with just one window open - so nothing else closed down > > as a tab? > > > > If you run top (or any other performance indicator) at the same time, > > do you see any pattern to what processes are running? > > > > Also - this is the Debian version - the Firefox ESR - and not a newer > > version from Mozilla themselves? > > > > Rather than moving to yet another browser, lets see if we can narrow > > down causes. Someone else a while ago was mentioning the same problem > > but with the newer versions of Thunderbird - do you have a Thunderbird > > window somewhere in the background, perhaps? > > > > All the very best, as ever, > > > > Andy Cater > > (amaca...@debian.org) > > > > > >> Moe
