Web browsers running much slower on linux, compared with windows 7, same PC

[the dsc]

Debian lenny, old install (I've upgraded to lenny when it was just about to become the stable release), versus windows 7, fresh install.

Comparing browsers speeds with numion.com/Stopwatch.html, I had results such as:


Iceweasel (firefox) on linux: from 9.154 seconds to 21:860 seconds (the same webpage, reloaded)


Firefox on windows: 4.32 seconds - and never much slower than that


The fastest browser on linux was Opera, ranging from 8.562 to 5.503 secs to load the same page, but even internet explorer beat/match it with its timing of about five seconds. I have not other browsers on windows; on linux there is arora, konqueror (KDE3), kazehakase, chrome, and dillo, besides text browsers. I didn't test on dillo; Kazehakase and chrome were the only ones which had nearly decent results, but still very bad, 11 to 13 seconds for chrome, and 21 for kazehakase. Konqueror just seemed to never finish to load the page, I gave up when it was still loading something after 2 minutes and 5 seconds.


I've emptied the cache every time I would test, and I was running almost only the browsers and not much else. Whatever comes by default on windows, and on linux, I was on openbox, with nothing much going on I guess, I think the most memory consuming process at the time, besides xorg and the browsers themselves, was dictd.




I've researched a little bit about, but not enough to make a list of possible things to change in order to improve the speed on linux. Most of the time there are people just agreeing that on windows the rendering is faster, and other people saying that with them is the opposite, with some minor variations like people saying that linux is faster for plain downloads while windows is faster for web browsing due to better graphics.

(by the way; I haven't installed any graphic card driver on windows, which is still running on 1024x768, while linux runs on 1280x1024, with the "nv" generic driver, without fancy options, not supported by my old card)

The closest to a suggestion of possible solutions was someone saying tha compilation may affect performance, I guess it was both about kernel compilation, and the web browsers themselves.



I'll google a bit more about how to "compile for speed", both kernels and programs (maybe the x server), but I'd like appreciate a lot if someone could point to something else I might be missing here.

I wonder if Lenny is much dated by now, with some speed being compromised in exchange for stability.

[oz]

Are you talking internet speed, or page rendering speed?

Not sure that it would apply in your case, but some Linux users get much faster internet speeds if they disable ipv6, so you could try that if you haven't done so already.

[the dsc]

Thanks for answering, so fast!


(I was just going to edit just to mention that I accidentaly "cheated" for Opera, I forgot about the flash blocker; without it, it goes a bit worse, albeit still the better on linux, ranging from 12 to 8 seconds to render the same page)


I think that page rendering is what I'm actually measuring with that website I mentioned, but maybe there are differences in internet speed contributing to that too, I can't really tell.

Actually, when I first read (today) about that possibility (where linux would tend to be faster) I found that a bit strange, I didn't expect that the OS could make any meaningful difference, unless we were comparing a very new one against a much older OS. Older like windows 95, not debian Lenny. But that's just my unfounded intuitions.



I had disabled already something with ipv6 on iceweasel's "about:config" (otherwise it would barely load any page), are you talking about this sort of thing, or is there some system-wide configuration I could disable?


Edit:

Nevermind, just found about that:

Linux: How To Disable The IPv6 Protocol

I'm gonna try it now, thanks!

[reed9]

I've heard many reports of firefox being slower on linux than windows, but it was always my impression they were talking primarily about startup speeds.

I mostly use chromium now, and most pages are rendered in a couple of seconds tops. (Alright, subjective, I haven't measured it.) Firefox renders things reasonably fast, though not as fast as chromium.

If disabling ipv6 significantly improves the problem, then it seems to be more of a DNS issue than a rendering issue. You might also try switching your DNS server to openDNS and see if you find a speed increase.

You might also want to set up a local DNS cache.
Local DNS Cache for Faster Browsing Ubuntu Blog