Slow going...

Granny Sue

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If this needs to be posted elsewhere, please let me know.

When I run a browser of any sort, I'm known to have multiple tabs open, usually up to 7 or 8. My syst4em starts slowing down as soon as I open the browser, then gets progressively slower as I open more tabs. Is this a processor problem? What do I need to do to fix this?Also, is this something I van do myself without breaking anything?

Thanks, Granny Sue
 


Remind me...how much RAM do you have on that particular pc/laptop ...?
 
When I run a browser of any sort, I'm known to have multiple tabs open, usually up to 7 or 8. My syst4em starts slowing down as soon as I open the browser, then gets progressively slower as I open more tabs. Is this a processor problem? What do I need to do to fix this?Also, is this something I van do myself without breaking anything?

Thanks, Granny Sue
Running 7 to 8 tabs open can and will load the processor and use a lot of ram and can and will slow your computer down to a halt if under powered and not enough ram.

Ram is your work bench and the more ram the bigger area to work on and more area to work on means more tasks can be done at the same time.

Why do you need to have so many tabs open at the same time.
 
If this needs to be posted elsewhere, please let me know.

Hi Sue, I am moving this to General LInux as it is not Mint-specific, with a redirect so Viewers can find you.

I may be back some time with my 2 cents, but you are in good hands. :)

Chris
 
Hey Sue! As the others have said, RAM is a likely suspect. It's time to teach you a new command line tool, top. Open a terminal and give the command top and your terminal will turn into a constantly updating live review of what your system is doing. Use CTRL-C to exit when you're done looking at it.

Top can help you identify what is using up your resources (CPU and RAM). In the lower "pane" of the display, the far right column shows what programs and services are running. Many of these are system services and you can't do anything with them. But run Firefox and you will see it appear in the list. It's hard to watch the output because it changes every couple of seconds, but pay attention to it and you'll get the hang of it. The most active programs appear at the top of the list, so watch the top (or near the top) for Firefox. When you see Firefox, quickly look a couple of columns to the left and you'll see a column for %CPU and %MEM, and especially watch the %MEM column. It takes practice to do this, but it's worth it.

As you open more tabs in Firefox, the %MEM will increase. Your situation will be different from mine, but I did a quick test... with 1 tab open, Firefox was using 4.0% of memory. With 8 tabs open, it was 6.0%. My desktop has 8GB of RAM, so 6% of that is 0.48GB, or 480MB. If your older Compaq only has 1GB of RAM, that would be nearly half being used by Firefox (or a fourth if you have 2GB of RAM). You see it can add up quickly. While watching top, a couple of other items that are probably related to Firefox were also appearing, Web Content and Web Extensions... so these just add to the problem, but they varied a lot so maybe they don't hurt too bad either, I don't know.

Consider too, it's not just how many tabs you have open, but what is going on with those tabs. If any are playing streaming music or video (especially video).... their memory usage will be higher than other pages. Some pages will automatically reload themselves to stay current (like watching football scores, for example).... and this can contribute to more memory usage also.

A less likely possibility is also your internet connection.... either your wireless computer-to-router connection or the router-to-internet. If either of these are bottlenecked, it would make your browser seem slow because the pages are not loading quickly. This would be most noticeable if you were trying to load 8 tabs one after another very quickly.

If you can increase the RAM in the computer, it would probably help, but it's hard to guess by how much. Older computers have a maximum limit on how much RAM you can add, and what kind of RAM you can use, so if you want to upgrade it you will need to be very careful to get the right stuff.

And you still may need to adjust your browsing habits... and open less tabs.

Cheers
 

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