Are you using a low spec machine with limited resources ?

(But you seem to be using 64bit Firefox ) 

How is it for available RAM and CPU use ?

Do you notice any pattern to when you have these problems, and is it only Firefox that is affected ? If you run other applications at the same time do they behave ok ?

I may not understand but what do you mean by maximum encryption and security ? Presumably that is something more than just encrypting the Home Partition.

You are on firefox 28 that is not supported, and even though the canonical Firefox tends to be delayed you should still be on Fx30 or 31. Is your Xubuntu a supported version ?

To John 99:

I'm sorry it's taken so long to reply, but for some reason I was unable to rejoin this string until just now. (Technical mystery)

The problem I brought seems to have resolved itself; I have no idea why. Online operations run much better now.

To answer your question, though, the version of Xubuntu I'm using is 14.04 and so it is supported. And thanks for alerting me to the fact that I'm using Firefox 28; why would they include an unsupported version of Firefox in the same package with the newest version of an operating system? In any case, I'm told that I can't update my Firefox to 31 (or whatever the number is) until they send an update.

I do have another small problem but I'll save that for a separate question.

Thanks for your offer to help., Bob

Xubuntu 14.04 came out April 17, 2014 according to http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=xubuntu and it had Firefox 28.0 then. So you will have to look for Firefox updates in its package manager unless you use the tarballs from mozilla.org

Got it downloaded. Thank you.

Glad your problem resolved itself, and I see you also solved your other (/questions/1012424) problem. Don't forget to update Firefox it should be Firefox 31 now or if Xubuntu is a bit behind maybe still Fx30 but certainly not Fx28.

Be aware you will notice big changes in Firefox

• Learn more about the design of the new Firefox version 29
• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/tour/

You mentioned

why would they include an unsupported version of Firefox in the same package with the newest version of an operating system?

Ubuntu and Xubuntu major releases come out every six months. Firefox updates every six weeks. Probably the first thing to do after installing a new version of X/Ubuntu is to update the software, also immediately prior to upgrading to the next Xubuntu.

Firefox & Ubuntu/Xubuntu versions

I use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS mostly. 14.04 is also LTS so you have the option to stay on that instead of in due course upgrading to 14.10

• Pretty graphic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_versions#Table_of_versions

I use their distro canonical builds of Firefox from their Aurora repository. That is behind Mozilla builds datewise (I also have mozilla builds installed) but it uses the package manager so no need to resort to manual updates of Firefox. You probably do not wish or need to do that but if you do wish to install that as an additional browser it is available for 12.04 & 14.04 from

• https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ubuntu/firefox-aurora
• If you are interested in the Mozilla installs see
  Install Firefox on Linux
  & https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FirefoxNewVersion

The package manager synaptic (Graphical front end of APT ) is no longer in default distros of Ubuntu/Xubuntu you could add Synaptic (Included in gDebi in Xubuntu 12.04) otherwise use the "Software Centre" to ensure everything is kept updated

• Software Centre http://askubuntu.com/questions/4983/what-are-ppas-and-how-do-i-use-them/40351#40351
  • https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/first-xubuntu#TOC-Apply-all-available-updates
• Synaptic Package Manager https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticHowto

I know some earlier versions of Ubuntu at (least LTS versions) the canonical builds of Firefox did not update but I would expect the package manager or software centre to be able to keep Firefox reasonably up to date and not drop behind by more than one version.

Thanks, John, this is all useful information. I did manage to download Firefox 31, by the way. Take care, Bob