I-Firefox Isithangami Sokwesekwa

Summary: Firefox fails to load many sites, and some will kill the entire browser.

I recently updated from Ubuntu 22.10 to 23.04, which included an upgrade to Firefox. I originally had trouble with tab/window dragging operations causing the entire desktop to crash.

Removing the snap and installing from the Firefox maintained PPA fixed this issue, but a number of others remain. (Detail on this part over here on the ubuntu forums if interested)

Now many google sites simply show the loading error for ever and never recover. Some URLS can kill the browser completely. For example, this one from the Mozilla website: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/websites-show-spinning-wheel-never-finish-load The error message is attached.

I am happy to perform more tests and provide more diagnostic if it will help. That same URL works fine from the chromium browser on the same desktop systems,as does every other site I've had issues with.

System details: Ubuntu 23.04 64 bit Firefox 113.0.2 Intel_R_ Client Systems NUC7i7BNH (Intel® Core™ i7-7567U) Intel® Iris® Plus Graphics 650 (Kaby Lake GT3e) (KBL GT3) Gnome 44.0 Wayland WS

I use Firefox on Ubuntu 22.04, and my system has 16GB RAM. I have been facing this problem of frequent crashes for the past few months. By crash, I mean not Firefox alone, but the entire system. I use several apps and run several processes that require great compute resources, often simultaneously. I have narrowed the cause of frequent system crashes to Firefox alone; the system rarely crashes when I use other resource-heavy apps. Due to this, I have to restart my system several times a day.

Before this problem arose, I would use multiple tabs (including YouTube, often 10+, close to 20) and multiple windows (2+). Such usage very rarely caused crashes, which is why it is surprising that Firefox now causes the entire system to simply hang sometimes with as low as 3-4 tabs.

I have disabled Hardware Acceleration, refreshed Firefox, even tried disabling WebGL. I also tested it after removing all add-ons, but it still didn't help (I use only 2 add-ons: a simple wide-spectrum ad-blocker and an EPUB reader). Even in troubleshoot mode, Firefox will cause my system to heat up, although it takes some more effort to crash in this case. I use one of the standard themes, so it could not have been the problem.

Many people report Firefox crashes, but in my case, Firefox causes my entire system to crash. How do I fix this issue? Thank you in advance.