Making Firefox lean and secure

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Dieting

Erik Bärwaldt

Firefox tends to get sluggish pretty quickly when it is used intensively. There are some settings and add-ons available that can help it pick up speed again.

Mozilla Firefox is undoubtedly one of the best web browsers available. Thanks to its modular construction, it can be configured very precisely and also expanded to include many additional functions. However, heavy Internet use can lead to sluggishness for this browser. It may start slowly and websites may also load slowly. There are a few maneuvers you can use to handily help Firefox regain its original speed.

Hoarder

Many of the conveniences found in Firefox come at the expense of storing data, either temporarily or permanently. This data is not limited to things like URLs you have visited over the Internet and the content of websites you have visited. The Mozilla corporation, which develops and maintains the browser, also collects numerous pieces of user data by means of a series of default settings in order to improve the software and to stay informed of its operating condition.

Under Linux, you will see that large volumes of data quickly accumulate in the $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/ directory and its subdirectories. In addition to status reports that the browser collects and transmits to Mozilla servers, these directories contain crash reports and many other types of data. The software also saves up to five backups of your bookmarks even if you have used the corresponding dialog to save these externally.

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