Speed Up Firefox

If you are experiencing tearing while using Firefox you may want to see if graphics accelleration is enabled on the browser. You can try this tip to force hardware accelleration on in the browser.

First, check to make sure that your Linux desktop installation supports it by running the following command and making sure that direct rendering returns Yes:

$ glxinfo | grep render direct rendering: Yes

Then, open Firefox if it’s not already running, and enter about:config in the address bar. Click Accept The Risk And Continue when prompted, to get to the Firefox Advanced Configuration Editor

Search for “layers.acceleration.force-enabled” and you should then see it listed in the results.

Click the right and left pointing arrow icon associated with the entry until false changes to true. Once that’s taken care of, close and restart Firefox.

If you don’t see layers.acceleration.force-enabled listed, you’ll need to create it by right-clicking an empty area and selecting New | Boolean. Name the new entry layers.acceleration.force-enabled and set it to true. Restart Firefox and you’re done.

If you notice any issues with Firefox after that and you need to revert your change, just search again and toggle it back to false.

Some folks report that setting gfx.xrender.enabled=true and layers.acceleration.force-enabled and layers.force-active also works. YMMV ;^)

• Firefox
• Tearing
• Accelleration
• Glxinfo
• Direct-Rendering
• Motd