Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Slow Scrolling in Firefox 3, Ubuntu, intel graphics

FireFox and a even Epiphany were scrolling super slow on certain sites on my EEE PC 1000h.

This was with both Ubuntu 8.04, and the 8.10 beta.

One in particular was ign.com. It was almost unusable.

After a lot of digging, I found the key, at least for my situation.


In your xorg.conf file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) add the follwing in the Device section.

Option "AccelMethod" "exa"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"


From what I gather, "exa" is the new way for X to handle accerlation for intel chips.

What I know for sure, is that my firefox scrolls nice and fast again, and alot of other wiered graphical anomalies with compiz have stopped happening alltogether.

I am happy!

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

This worked for my HP PC that uses "Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)" on Ubuntu 8.10
Spread the word on the UbuntuForum!
At first I figured it was the Flash plugin.. nope!

Unknown said...

Hey there, glad it worked for ya!

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much, I just ditched XP for Intrepid and the video issues were such a headache.

I too thought it was the flash plugin, but then VLC was having frame rate issues playing movies.

This fixed everything for me, thank you very much.

Unknown said...

Worked for me.
You saved my life, as a web developper firefox was making me loosing a loooooooooooooot of time waiting for him to "unlock"

Unknown said...

Awesome guys, I am glad this has helped in more situations than just my own!

Anonymous said...

Fixed artifacts for me using NVidia's proprietary driver (version 177).

Thanks!

Matthew said...

Dang, thanks a bunch. This fixed everything!

Anonymous said...

Thanks a million. You're a feckin star! I thought my Dell Inspiron 6000 wasn't cut out for Intrepid but everything is flying now.

Anonymous said...

If you have the same problem but with a nVidia, there is a link: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=118088

Florian said...

Hey thank you!! This worked on my Thinkpad T61! Finally Firefox works as fast as in Windows!

Anonymous said...

what do you have in your xorg.conf for the intel driver? Does this fix the issue of intrepid and setting the driver?

Unknown said...

Driver "intel"


In my xorg.conf, I have never had an issue with needing to change that.

Anonymous said...

Sweet, that works, i have eeebuntu 2 standard on a eee pc 701 4g, I mostly use up and down arrows to scroll in firefox and it was horribly slow. When it finally decide to start scrolling it would continue for a little while even after I stop holding the down arrow key.
Your hint fixed it.

Thomas said...

Nice, it worked somehow for me too! But still.. It seems that Ubuntu is pretty much slower compared to ArchLinux, so I am just going to switch back anyway

What made me choose Ubuntu is that it had a nice theme for libnotify, but I think I will live without it ;)

Cool Acid said...

Man, you are GOD!
Worked like a charm. Thx!

Anonymous said...

God bless you! It worked! Slow speed on ubuntu was giving me a headache. Was struggling with that problem for hours!

for the beginners like me:
to edit xorg.conf:

1. open terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal)

2. Type in (without quotes)
"sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf"

3. Enter password

4. just save and exit

5. Reboot system

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generic cialis 20mg said...

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Thanks,
Charlie