Firefox 88 doesn't run

Just went to install a new package so did my usual -Syu to make sure everything is update and no partial upgrades. This only pulled in a new version of Firefox. After restarting (twice to be sure) Firefox still wont run.

If I downgrade from 88 to 87, downgrading the firefox-i18n-en-gb package first to resolve conflicts, then Firefox run this older version. Returning it to 88 and again it is still broken, which uses the new Profile and shows it’s not due to any AddOns etc.

Symptoms are no page displaying. Clicking on previously open tabs and only the info bar would show any change. Changing desktop and back to where Firefox is and it would show the new tab as selected. Nothing within the main window updating graphically at all, including typing into the address bar.

inxi -Fxz
System:    Kernel: 5.4.106-rt54-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.0 Desktop: Xfce 4.16.0 
           Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP EliteBook 840 G2 v: A3009D410303 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 2216 v: KBC Version 96.5B serial: <filter> UEFI: Hewlett-Packard 
           v: M71 Ver. 01.27 date: 07/12/2018 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 32.4 Wh (100.0%) condition: 32.4/32.4 Wh (100.0%) volts: 12.7 min: 11.4 
           model: Hewlett-Packard Primary status: Full 
CPU:       Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core i7-5500U bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Broadwell rev: 4 cache: 
           L2: 4 MiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 19160 
           Speed: 2395 MHz min/max: 500/3000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2395 2: 2395 3: 2394 4: 2394 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 5500 vendor: Hewlett-Packard ZBook 15u G2 Mobile Workstation driver: i915 
           v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: intel resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 5500 (BDW GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 21.0.2 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Broadwell-U Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 00:03.0 
           Device-2: Intel Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: snd_hda_intel 
           v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.4.106-rt54-MANJARO running: yes 
           Sound Server-2: sndio v: N/A running: no 
           Sound Server-3: JACK v: 1.9.17 running: yes 
           Sound Server-4: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
           Sound Server-5: PipeWire v: 0.3.25 running: no 
Network:   Device-1: Intel Ethernet I218-LM vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: e1000e v: 3.2.6-k port: 5080 
           bus-ID: 00:19.0 
           IF: enp0s25 state: down mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Intel Wireless 7265 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: ef80 bus-ID: 03:00.0 
           IF: wlo1 state: up mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 3.64 TiB used: 2.86 TiB (78.5%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 4TB size: 3.64 TiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 59.83 GiB used: 33.5 GiB (56.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3 
           ID-2: /boot/efi size: 496 MiB used: 49.9 MiB (10.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 
Swap:      ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 15.26 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/sda5 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 52.0 C mobo: 0.0 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:      Processes: 194 Uptime: 23m Memory: 15.04 GiB used: 1.4 GiB (9.3%) Init: systemd Compilers: 
           gcc: 10.2.0 Packages: 2039 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.0 inxi: 3.3.04 

Is there any way I can get my old profile to open now it’s been opened in the faulty 88 it wont let me open it in 87 and keeps on forcing me to create a new profile. I’ve tried setting it in the Profile Manager accessible from about:profiles in the address bar but opening a Firefox window with it still forces me to create a new profile again. Is there a string I can edit somewhere? Googling not coming up with much useful… (Although at least it taught me the existence of about:profiles)

Or maybe there’s one single file I can not copy into the new folder to get my previous session restored, along with my AddOns and Bookmarks…

I don’t think profiles are backwards compatible.

Then Manjaro shouldn’t have put a 100% broken version into its repos!

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Can you start firefox on console ?
type “firefox” console.

I myself actually don’t have issues with Firefox 88 on any of my 3 computers. So it might be your end.

Did you by any chance run Firefox in the terminal to see what errors it was outputting? That is always the best thing to do when you have issues with a program.

You can use old profiles, with the --allow-downgrade switch.
But can you confirm something first before doing that. ON FIREFOX 88 go to Firefox settings, scroll to these options and disable them, restart Firefox then:

[ ] Use recommended performance settings
 [ ] Use hardware acceleration when possible

Does it work?

If yes then can you give output of inxi -Fazy

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Terminal remains completely blank after hitting Enter.

Bingo! Any idea why I needed to do that? Was a pain as had to switch desktop to see if I had scrolled to the right part of the Settings page but this seems to be the ticket.

Apparently there is an issue in Firefox 88 with hardware acceleration, I have Nvidia and have the issue, you have Intel and have the issue, so far it seems AMD is not affected. Will link your thread to the thread I will open about it.

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Explains why I wasn’t affected. All my computers runs AMD haha.

It’s not affecting all Intel apparently. I run an Ivy Bridge (HD Graphics 4000 (IVB GT2)) laptop and I do have “Use recommended performance settings” checked. I recently followed the Arch wiki to manually enable WebRender so I don’t know if that possibly is why I haven’t encountered an issue?

What if you try the settings I said to test (actually forcing hardware acceleration)?

//EDIT sorry it is not in this thread, just tick the second box to test if it breaks WITH hardware acceleration. Try this and report please:

[ ] Use recommended performance settings
 [X] Use hardware acceleration when possible

If I uncheck “Use recommended performance settings” then I can see that “Use hardware acceleration when possible” was also checked, so yes, hardware acceleration is forced on my end, but I did create a config file to manually enable WebRender recently. I restarted Firefox twice and it still works. Also after reboot of the computer. I re-enabled “Use recommended performance settings” now.

And I ran the Chalkboard benchmark you mentioned and it finished in 7.44 seconds. Off topic, but Chromium takes 4x longer, weird…

If it finishes under 10 seconds you have hardware acceleration. If it takes long time you don’t.

What’s weird though is in Chrome and Edge on my Win 10 PC with Nvidia GTX 1060 6g installed, the Chalkboard benchmark takes over 28 seconds to complete, while Firefox takes around 8 seconds, similar to my Intel CPU only Manjaro laptop running Chromium and Firefox.

Chrome and Edge on Win 10 and Manjaro both show under Graphics Feature Status in green either Hardware Accelerated or Enabled (for everything except Vulkan, which is Disabled) and Firefox lists WebRender as the compositor on both computers.

I’m not even sure this test is relevant, when I talked about this test it was to tell that it was now taking 10 times the time as it was before. I just use this test as comparison to see if Firefox work great or not.

If it doesn’t give you good results in other system or other browser this is off topic sorry.

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I understand and you are correct, off topic, sorry. I just thought it was interesting for comparison purposes and to possibly spark an idea in someone who may be able to help more with the specific topic. My bad.

No problem, just that I don’t know. Someone may have find some more insight on the issue, see this post here Firefox issues after update to v88 - #39 by flux

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