Firefox keeps completely freezing randomly

Oh that worked, i think it’s because i did not do it as 1 line command, but even downgrading to 106.0.4 still freezes when trying to open Download dialog window, so it does not look like its Firefox that’s causing the crash?

If I’m not mistaken – I might be; I’m new-- then the Arch Linux archive won’t work here. Firefox itself in its About at least says it’s “Mozilla Firefox for Manjaro Linux”, i.e., to be Manjaro specific/tailored.

[EDIT] … although come to think of it “ALA” seems to have fair chance to stand for “Arch Linux Archive”, which would be to say that if the manual route you suggest wouldn’t be advisable neither would “downgrade” be

<shrug> Who knows how this ■■■■ works…

Given that you guys identified that the dev branch doesn’t suffer from the issue, yes, I would think it’s Firefox as such…

Actually, I have to revise this.

Dev version just froze on me in the same way directly after starting it after another reboot to try and fix things.

Mmm. The hardware acceleration thing is likely not it either if it’s this reproducible from a specific and seemingly not graphically related action – but I’d still be trying to switch that off for a bit to see if it does anything. Settings → General.

I read a post by one of the developers about this. For Firefox, it really doesnt matter. Sometimes Firefox will say Manjaro, other times Arch. Remember Manjaro brings in Arch packages to the unstable branch, and then it works its way to stable. The Manjaro developers dont build all the packages all the time, mostly Manjaro specific packages like pamac.

Thank you; just came from Mint which does in have its own build of Firefox (since Mint 21 basically the direct upstream Mozilla one – but specifically then not the upstream Ubuntu one) so felt that likely same here. But shall know to not shy away from Arch Firefox here then.

Disabling hardware acceleration seems to have actually fixed it. But the question remains: How did this get broken if neither Firefox version, nvidia driver version nor kernel version seem to be the cause?

I don’t do Nvidia (quite by design) but I believe if you have the proprietary Nvidia driver installed you are not using Mesa as such? If I’m mistaken about that: mesa was upgraded so that could presumably be related.

How do you turn this off??

I just uninstalled all of Firefox and then searched and delete all files and folders for Firefox, both on System/boot and home folder, rebooted and reinstalled Firefox, then synced (Firefox Sync)my stuff, and it still crashes/freezes with download dialog window and now I’ve gotta setup all the websites that need Logging in :pensive:

Oof, always do backups before drastic measures!

Go to Settings → General, then scroll to performance. Uncheck “Use recommended performance settings” if checked, then uncheck the hardware acceleration checkbox that appears (if checked)

Just found it and am now about to test, fingers crossed.

It seems to be working, just downloaded stuff left right and centre and so far no crash/freeze when opening Download dialog window.

I’m not sure if its me but Firefox seems to be running smoother with hardware acceleration off?, Checked HQ Videos on YouTube and all played back perfect.

It could be because as i said i uninstalled Firefox and delete all Firefox Folders and Files.

To be perfectly honest I’ve also had the idea that disabling hardware acceleration in Firefox doesn’t in fact feel detrimental – but, well, it likely is in specific situation.

Are you also on Nvidia? If so this might be Nvidia specific I guess. I as said don’t have the Downloads issue/trigger available on (very) old Intel integrated graphics.

Yes RTX2060 and driver 520.56.06.

If you’re curious or feel socially inclined towards other users I guess you could try and see whether or not switching to the open-source “nouveau” driver allows to re-enable Firefox’ hardware accel.

No, But i do have 2 Laptops, with AMD K8/Radeon, and AMD Ryzen/Vega, I’ll update them at some point and see if it happens on them.

OK. For someone else possibly interested in testing nvidia/nouveau difference: it seem you can on Manjaro do so easily as per How do I switch between Nvidia and Nouveau drivers on boot? - #4 by stephane

Still would like to know how or why this is happening as it was working fine before today’s update?

I’ve also been having this issue, with firefox freezing at first and then seemingly all of GDM until I switch to a different terminal and restart GDM. I just turned off HW accel and am hoping it helps for the time being.
(I’m on a laptop with a RTX3070 mobile gpu.)

UPDATE:

Firefox 107.0 did not fix the problem, Still need to turn off performance and hardware acceleration.