One Place FireFox Beats Chrome is Thin Clients at Robert Pogson

I have been using Chrome browser for a while and find it very fast and efficient. Last year, I ran it on thin clients with no problems. This year…

Number one issue is the “smooth scrolling” which smooths scrolling by refreshing the screen multiple times between shifts, basically making a movie… This is deadly on thin clients as the network lag between shifts is multiplied by the number of shifts. For thin clients it would be great to turn off smooth scrolling and just jump to the next view. It works pretty well in FireFox but there is no option in Chrome browser…

The result is that I am forced to use FireFox from my thin client to get acceptable performance. I can turn off non-smooth scrolling in FireFox (http://about:config).

The thing I really hate about FireFox is the two separate windows for URI and search. I am told that the latest version of FireFox is better. I can type two search terms into the address window and FireFox does a search but with one word, it tells me this is not a valid URI… I do a lot of searching and I don’t want to type in two words when one would do.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.

3 Responses to “One Place FireFox Beats Chrome is Thin Clients”

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1 Ray Oct 29th, 2011 at 11:57 am

About the servers, is there any other uses for one at home, besides using it as a NAS, or a file server, that doesn’t require any purchase?
2 oiaohm Oct 29th, 2011 at 8:00 pm

Ray you missed proxy server. Really it is still something that surprises me that there is no adsl modem on the market that has integrated proxy. Most likely anti isp so never got off the ground.
3 Robert Pogson Oct 29th, 2011 at 9:04 pm

I use GNU/Linux boxes as databases with web access: recipes, ammunition reloading, contacts in education, and my own little search engines for documents. On a decent PC these can all be done on the same machine as the client giving no network lag. The advantage of web access is that one can have a client in the kitchen for recipes, a client in the workshop (finally getting mine going again after more than a decade in the North) and with wireless, even one in the garden in addition to my office.