Web Browser

Firefox ESR consumes excessive CPU

Problem

Firefox ESR shows high CPU usage.

Solution

Try to enable hardware acceleration:

  1. Open a new tab in Firefox ESR

  2. Navigate to about:config

  3. Accept the warning to continue

  4. Search for vaapi (Video Acceleration API)

  5. Change the flag to true (from false)

  6. Fully close and restart Firefox ESR

Note

Make sure you have the gstreamer1.0-vaapi package installed.

PureBrowser to Firefox ESR

This guide describes the migration from a PureBrowser Profile (bookmarks, history, addons, etc) into Firefox ESR.

Method 1 (Command Line)

  1. Launch PureBrowser

  2. Click the menu button on the top right - Help - Troubleshooting Information.

    The Troubleshooting Information tab will open. Your Profile Directory will be listed under the Application Basics section. Take note of path to the profile directory: /home/USER/.purism/purebrowser/USERSTRING.default

    • If you have already migrated to Firefox, run cd ~/.purism/purebrowser/ and ls -al. This will list all files and directories. The directory named USERSTRING.default is the one you are looking for.

    • If you have multiple USERSTRING.default, find the one with the date of the last time you used PureBrowser.

  3. Open a terminal emulator and run cd ~/.purism/purebrowser/ and find the USERSTRING.default directory.

  4. Run the update in Software, or apt, to now migrate to Firefox ESR.

  5. Run cp -r USERSTRING.default ~/.mozilla/firefox/ to move the profile folder.

  6. Now run firefox -P

  7. Select Create Profile and then Next

  8. Enter a profile name or leave as it. Then select Choose Folder.

  9. Click on your the USERSTRING.default directory that you just moved over and press Open.

  10. Click Finish and Start Firefox.

  11. Firefox should load with all the tabs you had open before and everything else will have come over from PureBrowser. You are done!

Note

If wanting to use a search engine other than Google, you’ll need to go into the menu button on the top right - Preferences - Search - select your Search Engine of choice from the drop down.

Note

We have transitioned from uBlock Origin to EFF’s Privacy Badger. That should be the only difference in addons you see.

See also

Mozilla Firefox Knowledge Base

Method 2 (GUI)

Another way to relocate your old Purebrowser profile to the new Firefox one is to move certain parts of the Purebrowser profile folder to Firefox:

  1. Open your Files manager in your home folder and press Ctrl+h. This will show you the hidden folders.

    Tip

    Hidden folders/files always start with a . before the name.

    You will see the folders .purism and .mozilla

    .purism and .mozilla folders in nautilus

    Caution

    Make a copy of both these folders as a backup before proceeding.

  2. Close Firefox if it is open. If you need to have access to this tutorial during this process then, print this page as a PDF.

  3. Open the .mozilla folder, then Firefox, then open the folder that has a name ending in default-esr

  4. Delete the content of the folder that has a name ending in default-esr but do not delete the folder itself.

    Deleting folder contents

  5. Open the folder .purism and then purebrowser and you will see a folder that also has a name that ends in default. Copy the contents of that folder to inside the folder default-esr in .mozilla/firefox/somestring.default-esr.

  6. Restart Firefox.

    You should now see:

    Firefox-ESR

Note

Firefox uses Google as its default search engine. We recommand you select DuckDuckGo to replace Google as the default search engine.

Firefox compatibility mode

Cannot install Firefox add-ons

Enable Firefox Compatibility Mode to install add-ons from Mozilla add-ons website.

Note

You can search for web extensions available from the PureOS repo by running apt search webext in a terminal emulator.

  1. Open PureBrowser and type about:config into the location bar, then press Enter. A warning will appear:

    firefox-esr warning

  2. Click the I’ll be careful, I promise! button.

  3. Type //useragent.compat// into the search bar.

  4. Double-click the preference to change its value to true:

    firefox-esr useragent setting

    Note

    This is already set to true in recent versions of PureBrowser, so you don’t have to change it.

  5. Change your useragent string to install Firefox addons.

    1. Open about:config

    2. Right-click and select New -> String

    3. Within general.useragent.override, enter Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0.2 as a string value.

    4. Click Okay and reload the page.

Testing PureBrowser first start issues

Question

I noticed an issue with PureBrowser the first time I started it and reported it. Since then I have been using PureBrowser and modified my browser profile such that the issue no longer occurs.

An update has landed and I want to confirm the fix. How can I do this without losing my new profile settings?

Answer

You can create a fresh profile. Launch PureBrowser, then delete the profile:

  1. Close any running instances of PureBrowser

  2. Start with purebrowser --ProfileManager

  3. In the profile manager window, create a new profile “temp”

  4. Click Start PureBrowser

You can now test for the first-start issue. When you are done…

  1. Close any running instances

  2. Start with urebrowser --ProfileManager

  3. Delete the profile “temp” (delete profile and files)

  4. Close the profile manager window