Why does Mozilla choke my Debian box?
 

I am running Debian on an old 800mhz box, using Mozilla 1.5 as my browser. However, whenever I use it, when it is loading a page, it immediately starts using all of the CPU cycles, choking the computer until the page is done loading. Its rather annoying. I was using Firebird which was even worse (not optimized at all for Linux). Why is it doing this? 800mhz isnt fast, but its more than enough to browse the web. Also, Konqueror works fine, using only about 35-40% of the CPU. What gives?

Do you mean it uses all the CPU because it's rendering hte page or is it waiting on the network?

I suspect rendering the page. Konqueror works fine, and there certainly isnt a problem with bandwidth (im sitting on my university's connection), which implies to me that it isnt waiting on the network.

well, you want it to use all the CPU it can to finish the render faster.

Or is it chocking out other processes say mp3's skip when rendering pages, that kind of stuff?

Nothing else is running. I wouldnt mind, except that it completely chokes the machine--if for example, I have another browser window open, it will be sluggish to scroll. If you watch my CPU use meter, it isnt like it just hits 100% a couple of times, either. It is constantly at 100% for two, three seconds while the page loads. It *would* be enough to choke out other processes like MP3s, but nothing else is running.

okay so it is interfearing with other processes. Download and try the 1.6 or a nightly and see if the problem is still there.

Ill try that as soon as I get done with these exams. It has to be something with Mozilla, seeing as Konqueror browses just fine. Im just baffled, Ive never had such a problem with Mozilla before :(

Is it every page, or just those with Java, Shockwave, or some other things?

What extensions are you running?

Also, FYI, the next milestone (Moz & FB) should be released within the next week or two.

Everything.

No extensions, its a default install of Mozilla.