xabbott.blg

SwiftFox is an optimized build of Firefox. It uses a few methods to do this, most notably the compile options. I don’t use Swiftfox but I had to compile Firefox in Arch. I figured I would apply some of Swift’s optimizations to my own build. If you need a crash course in rebuilding Firefox in Arch Linux read the Arch Wiki for Firefox recompile. If you want more details of SwiftFox’s optimizations check out it’s source code page and Wikipedia entry.

Here are the following changes I made to the mozconfig file:

ac_add_options --enable-optimize="-march=pentium4 -Os -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
ac_add_options --disable-pango

Then I added the following:

ac_add_options --disable-accessibility
ac_add_options --disable-installer
ac_add_options --disable-ipv6
ac_add_options --enable-official-branding

The last line has nothing to do with optimizing. I just don’t like my browser being called by a project name. Of course you would adjust according to your needs.

The only reason I’m still not using Firefox 3 is select extensions aren’t working yet. Although you can force some to try and work. Open up about:config, right click, New then Boolean. Enter extensions.checkCompatibility then set it to false.