Remember that you can use the non-snap guide if it is still slow or have any other problems with the snap.
As you noted, it used to be slow. Recently, it loads and runs as fast as the non-snap version.
I'm happy with it and notice no difference on both low and high end machines that have 22.04 Jammy installed.
I use Firefox as my "browser of choice", Frontend development included.
Since the update to Ubuntu MATE 22.04, Firefox is installed as snap.
I simply thought "let's give it a try" even if I felt very comfortable with the non-snap package.
And... I cannot see any difference in speed between the Firefox non-snap and the Firefox snap.
2 Likes
In operation I find firefox as ~fast as any other browser I use (I'm excluding lynx here as I do use it at times can be super-fast to achieve the result I want, but it's differences make it a different animal)
The snap packaged browsers (firefox and chromium) seem the same speed as deb based browsers once they're running, with only the initial startup on a newly booted system a little slow; I don't recall how fast/slow firefox was ~2 hours ago when I first started it as I didn't notice it; I've made it part of my routine & click start whilst I scan other windows (terminal, hexchat).
I have noted it ~slow in QA testing in starting, but in those cases you boot the system and I usually start firefox as I want to test there awhile, and I sit & wait for it, and just like 'a watched kettle never boils' it seems to take awhile to start. Likewise if I've discovered a bug, and have run ubuntu-bug & it starts firefox the wait can be noticeable. But those are initial run slowness issues (that has significantly improved!) that I do not notice in my actual use.
It wouldn't surprise me if reviewers, bloggers etc. noticed that too, as they're more likely to have short sessions & thus experience the initial load far more than my own sessions that last the day at least.
Summary: It's only slowish to start once per session (initial run), and that's better than it was too. Otherwise it's the same speed as any other equivalent browser in my opinion. My 2c.
1 Like
I tested it and the speed was just as quick as .deb. So I finally was able to switch to Firefox as default browser - for a while only Chrome would work. I also like that snap Firefox theming matches the UI.
Faster than it was on Fedora or Elementary OS, I use Chrome though.