The basic idea was to inform users and developers alike about the top add-ons that slow down the start-up of the
Firefox web browser. Slow Performance data has been added to the Mozilla Firefox Add-on Gallery.

The biggest offenders back then slowed down the browser by 74%. A Firefox user who’d install the top 5 add-ons of the list would slow down the start of Firefox by almost 300%.

The situation looks as grim one month later. The top five add-ons now slow down the browser by more than 350%. Some add-ons that have been previously on the list are not found in the top 10 anymore, but most add-ons that have been in the top 10 back then are still there, many with slower start-up times than before.

Mozilla has modified the top listing slightly. Only a top 9 list is displayed on the Slow Performing Add-ons page on Mozilla. Back then it was possible to load a top 50 list, which does not appear to be possible anymore.

Operating system filters have been added to the page which have not been there before, making it now possible to display the slowest add-ons for Fedora, Mac OS X, Windows 7 or Windows XP instead of a mixed listing.

If you look at those listings you will notice that only the add-ons of the top 9 listing are displayed. The start-up performance on the other hand differs widely. The worst offenders of all lists are SimilarWeb and Personas Plus under Windows 7. They slow down the startup time of Firefox by 223% and 202%. Compare that to the 25% or less add-on start-up time on the tested other operating systems. These numbers may be flawed, and it is very likely that they are considering the huge difference between Windows 7 and all other tested operating systems. While a flawed test is the most likely explanation, it could on the other hand be an extension specific problem instead. Only re-tests will tell.

Profile is not a tool you install, or run from the command line. Instead, profile is an option you add to your grub configuration file to inform the boot loader you want to create a profile  during the next boot loading sequence. In this article I am going to show you how to profile your grub boot sequence for a faster boot process.

How this works

When you boot up your machine Grub does a search for all the necessary drivers to load. This takes time. Instead of making Grub search for these drivers, the profiling actually makes Grub remember every driver necessary to work, thereby cutting down all of the driver load times.

This is a proven technique that can help the boot process. It has actually been around since Ubuntu 6.04, so it has been tested and tested and does work. I will make this normal disclaimer. Even though Grub profile works, anytime you deal with your bootloader you take the chance that you can render your machine unbootable. So you use this tool at your own risk. Don’t take that to mean profile is a dangerous tool and your machine will wind up bricked and mocking you…that is just to say should something happen, you were warned.

How to add profiling

To do this you are going to have to modify your /etc/default/grub file. The edits are not challenging at all. So, open up a terminal window and get ready to work.

The line you are looking for is:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash”

This is the line that gives the options to Grup upon boot. You need to add one more option to that line so it now looks like:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash profile”

Save that file and then issue the command:

sudo update-grub2

You are ready to reboot your machine.

During this next boot time you will see a noticeable SLOW DOWN. This is normal because Grub is now running the profile. This is quite necessary.

Once the boot up is complete, open up that /etc/default/grub file, remove the profile entry you just added, and re-run the command sudo update-grub2. Now reboot your machine again and see if you don’t notice a distinct speed increase in your boot times.

Final thoughts

There are so many ways to speed up the boot process of your Ubuntu Linux machine. This process, however, is one of the ones that will truly speed up the process and is tested and safe to use. You should gain some noticeable increases and should even speed up after 2 or 3 more start ups.

See the problem is that I never really “got” Twitter… I tried, I really did. I signed up and followed people and Twittered regularly, but it never really did it for me. Eventually I just forgot about it.

Enter Plurk.

Considering micro-blogging isn’t something I’ve really got into you may be surprised I wanted to introduce you to this service. Some say it’s just a better featured Twitter clone, but I think it has a great deal more potential then that.

It’s got a wicked name for a start.

No seriously, the name is actually brilliant. It manages to sound suitably web 2.0 without taking a killing the consonants and even works perfectly as a verb. Check out how they explain it:

• Plurk as stalkerati central: People + Lurk = Plurk
• Plurk as an amalgam of Play + Work: Play-Work. Plurk is what scientists do. It is the enthusiastic, energetic application of oneself to the task at hand as a child excitedly plays; it is the intense arduous, meticulous work of an artist on their life-long masterpiece; it is joyful work. (credit)
• Plurk as acronym: Peace, Love, Unity, Respect, Karma
• Verb potential: “Oh I googled this –> Oh I plurked it” Easy enough to wrap around in any form. Plurked, plurking, plurkers, plurks. Little p, big P, it’s catchy, snippy and sweet.

I agree.

It also demonstrates the sites tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, something which actually works in this case… *ahem* Sphinn (“Stop right there! We’re going to have to see some ID”). In fact the Plurk blog is quite entertaining and worth a read.

You’ll find a nice attractive UI which features a colour scheme very similar to the WordPress dashboard. Here is an image of what to expect:

As you can see I have no contacts so it’s not very fun at the moment, I would like to test drive the service properly so so why don’t you join up and try it out too!

One particular element I’m liking is the horizontal orientated timeline, rather then the vertical focus of most services. I’ll be interested to see how it’ll handle a lot of contacts because having to scroll across and down to view “plurks” will be a pain.

Anyway, this isn’t just a Twitter-plus-more-features start-up, it’s a whole new take on micro-blogging and social networking in general.

Expect it to be big soon!

(If not, just expect it to be in TechCrunch’s Deadpool by early next week)