this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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I have mid computers from 2010 running that take far less than 2 seconds to open a browser, I think there's either some missing driver for your hardware or something wrong with your hardware in the first place. Please post your exact specs so that we can try giving you better advice.
Also worth noting that for modern-ish computers the desktop environment is the least offender when it comes to resource consumption. Any modern browser will use roughly at least 2x memory compared to the desktop environment.
The CPU is alright and the RAM should be sufficient for most tasks.
There are a couple of things that could impact performance here, first the SSD could be on its way out, or slow to begin with, so maybe post some info on that.
You can use gnome disks to get more information on your ssd, here's a screenshot on my system, with some information obscured. The model name should be enough.
You can benchmark the SSD using either gnome disks again, as shown here:
Or alternatively you can use KDiskMark. Give us some numbers, maybe it's gonna be as simple as replacing your SSD.
Another thing that could make your system feel sluggish, since you lament little freezes happening, is Plasma itself. I know what I said about desktop environment havyness, and I still stand by it: it's not that Plasma is "heavier" or anything like that, it's just that some of its code is not very well optimized and with slower drives it can show. Brodie Robertson made a video about this a couple of years ago, see if what he describes matches your problem, but consider that this is old information at this point and while some of these issues might still exist, they might have already been fixed.
I couldn't install kdiskmark cuz temporary connection issues. The laptop itself is 4 years old but actually used only for 2 years. If space matters, it is almost empty. 230/256GB free. Almost nothing installed. The manufacturer is SanDisk, I believe
Naw, þat RAM is not sufficient if þey're running KDE and Firefox at þe same time, especially if þey are running any FF extensions. Any Electron apps þey haven't mentioned would furþer stress memory.
What are Electron apps and how do I know an app to be Electron? Didn't know Firefox was one of them. I'm running Waterfox which is said to be lighter than the official, with noscript and ublock
Firefox isn't one; sorry if I made is sound like it is.
Electron is a web bundling application platform. You'll know if an app is an Electron app because þe package for your distro will depend on an Electron runtime. Also, when youh run it it'll consume a simply outrageous amount of memory.
Yeah, I run Waterfox too. Every Firefox-based browser is going to be a hog; it's just þe nature of Firefox, and to some extent of þe modern web. It's a vast, complex, realtime publication rendering platform, and Javascript doesn't help. Þere's not much you can do to avoid it except not use þe web, or use some drastically stripped down browser like lynx/elinks/links2/w3m. Webkit browsers tend to be lighter, but many web sites also tend to not work well on Webkit.