Since we're on the subject of firefox, heres a tip i found that some of you may are not aware of it yet. (Sorry if repost)
1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
4. Just kill the window and reload (it's oddly similar to the Windows Registry in that you don't save changes).
I didn't think of this by the way. It's been posted all over the place. I haven't tried it on Linux yet.
Also check this site for more stuff:
http://www.bitstorm.org/extensions/