Richard, as I remember I did indeed run it in a terminal but couldn't make sense of the error output.

BTW, there was a linux guru helping me on the mint forums -- very helpful but to no avail. I'll experiment & get back (on puppy w/seamonkey browser right now). And I even installed seamonkey on mint to experiment & that crashes (not surprising as it's mozilla too).

Interesting? Instability - Cinnamon & Browsers Probably not.

.

Anyway, if/when you determine the cause, I'd still like to know what it was.

Took a while to crash -- last lines in terminal:

*****************

console.error: ghostery:

Message: TypeError: r.json is null

Stack:

checkLibraryVersion/<.onComplete@resource://gre/modules/commonjs/toolkit/loader.js -> resource://firefox-at-ghostery-dot-com/ghostery/lib/background.js:2437:4

emit@resource://gre/modules/commonjs/toolkit/loader.js -> resource://gre/modules/commonjs/sdk/event/core.js:97:9

onreadystatechange@resource://gre/modules/commonjs/toolkit/loader.js -> resource://gre/modules/commonjs/sdk/request.js:104:7

*****************

But while previously testing I ran many instances of "fresh" installs w/a new profile and no add-ons, so ghostery isn't the problem. Opera (which crashes) doesn't have ghostery. So the terminal isn't telling enough.

Next to try is your Mate desktop switch, then perhaps another Mint version, but getting to the end of my Mint rope.

Well, ran FF again in terminal, crashed, & got this:

***********************

[NPAPI 2747] ###!!! ABORT: Aborting on channel error.: file /builds/slave/rel-m-esr38-l64_bld-0000000000/build/ipc/glue/MessageChannel.cpp, line 1584

[NPAPI 2747] ###!!! ABORT: Aborting on channel error.: file /builds/slave/rel-m-esr38-l64_bld-0000000000/build/ipc/glue/MessageChannel.cpp, line 1584

***********************

And that's after upgrading to the newest FF ESR version.

Richard, I just gave up, reformatted the partition & reinstalled Mint 17 from my original installation DVD. It has FF ver 28.0. I could have removed FF & downloaded/installed FF 28 (if I could find it), but I want to find out if FF is the culprit, or an unknown Mint update. So afterward I updated Mint w/everything EXCEPT Firefox & related. So far so good (1.5 days). And, yes, linux people would scream "that's vulnerable!", but I won't do any bank stuff, purchases, etc, with this version.

Edit: OK, FF 28.0 finally DID crash. That tells me the issue is with Mint itself, not FF. Next step, if I get around to it, is try some other Mint version. I like the xfce windows-manager, but maybe that's the problem.

Thanks for the updates. I've got to admit, I'm stumped.

Just a couple possibilities. Probably ones you've already thought of but anyway...

.

(1) Video driver (I use fglrx for my Radeon HD 6570)

(2) Compiz (I use no effects, I suppose I'm boring)

A possibility I might try is to install Mint again and don't install any of the updates EXCEPT FF (because I don't know which Mint update caused the problem). Theoretically vulnerable, but my browsing has never incurred a virus in over 20 yrs & only one instance of truly nasty malware from a mistake clicking on a false program installation in Windows7.

Seems I remember getting a piggyback type adware a time or two back in my XP days. And once, while using Direct Connect, I stumbled upon a file with a name that indicated it was likely a virus. so I couldn't resist. After imaging my drive, I grabbed the file and unrarred it. It didn't seem to be a virus, just a joke file that decompressed into many hundreds of files all over the place. I just laughed(maybe not literally) and restored. A good image gives a person freedom to experiment. :)

.

I don't know about Cinnamon but Mate, at least on my machine, is stable as can be.

If I get bored I might try Xfce some day.

Did what I mentioned above, reformatted the linux partition & reinstalled Mint 17, then carefully went thru all the dozens of update descriptions & only checked ones that I was almost sure would have no stability issues (about half the updates). Checked Firefox update of course (ver 41.0.2). So far so good after 2 full days -- posting from it now.

Don't care about screensavers, but Mint has the most interesting, constantly changing screensavers (one is an old Apple II screen showing commands being executed, another is old DOS commands).

That's good news.

Probably what I would do either now or in a couple days is back it up. Then I'd allow it do the rest of the updates. I'd be betting it would remain stable and even if it didn't, I'd just restore my backup.

To backup, I'd use either "tar" http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087 or Acronis. (You have to install Acronis on Windows but once you do you can create a bootable CD/USB that works on any machine, including Linux.)

Arrrrgghh. Spoke too soon. Browsing along, clicked a link and -- poof. Browser disappeared. So no joy. Almost certain, but not 100% sure, the updates I allowed didn't cause the instability.

May try another Mint distro, but tired of fighting it. For now I can get my linux fix w/Puppy.

Strange. I really don't know then. I doubt it's an update though. I run Mint Mate, all updates, very stable.

Yeah, sticking with Puppy might be less stressful. I boot into Win10 occasionally, it runs and looks great, but then I miss my terminal and back into Linux I go.

May not make sense since Puppy runs stably but... have you tried running memtest? Reseating memory, video card, sata/pata cables(both power and data), etc.?

Yeah, ran 3 cycles (several hrs) of memtest from a boot DVD -- not a single error.

Now, if I could only get those cool screensavers for puppy.....

So as not to be a quitter, I reformatted, re-installed Mint and will NOT update anything, even FF, to see how it pans out.

Stress-testing it for many hrs & still OK -- a dozen tabs open.

Cross-fingers, but looks like my last resort worked as I've vigorously stress-tested FF 28.0 for many hrs & no problem.

I wish I knew. Sounds like you may be on the way to figuring it out though.

I'm sure you already know this, but if you want to test with a newer version of Firefox, you can just download the archive, extract it and run "firefox". Unless you specify otherwise, it'll use your usual profile (same extensions, bookmarks, etc.)

I made a partition image to recover back to a stable-state, but too squeamish to try newest FF (got burned too many times).

Richard, I asked this on the Mint forum, but no response yet. So I'll ask you.

Suddenly Mint 17 Qiana is automounting all my partitions at startup where it didn't before??? Not urgent, but rather it NOT do this. Here's /etc/fstab:

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=048e0813-3eb0-4016-9b37-cb9d3ec43738 / ext4 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/mintswap.swp none swap sw 0 0

And /etc/mtab showing the last three partitions automounting:

/dev/sda2 /media/bee/Windows\0407 fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,blksize=4096 0 0
/dev/sda5 /media/bee/Share fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,blksize=512 0 0
/dev/sda3 /media/bee/Linux1 ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks2 0 0

Any idea?

Got it, Richard. Added these to fstab to get them to stop auto-mounting:

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=048e0813-3eb0-4016-9b37-cb9d3ec43738 / ext4 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/mintswap.swp none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sda2 /media/bee/Windows7 ntfs noauto,user 0 0
/dev/sda3 /media/bee/Linux1 ext4 noauto,user 0 0
/dev/sda5 /media/bee/Share ntfs noauto,user 0 0

noauto(mount) and user(can mount)

None of mine auto mount (except those I want to) but it's good to know how to stop it starts occurring. Thanks.

Alot of continuous stress-testing w/no issues w/FF (youtube & other videos run fine w/the old FF updated to the newest flash player plugin) so pretty safe to say issue is solved. Incremental backup images should make any necessary recovery easy.

Not ideal, but some of the linux experts say automatic updating in some situations/machines is NOT a good idea -- like mine. Still using apt-get & Synaptic package manager to install desirable programs.