Multiple web browsers crashing almost immediately

I freshly installed Xubuntu 14.04 on an old desktop machine. Running both firefox and firefox --safe-mode ends up with a crash report before browsing GUI is loaded.

Then I tried using Midori and Chromium and got almost identical problems. Midori was able to show GUI before crashing while chromium had pretty much the same issue of crash w/o GUI.

Before Xubuntu, I tried Lubuntu 17.10 and it also had the same issue with both Firefox and Qupzilla.

And also before that, I tried Ubuntu 16.04 with Firefox and again crash on startup.

How can I resolve this?

Note: I am able to install/update packages and software with terminal and Software & Updates.

Note 2: I am able to browse web using elinks.

Note 3: I have Windows XP on another partition in that same system in which I can run Firefox 47 without a problem.

Terminal run results for Xubuntu 14.04

firefox:

user@user-System-Name:~$ firefox
ExceptionHandler::GenerateDump cloned child 6237
ExceptionHandler::SendContinueSignalToChild sent continue signal to child
ExceptionHandler::WaitForContinueSignal waiting for continue signal...
user@user-System-Name:~$ 

firefox safe mode:

user@user-System-Name:~$ firefox --safe-mode
ExceptionHandler::GenerateDump cloned child ExceptionHandler::WaitForContinueSignal waiting for continue signal...
6256
ExceptionHandler::SendContinueSignalToChild sent continue signal to child
user@user-System-Name:~$ 

midori:

user@user-System-Name:~$ midori
Illegal instruction (core dumped)
user@user-System-Name:~$ 

chromium-browser:

user@user-System-Name:~$ chromium-browser
Illegal instruction (core dumped)
user@user-System-Name:~$ 

vmstat; lscpu | grep 'Flags\|Model':

user@user-System-Name:~$ vmstat; lscpu | grep 'Flags\|Model'
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu----- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st 2 0 0 429708 43664 351792 0 0 1744 22 263 679 18 7 65 10 0
Model: 10
user@user-System-Name:~$ 

lscpu:

user@user-System-Name:~$ lscpu
Architecture: i686
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 1
On-line CPU(s) list: 0
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 1
Socket(s): 1
Vendor ID: AuthenticAMD
CPU family: 6
Model: 10
Stepping: 0
CPU MHz: 1833.066
BogoMIPS: 3666.13
L1d cache: 64K
L1i cache: 64K
L2 cache: 512K

vmstat; lscpu

user@user-System-Name:~$ vmstat; lscpu
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu----- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st 1 0 0 335048 44380 443048 0 0 709 27 193 339 14 3 79 4 0
Architecture: i686
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 1
On-line CPU(s) list: 0
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 1
Socket(s): 1
Vendor ID: AuthenticAMD
CPU family: 6
Model: 10
Stepping: 0
CPU MHz: 1833.066
BogoMIPS: 3666.13
L1d cache: 64K
L1i cache: 64K
L2 cache: 512K

sudo lshw -c cpu:

user@user-System-Name:~$ sudo lshw -c cpu *-cpu description: CPU product: AMD Athlon(TM) XP 2500+ vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] physical id: 4 bus info: cpu@0 version: 6.10.0 slot: SOCKET A size: 1833MHz capacity: 2250MHz width: 32 bits clock: 166MHz capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce
cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext
3dnowext 3dnow vmmcall
user@user-System-Name:~$

cpuid | grep 'physical address extension'

user@user-System-Name:~$ cpuid | grep 'physical address extension' physical address extensions = true physical address extensions = true

Also ran memtest on grub resulted 3 times: *****Pass complete, no errors, press Esc to exit*****.

1 Answer

No good news I'm sorry

The illegal instruction is because the browser engines (eg. webkitgtk) are coded to require SSE2 which doesn't exist on your cpu, hence the 'illegal instruction' (you only have SSE)

Yes I know it runs firefox under XP, but its an old version without security updates, and whilst you may be able to run older versions of browsers on your machine on Ubuntu (with work), I'd not recommend it for security reasons.

The machine is still good for many uses, but I'd avoid browsing on it due to CPU not having SSE2 unless you're happy with lynx or w3m which don't require SSE2.