That is seriously weird. I don't have the fastest machine possible yet FF starts in a second or two.
Bigger problem are the apps that consume too much CPU and memory. Unfortunately there is no nice way to avoid their killing the whole system (Linux here). But other browsers are no better. The browser makers should realize they are delivering a multiuser OS and protect the resources accordingly.
I've used cgroups in the past to handle that problem when I was using stuff that would otherwise bring down my machine. But I don't know that I'd call it a nice way; at least back then, it was a PITA to set up.
Bigger problem are the apps that consume too much CPU and memory. Unfortunately there is no nice way to avoid their killing the whole system (Linux here). But other browsers are no better. The browser makers should realize they are delivering a multiuser OS and protect the resources accordingly.