If you are using the website

Many site issues can be caused by corrupt cookies or cache.

• Clear the Cache and

• Remove Cookies
  Warning ! ! This will log you out of sites you're logged in to.

Type about:preferences<Enter> in the address bar.

• Cookies; Select Privacy. Under History, select Firefox will Use Custom Settings. Press the button on the right side called Show Cookies. Use the search bar to look for the site. Note; There may be more than one entry. Remove All of them.
• Cache; Select Advanced > Network. Across from Cached Web Content, Press Clear Now.

If there is still a problem, Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link} While you are in safe mode;

Type about:preferences#advanced<Enter> in the address bar.

Under Advanced, Select General. Look for and turn off Use Hardware Acceleration.

Poke around safe web sites. Are there any problems?

Then restart.

If you are using the program

Re-install the program from the site.

Thank you for the prompt reply but this didn't solve my problem the fist website I went to when I installed Ubuntu and opened firefox was Google maps so u have no cookie cache built up the same problem happened on my Asus eee PC its a Firefox issue maybe Google maps uses html5 and Firefox doesn't run html5 well ?

New Google maps really needs a fast internet connection and a fast computer. For some reason it is an incredibly resource intensive website much worse than the previous version of the site. Neither my EeePCs (as 701 and 901 running LinuxMint) are fast enough for New Google maps. Nor is my PPC mac. My DualCore Intel macbook 2,1 struggles too.

Try using ClassyGMap http://gokml.net/maps this is a lightweight front end that uses Google maps backend. It can do Streetview too.

or

OpenRouteService http://www.openrouteservice.org/ This is based on open source mapping information so has nothing to do with Google. It doesn't always work properly but when it does it is a good deal faster than New Google maps. I prefer this UI to the ClassyGMap one and always try this first.

Try using this version of Google Maps. https://www.google.com/maps?output=classic

Or even https://www.google.com/maps/?force=canvas

It's strange because I just test Firefox 38 on a livecd of linuxmint and Google maps works fine and street view so wondering whether it got broken again when they built Firefox 41 ?

If I understand correctly a live CD uses RAM for caching data that are cached to disk when you install the OS. So when you install the OS to your hard disk the speed of your hard disk becomes a limiting factor. Generally netbooks do not have fast hard disks so you might experience a performance hit when you install the OS.

I also have found LinuxMint (XFCE or Mate desktops) performs better on my netbooks than the Unity based Ubuntus I have tried (early versions of Unity were unusable on my 701). So ideally you need to compare Firefox 38 with Firefox 41 on the same computer with the same version of Linux on it before you can start drawing any conclusions as to which version of Firefox is faster or indeed if 41 actually has a problem with a given website.