Firefox no more ... - by zombe
dj_ivocha on 27/8/2017 at 23:11
But that's a false dichotomy. Just because they are removing support for the old extensions at the same time as introducing multiple processes it doesn't mean that it HAD to be this way. After FF4 it's been one questionable decision after another, to put it mildly. Sometimes I think there are literally idiots in charge there :(... "Guys! Chrome has 80% market share, what can we do??? - I have an idea! Let's make Firefox just like Chrome, but worse! That will make all its users come right back to us *hits blunt*"
Azaran on 28/8/2017 at 03:47
Ok I disabled Video Download Helper, and it sped it up. Still a bit slower than Chrome though. Everything else I have on there are pretty much the same extensions. As for memory, Firefox hogs way more than Chrome on my system
Inline Image:
https://s2.postimg.org/6zli3ihs9/Untitled.png
zombe on 28/8/2017 at 08:25
Don't remember vanilla FF, so have to assume my extension-set plays a part, but FF for me is pretty resource hungry. Have to occasionally restart after heavy use or it will go boom:
* very laggy (ie. seconds until input has an effect with plain .txt file)
* cpu usage hovers 30% (4-hardware thread cpu, the typical 2+2 setup) up to 50% and hangs completely if i do not restart in time
* memory usage goes to 2.5-3.5 GB and crashes at the higher end (perils of 32bit). The usage DOES go down if i close almost everything and give it a LONG time to sort it out. Unless alloc and reclaim speed quotient goes bad (this happens with normal alloc rate as reclaim implementation is not scalable and fails horribly at times) - then there is nothing you can do till it crashes.
... and i'm basically fine with it (*) as far as the browser does what i need (aka. extensions as the vanilla FF does not meet the minimum requirements of a browser for me). Extensions aside, i wonder how well the new memory management (which will now have to be thread-safe and still efficient - preferably more efficient than the craptastic current one) will be :/.
*) If i notice lag i check memory/cpu-time consumption (or have taskmanager open if i am doing something prone to make FF explode - like ~50+ tabs open) and restart as needed. Depending on what i am doing, more often than not i do not need to restart it the whole day.
Currently (after watching ~2 hours of youtube in background and googling around for some unrelated technical pickle i am having and with 10 tabs open): i am at 460-480MB. A bit high, but still in the "whatever" category.
Sulphur on 28/8/2017 at 10:56
Quote Posted by Azaran
Ok I disabled Video Download Helper, and it sped it up. Still a bit slower than Chrome though. Everything else I have on there are pretty much the same extensions. As for memory, Firefox hogs way more than Chrome on my system
(image snipped)
You'll need to total up all those Chrome instances to see the actual memory usage. Chrome uses a process-per-tab model which is why if one tab crashes, the browser doesn't go down with it.
In any event, if Chrome is less painful to use/faster, so be it, obviously use whatever is most comfortable.
Nameless Voice on 28/8/2017 at 19:41
Yeah, I just don't get it, because it's never been my experience that Firefox is slow - at least, on decent hardware. It used to be slow back in the day, but everything was slow back then.
I always have it running all day, often have 10-20 tabs open, have lots of extensions (~27), and it's never slow for me.
Yet I've heard quite a few people say that they dumped Firefox for Chrome because it's "faster". I honestly don't understand it.
Of course, in these days of SSDs letting computers start up in seconds, I don't use hibernate or suspend at all any more, I just turn off the PC at night, so the longest Firefox is ever running for now is a couple of hours.
Are you folks running on very old hardware?
Azaran on 28/8/2017 at 21:16
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
Are you folks running on very old hardware?
Nvidia GT 640, 2GB video card. 16 GB of RAM. 500 GB HDD (310 GB free)
ZylonBane on 29/8/2017 at 15:18
Firefox without Status-4-Evar is dead to me.
Judith on 30/8/2017 at 13:32
By the way, do you know why, with latest updates, ALL language spellcheckers stopped working? As non-native, I make a lot of mistakes in English, so I really need to have one, at all times.
Nameless Voice on 30/8/2017 at 18:01
English (UK) is still working for me in Firefox 55.0.3 (64-bit)
qolelis on 1/9/2017 at 07:03
For everyday use I haven't noticed any slowdown when using Firefox, but for more specific uses, Chrome is significantly faster.