5 ms·

I've always been a fan of Firefox, switching to it years and years ago, but Chrome's performance was always a bit smoother because of multi-process, and their d

by dchuk 10y ago

I've always been a fan of Firefox, switching to it years and years ago, but Chrome's performance was always a bit smoother because of multi-process, and their dev tools are top notch. The flipside is that Chrome is a major resource hog too, often taking up half or more of my 16gb of RAM. Curious if Firefox can now compete performance-wise without going down the same resource path.

nitrogen 10y ago
It really bothered me when browsers decided they owned your machine and removed manual cache size limits. What if I want to use my browser at the same time as something I actually want to use all my RAM?
- softawre 10y ago
  Sadly, you use another browser. Safari is pretty good at not crapping all over your computer.
- vmarsy 10y ago
  If you're using an OS that lets you setup restrictions per process, you could do something like this: https://gist.github.com/juanje/9861623 https://gist.github.com/juanje/9861623: I was tired of Chrome eating all my laptop resources so I decided to put some limit to it with cgroup.
mrinterweb 10y ago
If you often have many tabs open, Firefox the better choice in terms of memory consumption. I use Chrome for more "appy" web sites, and Firefox for the rest of my casual browsing.
- neves 10y ago
  funny, Firefox is always the greatest memory hog in my machine. Probably due to uBlock.
  - sam_goody 10y ago
    I have in the past had over 700 tabs open in FF (which is insane, I know) and it handled everything with aplomb until I switched from ABP to uBlock. Now, I can't shut Firefox without it crashing, and my tab count can be as low as 100. I don't use Chrome, since it bothers me that Google tracks and profiles everything I do, but when I did I was shocked that about twenty tabs and it hits the floor.
  - Sylos 10y ago
    uBlock Origin usually rather decreases RAM usage, since ads tend to take up a fair chunk of RAM, too. If you want to troubleshoot it, type "about:memory" into the URL-bar and hit enter, then click the "Measure"-button to the left. This should give you a pretty detailed listing of everything that takes up RAM, and usually, high RAM usage is caused by an extension having memory leaks, so you'll probably see a pretty big number somewhere near the root of the tree and should be able to follow it along to whatever is causing it. If it is an extension, obviously try to find a replacement, if it's not an extension, you should probably file a bug report...
  - mrinterweb 10y ago
    I haven't found uBlock origin to consume much memory when looking at about:memory (Show memory reports). Perhaps another add-on is chewing up your memory. I often have 20+ tabs open. If I have 20 or more tabs with Chrome open, and I add up the memory for all the per-tab processes Chrome spawns, Chrome eats up way too much memory. Chrome is great as long as you don't have many open tabs. Firefox is great for those of us that just can't close our tabs.
Sylos 10y ago
This isn't yet fully on par with Chrome's multi-process implementation, as Chrome also separates individual tabs' content processes (so, if you load many tabs in a short time, those tabs will generally render better in parallel), and also, Chrome separates each individual extension into its own process, whereas Firefox only has one process for all extensions, but, if I remember correctly, current numbers are that this raises RAM usage by about 20%. The individual tabs in individual processes are also planned (and yesterday, I got a "The bad news first, this tab crashed"-message on Firefox Nightly, meaning that this was probably just pushed to Nightly), and the individual processes for individual extensions will most likely be implemented with their implementation of WebExtensions (Chrome's extension API) in the future. So, currently, it can't quite compete in theoretical performance when looking only at multi-process, but is also still miles off in terms of RAM usage. Personally, I don't think that they'll come close to the amount that Chrome uses, mainly because they've always been a bit more conservative, i.e. acknowledging that people occasionally use their computers for other things than browsing the internet, but yeah, we'll have to wait and see how it plays out in the end...

by dchuk 10y ago

nitrogen 10y ago

It really bothered me when browsers decided they owned your machine and removed manual cache size limits. What if I want to use my browser at the same time as something I actually want to use all my RAM?

softawre 10y ago
Sadly, you use another browser. Safari is pretty good at not crapping all over your computer.
vmarsy 10y ago
If you're using an OS that lets you setup restrictions per process, you could do something like this: https://gist.github.com/juanje/9861623 https://gist.github.com/juanje/9861623: I was tired of Chrome eating all my laptop resources so I decided to put some limit to it with cgroup.

mrinterweb 10y ago

If you often have many tabs open, Firefox the better choice in terms of memory consumption. I use Chrome for more "appy" web sites, and Firefox for the rest of my casual browsing.

neves 10y ago
funny, Firefox is always the greatest memory hog in my machine. Probably due to uBlock.
- sam_goody 10y ago
  I have in the past had over 700 tabs open in FF (which is insane, I know) and it handled everything with aplomb until I switched from ABP to uBlock. Now, I can't shut Firefox without it crashing, and my tab count can be as low as 100. I don't use Chrome, since it bothers me that Google tracks and profiles everything I do, but when I did I was shocked that about twenty tabs and it hits the floor.
- Sylos 10y ago
  uBlock Origin usually rather decreases RAM usage, since ads tend to take up a fair chunk of RAM, too. If you want to troubleshoot it, type "about:memory" into the URL-bar and hit enter, then click the "Measure"-button to the left. This should give you a pretty detailed listing of everything that takes up RAM, and usually, high RAM usage is caused by an extension having memory leaks, so you'll probably see a pretty big number somewhere near the root of the tree and should be able to follow it along to whatever is causing it. If it is an extension, obviously try to find a replacement, if it's not an extension, you should probably file a bug report...
- mrinterweb 10y ago
  I haven't found uBlock origin to consume much memory when looking at about:memory (Show memory reports). Perhaps another add-on is chewing up your memory. I often have 20+ tabs open. If I have 20 or more tabs with Chrome open, and I add up the memory for all the per-tab processes Chrome spawns, Chrome eats up way too much memory. Chrome is great as long as you don't have many open tabs. Firefox is great for those of us that just can't close our tabs.

Sylos 10y ago

This isn't yet fully on par with Chrome's multi-process implementation, as Chrome also separates individual tabs' content processes (so, if you load many tabs in a short time, those tabs will generally render better in parallel), and also, Chrome separates each individual extension into its own process, whereas Firefox only has one process for all extensions, but, if I remember correctly, current numbers are that this raises RAM usage by about 20%. The individual tabs in individual processes are also planned (and yesterday, I got a "The bad news first, this tab crashed"-message on Firefox Nightly, meaning that this was probably just pushed to Nightly), and the individual processes for individual extensions will most likely be implemented with their implementation of WebExtensions (Chrome's extension API) in the future. So, currently, it can't quite compete in theoretical performance when looking only at multi-process, but is also still miles off in terms of RAM usage. Personally, I don't think that they'll come close to the amount that Chrome uses, mainly because they've always been a bit more conservative, i.e. acknowledging that people occasionally use their computers for other things than browsing the internet, but yeah, we'll have to wait and see how it plays out in the end...