3 ms·

If this is your only or main issue with FF, it can't be that bad. I tried Chrome from time to time and the endless processes eating up an immense sum of RAM (I

by aluhut 10y ago

If this is your only or main issue with FF, it can't be that bad. I tried Chrome from time to time and the endless processes eating up an immense sum of RAM (I had to add together first to realize) as well as the missing addons drove me away. I never considered myself a participant in the ideological browser war and whenever I have to fix a computer somewhere around my friends and family (besides my parents) I left Chrome on their computers. It somehow always is there. Installed through Avast or similar. This annoying and disgusting behavior and the fact that Chrome wasn't anywhere faster or better led me to the conclusion that there is no better browser for me then FF.

Waterluvian 10y ago
I've never experienced ram issues with chrome. Is it a tangible problem that noticeably hurts experience or do you kind of have to be looking at the RAM stats to perceive that there's a problem? I wonder if I'm missing something or am just not the exceptional case where chromes use of memory matters.
- aluhut 10y ago
  I only open the process overview if something doesn't work as it should (like most people I guess). Every time I tested it I came to a point where I had issues. Maybe too many tabs, maybe wrong content, I don't know. It wasn't possible to find the "right process" there to kill too. I would just go and kill them from big to small and this is also the moment where I realize: I shouldn't have to care about which tab caused that or why. I don't have this problem on FF and if I have there is exactly one process I'd have to kill and I didn't have to do that for some versions already. Even with it being cramped with Addons. Old and new ones. I barely had Ublock on Chrome...
- barnacs 10y ago
  I too switched from chromium to firefox a few years ago when my system ran out of its 8GB RAM regularly. Chromium was using about 7.5GB, it was quite noticable. I then reopened the exact same tabs in firefox, made sure they are all loaded to make a fair comparison and it came out to less than 1.5GB RAM usage. I've been a happy firefox user since then and never looked back.
  - seba_dos1 10y ago
    Same here. Chromium with more than just a few tabs open is almost unbearable on 8GB RAM, while Firefox works well with hundreds.
seanhunter 10y ago
It might be that the processes are genuinely eating your RAM, but on most unix-like OSs, RAM usage doesn't work quite the way people expect and it may be you're misunderstanding. Many pages of forked or threaded processes can be copy-on-write, so it actually costs the OS nothing to have multiple processes sharing them. They only actually become separate pages when the process actually writes to them. What this means is that you can't get a true picture of the ram usage just by adding as you will in fact be double-counting any read-only pages that are shared using COW.
- aluhut 10y ago
  The true picture is that I have a performance issue that forces me to look at the RAM usage in the first place. As I've wrote below: I had one addon (ublock) on Chrome while my FF is so full with addons that I have to look up what they actually do from time to time ;)

by aluhut 10y ago

Waterluvian 10y ago

I've never experienced ram issues with chrome. Is it a tangible problem that noticeably hurts experience or do you kind of have to be looking at the RAM stats to perceive that there's a problem? I wonder if I'm missing something or am just not the exceptional case where chromes use of memory matters.

aluhut 10y ago
I only open the process overview if something doesn't work as it should (like most people I guess). Every time I tested it I came to a point where I had issues. Maybe too many tabs, maybe wrong content, I don't know. It wasn't possible to find the "right process" there to kill too. I would just go and kill them from big to small and this is also the moment where I realize: I shouldn't have to care about which tab caused that or why. I don't have this problem on FF and if I have there is exactly one process I'd have to kill and I didn't have to do that for some versions already. Even with it being cramped with Addons. Old and new ones. I barely had Ublock on Chrome...
barnacs 10y ago
I too switched from chromium to firefox a few years ago when my system ran out of its 8GB RAM regularly. Chromium was using about 7.5GB, it was quite noticable. I then reopened the exact same tabs in firefox, made sure they are all loaded to make a fair comparison and it came out to less than 1.5GB RAM usage. I've been a happy firefox user since then and never looked back.
- seba_dos1 10y ago
  Same here. Chromium with more than just a few tabs open is almost unbearable on 8GB RAM, while Firefox works well with hundreds.

seanhunter 10y ago

It might be that the processes are genuinely eating your RAM, but on most unix-like OSs, RAM usage doesn't work quite the way people expect and it may be you're misunderstanding. Many pages of forked or threaded processes can be copy-on-write, so it actually costs the OS nothing to have multiple processes sharing them. They only actually become separate pages when the process actually writes to them. What this means is that you can't get a true picture of the ram usage just by adding as you will in fact be double-counting any read-only pages that are shared using COW.

aluhut 10y ago
The true picture is that I have a performance issue that forces me to look at the RAM usage in the first place. As I've wrote below: I had one addon (ublock) on Chrome while my FF is so full with addons that I have to look up what they actually do from time to time ;)