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Firefox Hardware Report for Web Developers

188 points by nachtigall 10y ago

bad_user 10y ago
The actual report is at: https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ It's interesting that we are entering 2017 and the most popular configuration for users are Windows 7 (45%), 1366x768 as resolution (33%), CPUs with 2 cores (70%) and a majority have 4 GB of RAM or less. I have a ThinkPad Edge (the cheap version) from ~2012 with Core i5, 8 GB of RAM and SSD. It's incredible that it's still top of the line in these stats. PCs aren't dead, the problem for the PC industry is that old PCs are good enough, hence people don't feel the need to upgrade. Of course mobiles are now more attractive for the industry, because most of them have a 2 years of life expectancy. And it's funny that Windows 7 is still the most popular OS, even with Microsoft's aggressive upgrade tactics.
- odabaxok 10y ago
  ...people don't feel the need to upgrade. Exactly! I have similar specs on my Asus from the beginning of 2012, Core i5, 8 GB of RAM (originally 4), an SSD (I replaced the dvd-drive), and a nvidia GT540M (2GB) graphics. I bought it for ~500 EUR. If I browse laptops within the same price range, what do I get? Core i5, 8 GB RAM, nvidia 920MX (2GB), HDD, I don't even get a HD screen (or a touch screen - I would like to try those). I would buy a new laptop, but I would have to pay double the price to get something that it is much better than my current one. Until this does not changes, I will stay with the old one.
  - Jarwain 10y ago
    If you're comfortable with messing with the hardware, you can purchase a higher resolution screen and swap it out depending on your laptop's model
    - odabaxok 10y ago
      Nice tip, thanks! I have not thought about this, but it seems it is possible to buy one for my model for 50$. I will consider the replacement.
  - leoedin 10y ago
    The difference in performance between a recent laptop and a 2012 era one is marginal, but the difference in power consumption is considerable. My 2012 Asus has a i5-2410M, which has a passmark score of 3154 and a TDP of 35W. My recently purchased Dell XPS13 has a i5-6200U, which has a passmark score of 3926 and a TDP 15W. A 25% improvement in raw power, but a 190% improvement (almost a factor of 3!) in performance per watt. The reality is both are fine for day to day browsing. The real difference is that the power difference means the Dell has a smaller battery, so can be thinner and lighter. Given that I use my laptop plugged in and with a monitor 99% of the time, there's no real reason to upgrade.
- swiley 10y ago
  Most people don't need to run VMs probably. Of the people that do most probably run GNU/linux which is usally fairly lightweight. So the only memory heavy app is their web browser.
- ChoGGi 10y ago
  I do find it entertaining that as soon as Microsoft stopped pushing the free update the numbers levelled off.
  - rebelwebmaster 10y ago
    I never understood the logic behind trying to charge for the upgrade after giving it away for a year. Who was seriously going to pay for it after clearly going out of their way to avoid updating prior to that?
    - T-hawk 10y ago
      The logic was to impose a deadline on the free upgrade as an impetus for users to take it now rather than procrastinating on it forever.
- yoodenvranx 10y ago
  > the problem for the PC industry is that old PCs are good enough Yes. I use a T61 with a Core2Duo 2.5 Ghz, 3 gb of ram , and a SSD for browsing, Python and some image editing. Yes, it could be a bit faster but overall it's fine and I don't see any reason to upgrade. Actually I don't want to upgrade because I love the 14" screen with 1400*1050 resolution. It's perfect for reading and programming.
- pmontra 10y ago
  That was my laptop from 2006. Core Duo 2, dual core and RAM limited to 4GB, but with a 1680x1050 screen, or something like that.
- jccalhoun 10y ago
  I wonder what the breakdown is between homes and offices? My office computer (I'm an adjunct instructor) is slightly below those specs and slow as crap.
- my_ghola 10y ago
  That's just stats for people who use Firefox, right? I'm sure there isn't a large amount of Firefox users among people who browse the web in tablets, phones or chromebooks.
  - yoasif_ 10y ago
    Just people who use Firefox on "desktops" -- so tablets and phones are excluded. Pretty sure you can't run alternate browsers on a Chromebook.
    - dylanh 10y ago
      Firefox for android runs nicely using the new android layer on chromebooks.
- mbesto 10y ago
  > 2017 and the most popular configuration for users are Windows 7 (45%), 1366x768 as resolution (33%), CPUs with 2 cores (70%) and a majority have 4 GB of RAM or less. Not a knock on you but...surprise surprise Silicon Valley, the world isn't full of MacBook Pros.
  - JTenerife 10y ago
    I think he thought about upgrading to Windows 10, not to a Mac.
- sdeziel 10y ago
  > the problem for the PC industry is that old PCs are good enough, hence people don't feel the need to upgrade. Throwing away a working electronic device to replace it with a new one is really bad when you think of the ecological impact. I'm glad that some resist to the urge of buying shiny new stuff.
  - at-fates-hands 10y ago
    This. I've had my HP Workstation for 5 years now. I found an xw8400 workstation off of EBAY for around $400. Oh sure the specs are a little lower than what you'd find on the newer PC's: - Dual intel Xeon x5355 processors at 2.67GHz - 16GB of DDR2 RAM - Two 500GB hard drives in RAID config - nVidia Quadro FX 4600 768mb video card But I can expand the RAM out to 32GB and I've already upgraded the RAID drives to an SSD. I can also upgrade the video to 1.5gb or 2gb video card. I'm still impressed how stable its been and how even the 768mb card handles Adobe resources without any lags - I constantly have two or three Adobe programs running at a time which is normally a huge resource hog. I just fell in love with the performance and the stability of the HP workstations. For a fraction of the cost, and its easily upgradeable so I don't feel like I need to go drop 1K on a new laptop or PC. Also, with such an abundance of these on the market, you can always find a really good deal on them.
    - VodkaHaze 10y ago
      That sounds like a lovely workstation. I had a dream machine of overclocking a dual x5670 xeon machine, but motherboards that let you do that now are too rare and expensive.
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      Yep, and ECC RAM starts getting pretty important >8GB if you value stability. Workstations depreciate like bricks typically, so a last-gen system can be had for a song if many cores if what you're after. A short while back, some Xeon engineering samples were flooding eBay and were a better deal per-core than whatever the latest i7s were at the time. I forget the model number.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- digi_owl 10y ago
  > because most of them have a 2 years of life expectancy. Mostly from OEM "neglect" than customer wishes. I used a Android 4.0 tablet until recently. And only had to give it up because the USB port gave out so i can no longer charge it. The whole 2 year replacement cadence reeks of planned obsolescence.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- JTenerife 10y ago
  Even I'm no longer fond of upgrading my OS. Still refusing macOS Sierra. My PC is on Windows 10, but honestly, Windows 7 did the job pretty well. My parents hate every change on their devices. So does almost everyone I know who's not an enthusiast. So yeah, I agree. 95 % of the people need very basic hardware and a small, simple OS.
- warp 10y ago
  Those specs are not just found in old PCs, that's exactly what you find on brand new $200 to $300 laptops (HP Stream, etc..). I expect those are popular devices for people buying a first laptop for their kids or folks who just need to occasionally use Microsoft Office.
- wvenable 10y ago
  > old PCs are good enough I disagree. Old PC's are awful. The problem is that a good chunk of new PC's are just as awful. The sub-$400 laptop space is filled with low spec machines that still have 1366x768 resolution screens, low RAM, and slow processors. There has been very little spec change in that space for a long time. Windows 7 is still popular because most companies have not upgraded to Windows 10 yet. But it is starting to happen. I expect an explosion of Win10 users in the next year.
- Lagged2Death 10y ago
  It's interesting that we are entering 2017 and the most popular configuration for users are... But the stats cover Firefox users, not average PC users. I'd guess there's a lot of overlap between (people savvy enough to keep old PCs in service) and (people savvy enough to download a browser that didn't come built-in to the system). In particular, if you're using an older PC to browse the web, you're pretty likely to want to do some selective content blocking. I believe Firefox has more plugin options for that than the other big contenders. Similarly, Firefox may be the best choice on Windows 7. But on a brand-new Windows 10 PC, many people may be satisfied with built-in Edge.
- kasabali 10y ago
  > 4 GB of RAM or less With 70% having 4GB or less RAM, I hope this makes it clear to Mozilla people that the 20% memory tax of Electrolysis is simply not acceptable. I'll take less memory usage over benefits of multi processes browser any day.
- milankragujevic 10y ago
  To be honest, it's not as unusual to see the OS still being used because with the bunch of things Windows 10 runs in the background that can't be turned off it can get rather slow. Plus it hates 2 GB of RAM or less.
rattler 10y ago
Would be very interesting to compare this to the same data for Chrome.
- nachtigall 10y ago
  Pretty sure the Chrome team will do so internally. But I am also pretty sure that they won't share with the rest of the world. So kudos to mozilla for making this public.
  - cghendrix 10y ago
    Curious, why do you think this is so?
    - nachtigall 10y ago
      Same reason as why Google has buried open standards like RSS or XMPP based GTalk. Seriously I do not think that the stakeholders' values of Google are the same as the ones by the Mozilla fundation (which also has a corporation but mainly due to taxing and employing reasons). I'd even say: The moment Firefox would not exist anymore, we there would be not-so-user friendly changes to Chromium or Chrome in the interest of Google. http://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-later-you-wont.html http://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-la...
chinathrow 10y ago
Ouch: Win XP still slightly above 10%! https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/#goto-os-and-architecture https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/#goto-os...
- toni 10y ago
  Yet, Mozilla is going to end Firefox mainline support for Win XP in about 4 months[1]. [1] http://www.ghacks.net/2016/09/27/firefox-53-no-support-for-windows-xp-or-vista/ http://www.ghacks.net/2016/09/27/firefox-53-no-support-for-w...
  - rebelwebmaster 10y ago
    FWIW, XP will still be supported on ESR52 for another year or so afterwards.
    - toni 10y ago
      Hence mentioning "mainline suppprt"
- bad_user 10y ago
  Of course it is. It was a good OS and when offering the Windows 10 upgrade, Microsoft forgot about Vista and XP users. So without a (free) upgrade path, I'm pretty sure Windows XP will linger on for quite some time. And even with a free upgrade, I'm not sure those users will want it, because most users are conservative.
  - amlib 10y ago
    Or these users are still rocking a single core cpu with piss poor gpus that just perform terrible on any new OS, even a modern linux distro. My sister still insists on using a laptop like this, so winxp it is...
    - onli 10y ago
luckystarr 10y ago
This seems to be the world wide data-set. A breakdown by regions (think US, Europe, Asia, etc.) would be even more valuable to web developers.
lucaspiller 10y ago
Steam also publish a monthly hardware report, which has quite different results in some places: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
- ChoGGi 10y ago
  They did mention that. "Existing hardware reports (such as those from Valve and Unity) are excellent, but represent a different group of hardware users than the majority of people who use the web."
- brianwawok 10y ago
  This is more useful for making a game not a web app.
- 8draco8 10y ago
  Steam users are not average PC users. Believe it or not but gamers are actually just a small percentage of PC users. Most people don't game on their PC, if they even game at all. I'm talking of course about non-browser games.
  - nhaehnle 10y ago
    A good example for this is that AMD actually beats NVidia in graphics market share in the Firefox survey. Of course, Intel beats them both, which is clearly a result of laptops and low-end form factors. Similarly, just look at the absolute dominance of 2-core systems on the Firefox survey!
b15h0p 10y ago
This does not seem to contain information about HiDPI - does anyone know good statistics about how many people use HiDPI screens (on desktop)?
- GrinningFool 10y ago
  Given the most popular desktop resolution reported, I'd say "not most". It's always interesting to see what the rest of the world is doing outside of the bubble.
  - vetinari 10y ago
    4K display (3840x2160) with @2 scaling is being reported as 1920x1080: gfx.monitors.[0].screenWidth 1920 gfx.monitors.[0].screenHeight 1080 So the resolutions do not say anything about HiDPI. There's an additional key for that: gfx.monitors.[0].scale 2
- joobus 10y ago
  Zooming (ctrl +,ctrl -) in Firefox is terrible, and with a 4k screen zooming is a key feature. I quit using firefox because of that. Chrome's zoom actually works.
  - sergiosgc 10y ago
    I just changed the devpixelsperpx preference in Firefox. No need to mess with zooming anymore. FF should read the screen density automatically, but as annoyances go, this is a minor one (just set and forget).
    - db48x 10y ago
      It actually used to do it automatically, but it got more complaints from people who were surprised that it did so than complements from people who were thankful that they could read things without squinting.
  - tedunangst 10y ago
avian 10y ago
My first thought upon seeing this is that I was not aware that Firefox sends this kind of data to Mozilla. Under "how is the report created" [1] it says that "Firefox automatically collects information [...] unless users disable this collection". This seems to be in conflict with Mozilla Telemetry FAQ [2] that says that data collection is disabled by default for release builds. In fact, on Firefox 50.1.0 on Debian I no longer see the "Share additional data" setting mentioned in [3] - see screenshot in [4]. Does this mean that Telemetry is now enabled by default and can't be disabled? [1] https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ [2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Telemetry/FAQ#Is_Telemetry_enabled_by_default_on_normal_Firefox_releases.3F https://wiki.mozilla.org/Telemetry/FAQ#Is_Telemetry_enabled_... [3] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/share-telemetry-data-mozilla-help-improve-firefox?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=how-can-i-help-submitting-performance-data https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/share-telemetry-data-mo... [4] https://www.tablix.org/~avian/stuff/firefox_data_choices.png https://www.tablix.org/~avian/stuff/firefox_data_choices.png
- phlsa 10y ago
  Mozilla collects a limited set of aggregate data by default, but it can be opted out. Users can also opt in to send a more extensive data set (also aggregate AFAIK), but that's not the default. The screen shot from your preferences section is odd - all the boxes are there on Windows and macOS for me. Perhaps you can file a bug on bugzilla.mozilla.org
  - yoasif_ 10y ago
    Just tried with a new profile, and this comment is accurate. This is the default collection that is on but can be opted out of: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report This is what users can opt into: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#telemetry https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#telemetry
- gbuk2013 10y ago
  If I remember correctly, the first time you run Firefox with a new profile you get a message about data gathering with an option to opt out.
akerro 10y ago
Am I reading this right? Linux usage is 0.20%?
- loudmax 10y ago
  I'm wondering the same thing. Nearly every other metric I've seen puts desktop Linux between 3% and 4%. I'd imagine that paranoid Linux users would be undercounted because they're less likely to let Mozilla collect stats on them. And of course, Firefox stats wouldn't include ChromeOS. Still <1% seems awfully low. We're rare but we're not that rare.
  - yborg 10y ago
    It's the percentage of users on Linux running Firefox, so a simpler possibility is that a substantial number are running Chrome.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      I think more and more distros ship some compile of Chromium these days, or perhaps iceweasel/icecat (the GNU "fork" formed after the debacle with Debian over trademarks).
  - krallja 10y ago
    The Firefox in Debian's APT repo is patched to disable telemetry by default.
- morsch 10y ago
  I was wondering if maybe common Linux distributions ship with a different default than the Windows builds, but all I could find is that telemetry wasn't working with Ubuntu Firefox for a while in 2016[1]. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1233687 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1233687
- rebelwebmaster 10y ago
  Distros have control over the defaults for telemetry collection, so it's likely that Linux usage is under-reported.
amq 10y ago
> The share of 32-to-64-bit browsers showed no remarkable change during 2016. The installer from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ defaults to 32-bit, what would you expect?
- Siecje 10y ago
  I didn't even know there is a 64-bit Firefox installer. I remember there being a fork that would build it for x64.
  - amq 10y ago
    "Firefox for Other Platforms & Languages" in footer of that page.
    - the8472 10y ago
      That link used to be more prominent in the past, right under the main download button.
  - bad_user 10y ago
    For Linux and MacOS it's been available for a long time. I've also used the 64-bit Firefox on my Windows for some time now, but it's not the default download that they offer. See it here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/
    - cpeterso 10y ago
      In fact, 64-bit Mac will be the only version supported as of Firefox 53. This will halve the Mac installer size. 32-bit and Universal Mac builds were dropped in Firefox bug 1295375: https://bugzil.la/1295375 https://bugzil.la/1295375
  - Sylos 10y ago
    The fork is called Waterfox, and yeah, the 64-bit Windows installer is relatively new.
Siecje 10y ago
What other options are there for graphics besides Intel, Nvidia, and AMD? What is the other 3%?
- ReverseCold 10y ago
  ARM stuff mabye?
- PascLeRasc 10y ago
  mobile phones in "request desktop site" mode? That's a wild guess.
  - krallja 10y ago
    They wouldn't be running Firefox for desktop.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  Companies like 3DFX (which once one of the best and very notable with their GLIDE API) got bought by nvidia. Imagination Technologies (IMG) left the PC gpu market to focus solely on mobile gpu (Power VR series). on mobile there are still plenty company making gpu's like IMG (Power VR), Qualcomm (Adreno - which originated from ATI mobile division), Nvidia (ULP Geforce), ARM (Mali) and Intel
- chei0iaV 10y ago
  Matrox appears to still be alive and kicking: http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/graphics_cards/ http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/graphics_cards/
- hobarrera 10y ago
  There are VIA motherboards with build-in CPU and GPU for one (I had one of these for a small NAS, which could have been used for a very lightweight computer as well). Raspberry Pi and stuff like that use other brands of GPU as well.
dhogan 10y ago
What set up do you have for 7 GB of RAM? Why is that more popular than 12 GB?
- bwat48 10y ago
  Maybe systems that have 8gb ram but have integrated graphics that reserve a portion of system memory?
- hobarrera 10y ago
  12GB must be really weird because you'd have 3x4GB modules, which means no dual channel. 7GB = 8GB minus one used by the GPU.
  - xdanger 10y ago
    12GB = 2x2GB + 2x4GB
kbumsik 10y ago
What about the case of switchable graphics? When a laptop has intel internal graphic and a nVidia chip, is it counted as Intel ,nvidia, or both?
- hobarrera 10y ago
  Just the active on, probably.
shmerl 10y ago
No Linux in the OS list?
fdim 10y ago
Pitty that this represents only 12% of the global market, good to know nevertheless.
r1ch 10y ago
While the data isn't broken down by region, the disparity between the hardware listed here and what most modern web developers will be using on their own machines is astounding. It seems very easy to make web apps that will be pretty unusable on the most common configurations.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

188 points by nachtigall 10y ago

The actual report is at: https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ It's interesting that we are entering 2017 and the most popular configuration for users are Windows 7 (45%), 1366x768 as resolution (33%), CPUs with 2 cores (70%) and a majority have 4 GB of RAM or less. I have a ThinkPad Edge (the cheap version) from ~2012 with Core i5, 8 GB of RAM and SSD. It's incredible that it's still top of the line in these stats. PCs aren't dead, the problem for the PC industry is that old PCs are good enough, hence people don't feel the need to upgrade. Of course mobiles are now more attractive for the industry, because most of them have a 2 years of life expectancy. And it's funny that Windows 7 is still the most popular OS, even with Microsoft's aggressive upgrade tactics.

odabaxok 10y ago
...people don't feel the need to upgrade. Exactly! I have similar specs on my Asus from the beginning of 2012, Core i5, 8 GB of RAM (originally 4), an SSD (I replaced the dvd-drive), and a nvidia GT540M (2GB) graphics. I bought it for ~500 EUR. If I browse laptops within the same price range, what do I get? Core i5, 8 GB RAM, nvidia 920MX (2GB), HDD, I don't even get a HD screen (or a touch screen - I would like to try those). I would buy a new laptop, but I would have to pay double the price to get something that it is much better than my current one. Until this does not changes, I will stay with the old one.
- Jarwain 10y ago
  If you're comfortable with messing with the hardware, you can purchase a higher resolution screen and swap it out depending on your laptop's model
  - odabaxok 10y ago
    Nice tip, thanks! I have not thought about this, but it seems it is possible to buy one for my model for 50$. I will consider the replacement.
- leoedin 10y ago
  The difference in performance between a recent laptop and a 2012 era one is marginal, but the difference in power consumption is considerable. My 2012 Asus has a i5-2410M, which has a passmark score of 3154 and a TDP of 35W. My recently purchased Dell XPS13 has a i5-6200U, which has a passmark score of 3926 and a TDP 15W. A 25% improvement in raw power, but a 190% improvement (almost a factor of 3!) in performance per watt. The reality is both are fine for day to day browsing. The real difference is that the power difference means the Dell has a smaller battery, so can be thinner and lighter. Given that I use my laptop plugged in and with a monitor 99% of the time, there's no real reason to upgrade.
swiley 10y ago
Most people don't need to run VMs probably. Of the people that do most probably run GNU/linux which is usally fairly lightweight. So the only memory heavy app is their web browser.
ChoGGi 10y ago
I do find it entertaining that as soon as Microsoft stopped pushing the free update the numbers levelled off.
- rebelwebmaster 10y ago
  I never understood the logic behind trying to charge for the upgrade after giving it away for a year. Who was seriously going to pay for it after clearly going out of their way to avoid updating prior to that?
  - T-hawk 10y ago
    The logic was to impose a deadline on the free upgrade as an impetus for users to take it now rather than procrastinating on it forever.
yoodenvranx 10y ago
> the problem for the PC industry is that old PCs are good enough Yes. I use a T61 with a Core2Duo 2.5 Ghz, 3 gb of ram , and a SSD for browsing, Python and some image editing. Yes, it could be a bit faster but overall it's fine and I don't see any reason to upgrade. Actually I don't want to upgrade because I love the 14" screen with 1400*1050 resolution. It's perfect for reading and programming.
pmontra 10y ago
That was my laptop from 2006. Core Duo 2, dual core and RAM limited to 4GB, but with a 1680x1050 screen, or something like that.
jccalhoun 10y ago
I wonder what the breakdown is between homes and offices? My office computer (I'm an adjunct instructor) is slightly below those specs and slow as crap.
my_ghola 10y ago
That's just stats for people who use Firefox, right? I'm sure there isn't a large amount of Firefox users among people who browse the web in tablets, phones or chromebooks.
- yoasif_ 10y ago
  Just people who use Firefox on "desktops" -- so tablets and phones are excluded. Pretty sure you can't run alternate browsers on a Chromebook.
  - dylanh 10y ago
    Firefox for android runs nicely using the new android layer on chromebooks.
mbesto 10y ago
> 2017 and the most popular configuration for users are Windows 7 (45%), 1366x768 as resolution (33%), CPUs with 2 cores (70%) and a majority have 4 GB of RAM or less. Not a knock on you but...surprise surprise Silicon Valley, the world isn't full of MacBook Pros.
- JTenerife 10y ago
  I think he thought about upgrading to Windows 10, not to a Mac.
sdeziel 10y ago
> the problem for the PC industry is that old PCs are good enough, hence people don't feel the need to upgrade. Throwing away a working electronic device to replace it with a new one is really bad when you think of the ecological impact. I'm glad that some resist to the urge of buying shiny new stuff.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  This. I've had my HP Workstation for 5 years now. I found an xw8400 workstation off of EBAY for around $400. Oh sure the specs are a little lower than what you'd find on the newer PC's: - Dual intel Xeon x5355 processors at 2.67GHz - 16GB of DDR2 RAM - Two 500GB hard drives in RAID config - nVidia Quadro FX 4600 768mb video card But I can expand the RAM out to 32GB and I've already upgraded the RAID drives to an SSD. I can also upgrade the video to 1.5gb or 2gb video card. I'm still impressed how stable its been and how even the 768mb card handles Adobe resources without any lags - I constantly have two or three Adobe programs running at a time which is normally a huge resource hog. I just fell in love with the performance and the stability of the HP workstations. For a fraction of the cost, and its easily upgradeable so I don't feel like I need to go drop 1K on a new laptop or PC. Also, with such an abundance of these on the market, you can always find a really good deal on them.
  - VodkaHaze 10y ago
    That sounds like a lovely workstation. I had a dream machine of overclocking a dual x5670 xeon machine, but motherboards that let you do that now are too rare and expensive.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Yep, and ECC RAM starts getting pretty important >8GB if you value stability. Workstations depreciate like bricks typically, so a last-gen system can be had for a song if many cores if what you're after. A short while back, some Xeon engineering samples were flooding eBay and were a better deal per-core than whatever the latest i7s were at the time. I forget the model number.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
digi_owl 10y ago
> because most of them have a 2 years of life expectancy. Mostly from OEM "neglect" than customer wishes. I used a Android 4.0 tablet until recently. And only had to give it up because the USB port gave out so i can no longer charge it. The whole 2 year replacement cadence reeks of planned obsolescence.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
JTenerife 10y ago
Even I'm no longer fond of upgrading my OS. Still refusing macOS Sierra. My PC is on Windows 10, but honestly, Windows 7 did the job pretty well. My parents hate every change on their devices. So does almost everyone I know who's not an enthusiast. So yeah, I agree. 95 % of the people need very basic hardware and a small, simple OS.
warp 10y ago
Those specs are not just found in old PCs, that's exactly what you find on brand new $200 to $300 laptops (HP Stream, etc..). I expect those are popular devices for people buying a first laptop for their kids or folks who just need to occasionally use Microsoft Office.
wvenable 10y ago
> old PCs are good enough I disagree. Old PC's are awful. The problem is that a good chunk of new PC's are just as awful. The sub-$400 laptop space is filled with low spec machines that still have 1366x768 resolution screens, low RAM, and slow processors. There has been very little spec change in that space for a long time. Windows 7 is still popular because most companies have not upgraded to Windows 10 yet. But it is starting to happen. I expect an explosion of Win10 users in the next year.
Lagged2Death 10y ago
It's interesting that we are entering 2017 and the most popular configuration for users are... But the stats cover Firefox users, not average PC users. I'd guess there's a lot of overlap between (people savvy enough to keep old PCs in service) and (people savvy enough to download a browser that didn't come built-in to the system). In particular, if you're using an older PC to browse the web, you're pretty likely to want to do some selective content blocking. I believe Firefox has more plugin options for that than the other big contenders. Similarly, Firefox may be the best choice on Windows 7. But on a brand-new Windows 10 PC, many people may be satisfied with built-in Edge.
kasabali 10y ago
> 4 GB of RAM or less With 70% having 4GB or less RAM, I hope this makes it clear to Mozilla people that the 20% memory tax of Electrolysis is simply not acceptable. I'll take less memory usage over benefits of multi processes browser any day.
milankragujevic 10y ago
To be honest, it's not as unusual to see the OS still being used because with the bunch of things Windows 10 runs in the background that can't be turned off it can get rather slow. Plus it hates 2 GB of RAM or less.

rattler 10y ago

Would be very interesting to compare this to the same data for Chrome.

nachtigall 10y ago
Pretty sure the Chrome team will do so internally. But I am also pretty sure that they won't share with the rest of the world. So kudos to mozilla for making this public.
- cghendrix 10y ago
  Curious, why do you think this is so?
  - nachtigall 10y ago
    Same reason as why Google has buried open standards like RSS or XMPP based GTalk. Seriously I do not think that the stakeholders' values of Google are the same as the ones by the Mozilla fundation (which also has a corporation but mainly due to taxing and employing reasons). I'd even say: The moment Firefox would not exist anymore, we there would be not-so-user friendly changes to Chromium or Chrome in the interest of Google. http://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-later-you-wont.html http://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-la...

chinathrow 10y ago

Ouch: Win XP still slightly above 10%! https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/#goto-os-and-architecture https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/#goto-os...

toni 10y ago
Yet, Mozilla is going to end Firefox mainline support for Win XP in about 4 months[1]. [1] http://www.ghacks.net/2016/09/27/firefox-53-no-support-for-windows-xp-or-vista/ http://www.ghacks.net/2016/09/27/firefox-53-no-support-for-w...
- rebelwebmaster 10y ago
  FWIW, XP will still be supported on ESR52 for another year or so afterwards.
  - toni 10y ago
    Hence mentioning "mainline suppprt"
bad_user 10y ago
Of course it is. It was a good OS and when offering the Windows 10 upgrade, Microsoft forgot about Vista and XP users. So without a (free) upgrade path, I'm pretty sure Windows XP will linger on for quite some time. And even with a free upgrade, I'm not sure those users will want it, because most users are conservative.
- amlib 10y ago
  Or these users are still rocking a single core cpu with piss poor gpus that just perform terrible on any new OS, even a modern linux distro. My sister still insists on using a laptop like this, so winxp it is...
  - onli 10y ago

luckystarr 10y ago

This seems to be the world wide data-set. A breakdown by regions (think US, Europe, Asia, etc.) would be even more valuable to web developers.

lucaspiller 10y ago

Steam also publish a monthly hardware report, which has quite different results in some places: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

ChoGGi 10y ago
They did mention that. "Existing hardware reports (such as those from Valve and Unity) are excellent, but represent a different group of hardware users than the majority of people who use the web."
brianwawok 10y ago
This is more useful for making a game not a web app.
8draco8 10y ago
Steam users are not average PC users. Believe it or not but gamers are actually just a small percentage of PC users. Most people don't game on their PC, if they even game at all. I'm talking of course about non-browser games.
- nhaehnle 10y ago
  A good example for this is that AMD actually beats NVidia in graphics market share in the Firefox survey. Of course, Intel beats them both, which is clearly a result of laptops and low-end form factors. Similarly, just look at the absolute dominance of 2-core systems on the Firefox survey!

b15h0p 10y ago

This does not seem to contain information about HiDPI - does anyone know good statistics about how many people use HiDPI screens (on desktop)?

GrinningFool 10y ago
Given the most popular desktop resolution reported, I'd say "not most". It's always interesting to see what the rest of the world is doing outside of the bubble.
- vetinari 10y ago
  4K display (3840x2160) with @2 scaling is being reported as 1920x1080: gfx.monitors.[0].screenWidth 1920 gfx.monitors.[0].screenHeight 1080 So the resolutions do not say anything about HiDPI. There's an additional key for that: gfx.monitors.[0].scale 2
joobus 10y ago
Zooming (ctrl +,ctrl -) in Firefox is terrible, and with a 4k screen zooming is a key feature. I quit using firefox because of that. Chrome's zoom actually works.
- sergiosgc 10y ago
  I just changed the devpixelsperpx preference in Firefox. No need to mess with zooming anymore. FF should read the screen density automatically, but as annoyances go, this is a minor one (just set and forget).
  - db48x 10y ago
    It actually used to do it automatically, but it got more complaints from people who were surprised that it did so than complements from people who were thankful that they could read things without squinting.
- tedunangst 10y ago

avian 10y ago

My first thought upon seeing this is that I was not aware that Firefox sends this kind of data to Mozilla. Under "how is the report created" [1] it says that "Firefox automatically collects information [...] unless users disable this collection". This seems to be in conflict with Mozilla Telemetry FAQ [2] that says that data collection is disabled by default for release builds. In fact, on Firefox 50.1.0 on Debian I no longer see the "Share additional data" setting mentioned in [3] - see screenshot in [4]. Does this mean that Telemetry is now enabled by default and can't be disabled? [1] https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ [2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Telemetry/FAQ#Is_Telemetry_enabled_by_default_on_normal_Firefox_releases.3F https://wiki.mozilla.org/Telemetry/FAQ#Is_Telemetry_enabled_... [3] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/share-telemetry-data-mozilla-help-improve-firefox?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=how-can-i-help-submitting-performance-data https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/share-telemetry-data-mo... [4] https://www.tablix.org/~avian/stuff/firefox_data_choices.png https://www.tablix.org/~avian/stuff/firefox_data_choices.png

phlsa 10y ago
Mozilla collects a limited set of aggregate data by default, but it can be opted out. Users can also opt in to send a more extensive data set (also aggregate AFAIK), but that's not the default. The screen shot from your preferences section is odd - all the boxes are there on Windows and macOS for me. Perhaps you can file a bug on bugzilla.mozilla.org
- yoasif_ 10y ago
  Just tried with a new profile, and this comment is accurate. This is the default collection that is on but can be opted out of: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report This is what users can opt into: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#telemetry https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#telemetry
gbuk2013 10y ago
If I remember correctly, the first time you run Firefox with a new profile you get a message about data gathering with an option to opt out.

akerro 10y ago

Am I reading this right? Linux usage is 0.20%?

loudmax 10y ago
I'm wondering the same thing. Nearly every other metric I've seen puts desktop Linux between 3% and 4%. I'd imagine that paranoid Linux users would be undercounted because they're less likely to let Mozilla collect stats on them. And of course, Firefox stats wouldn't include ChromeOS. Still <1% seems awfully low. We're rare but we're not that rare.
- yborg 10y ago
  It's the percentage of users on Linux running Firefox, so a simpler possibility is that a substantial number are running Chrome.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    I think more and more distros ship some compile of Chromium these days, or perhaps iceweasel/icecat (the GNU "fork" formed after the debacle with Debian over trademarks).
- krallja 10y ago
  The Firefox in Debian's APT repo is patched to disable telemetry by default.
morsch 10y ago
I was wondering if maybe common Linux distributions ship with a different default than the Windows builds, but all I could find is that telemetry wasn't working with Ubuntu Firefox for a while in 2016[1]. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1233687 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1233687
rebelwebmaster 10y ago
Distros have control over the defaults for telemetry collection, so it's likely that Linux usage is under-reported.

amq 10y ago

> The share of 32-to-64-bit browsers showed no remarkable change during 2016. The installer from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ defaults to 32-bit, what would you expect?

Siecje 10y ago
I didn't even know there is a 64-bit Firefox installer. I remember there being a fork that would build it for x64.
- amq 10y ago
  "Firefox for Other Platforms & Languages" in footer of that page.
  - the8472 10y ago
    That link used to be more prominent in the past, right under the main download button.
- bad_user 10y ago
  For Linux and MacOS it's been available for a long time. I've also used the 64-bit Firefox on my Windows for some time now, but it's not the default download that they offer. See it here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    In fact, 64-bit Mac will be the only version supported as of Firefox 53. This will halve the Mac installer size. 32-bit and Universal Mac builds were dropped in Firefox bug 1295375: https://bugzil.la/1295375 https://bugzil.la/1295375
- Sylos 10y ago
  The fork is called Waterfox, and yeah, the 64-bit Windows installer is relatively new.

Siecje 10y ago

What other options are there for graphics besides Intel, Nvidia, and AMD? What is the other 3%?

ReverseCold 10y ago
ARM stuff mabye?
PascLeRasc 10y ago
mobile phones in "request desktop site" mode? That's a wild guess.
- krallja 10y ago
  They wouldn't be running Firefox for desktop.
at-fates-hands 10y ago
Companies like 3DFX (which once one of the best and very notable with their GLIDE API) got bought by nvidia. Imagination Technologies (IMG) left the PC gpu market to focus solely on mobile gpu (Power VR series). on mobile there are still plenty company making gpu's like IMG (Power VR), Qualcomm (Adreno - which originated from ATI mobile division), Nvidia (ULP Geforce), ARM (Mali) and Intel
chei0iaV 10y ago
Matrox appears to still be alive and kicking: http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/graphics_cards/ http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/graphics_cards/
hobarrera 10y ago
There are VIA motherboards with build-in CPU and GPU for one (I had one of these for a small NAS, which could have been used for a very lightweight computer as well). Raspberry Pi and stuff like that use other brands of GPU as well.

dhogan 10y ago

What set up do you have for 7 GB of RAM? Why is that more popular than 12 GB?

bwat48 10y ago
Maybe systems that have 8gb ram but have integrated graphics that reserve a portion of system memory?
hobarrera 10y ago
12GB must be really weird because you'd have 3x4GB modules, which means no dual channel. 7GB = 8GB minus one used by the GPU.
- xdanger 10y ago
  12GB = 2x2GB + 2x4GB

kbumsik 10y ago

What about the case of switchable graphics? When a laptop has intel internal graphic and a nVidia chip, is it counted as Intel ,nvidia, or both?

hobarrera 10y ago
Just the active on, probably.

shmerl 10y ago

No Linux in the OS list?

fdim 10y ago

Pitty that this represents only 12% of the global market, good to know nevertheless.

r1ch 10y ago

While the data isn't broken down by region, the disparity between the hardware listed here and what most modern web developers will be using on their own machines is astounding. It seems very easy to make web apps that will be pretty unusable on the most common configurations.

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