7 ms·

I must use my browsers differently from others. I have Chrome and Firefox open on my main work machine here (Ubuntu 14) all day/night. Never have a problem with

• jbhatab 10y ago
  I regularly log in to 8 google accounts and have 4-12 tabs open on 3-6 separate windows. Issues come up on occasion that are fixed by closing chrome and reopening. Not sure exactly but that's my experience at least.
  • tradersam 10y ago
    > 8 google accounts and have 4-12 tabs open on 3-6 separate windows. If you don't mind me asking, why do you do this? I can't think of a reason to need to be logged into that many Google accounts at one time.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • dexterdog 10y ago
      Whenever I get a new account I set it up to forward to my main account and setup my main account so it can properly send as that account. This way I only ever need one account open.
      • chillingeffect 10y ago
        How many phone #s do you register with?
        • dexterdog 10y ago
          Just one. I have an old gmail.com account from when they first started, but all of the newer accounts I get are google apps or gsuite or whatever they're calling it now. Those don't require a unique phone number.
    • BorisMelnik 10y ago
      lots of agencies have this need - social media agencies for instance need to be logged into all the gmail accounts of their clients at all times, so if they have 20 clients thats 20 logged in accounts.
  • ams6110 10y ago
    Not sure what the number of accounts would have to do with resource usage. A logged in account is just a cookie.
    • rosser 10y ago
      > A logged in account is just a cookie. ...and the code, and all of the state from the objects that are, you know, "currently resident in main memory" while that logged in account is being accessed, and, and, and.
  • mikepurvis 10y ago
    Only three Google accounts for me, but otherwise that sounds consistent with my experience— running on macOS, I need to restart Chrome typically once every day or two. Otherwise everything just eventually crawls to a halt.
• nerdponx 10y ago
  How much memory is on your machine? I can have 50 tabs open without a problem on my MacBook Pro with an i5 and 16GB of RAM, but on older hardware I can't have more than a handful of tabs without starting to run out of resources.
  • blakesterz 10y ago
    Yeah, good point, though the new macbook is just the standard Air RAM, and it seems fine.
  • scholia 10y ago
    With Firefox, I got to over 600 tabs on my 2011 Dell desktop (Core i5-2500) with 4GB of RAM. Because of "lazy loading", I'd guess that only about 40 or 50 were actually loaded. RAM use varies from about 1GB to 2.5GB. It slows down above that, which you can only solve by restarting the browser. I bought another 8GB so I reckon my 2011 machine will be good for another few years. It should last a decade, really.
• detaro 10y ago
  Do you use an Adblocker? Those make a massive difference. I have uBlock with quite strict settings, and normally I can keep 100+ tabs open without issues. But a single misbehaving site can disrupt that (heck, a long-running tab can load hundreds of MB of ads if nothing stops it), and occasionally parts of the browser just hang. Turn off uBlock and everything goes the hell immediately.
  • blakesterz 10y ago
    Oh, good point, yes, privacybadger and ublockorigin
  • krylon 10y ago
    Browsing the web without an adblocker is kind of like driving a car without wearing a seat belt or riding a bicycle without wearing a helmet. At least it feels like that to me.
    • johnchristopher 10y ago
      You are treading in dangerous waters by bringing up the helmet bike subject in this house. :)
      • krylon 10y ago
        Well, I am not going to force anyone to wear a helmet. I think it is a good idea to do so, and I personally do when riding a bicycle, but I have to admit I only started doing so after two people I know had pretty bad biking accidents resulting in injuries that most likely would have been prevented by a helmet. But I still like the analogy in the sense that lots of people are riding bicycles without helmets, and lots of people are browsing the web without adblockers. In both cases, my personal opinion is that this is not a good idea, but I won't try to force my personal opinion on others.
        • BuckRogers 10y ago
          Oh OK. Kids need to be told what to do sometimes until 18 because they're not mature enough to make the decision. Telling them to not get in a car with a stranger and wearing a helmet are good examples. The parent comment was talking about his household.
• ikeboy 10y ago
  Gmail often uses over 1GB. Some google sheets do too after being open for some time. With 10 windows and a handful of tabs each, I'm close to using up 16GB of ram and sometimes run out.
  • bitmapbrother 10y ago
    My Gmail is at 240MB with Chrome 57 with 50 emails per page. With 100 emails it's 380MB.
    • aninteger 10y ago
      How much memory is it with mutt, or Alpine.. or let's be fair, Thunderbird?
      • jacquesm 10y ago
        Thunderbird with a huge mail archive open: 1.5 G total, 500 M resident.
        • kalleboo 10y ago
          Does Thunderbird mmap it's mail archive or something? Because 1.5 GB sounds insane. Apple's Mail.app is only using 130 MB for a 1.8 GB mailbox. Might be an unfair comparison if Mail.app is leaning on the system for indexing/search (then again mds+mds_stores is using around 200 MB)
          • jcranmer 10y ago
            The metadata database for open folders is entirely resident in memory.
      • 1wd 10y ago
        My mail box is currently 700 MB on disk and Thunderbird uses less than 100 MB of memory.
    • 10y ago
• smkellat 10y ago
  Boss, 'News doesn't even ping uBlock Origin as having anything truly objectionable. You run a wonderful website that I have been privileged to contribute to. In contrast, some of the other places on the web I've visited that have auto-playing ads & auto-playing rich media have made my browser explode due to my rural broadband which you've heard me whine about. I pretty much have had to have uBlock Origin installed lately to keep four or more tabs open even on my Xubuntu 16.04 box.
• dexterdog 10y ago
  18 tabs spread over two browsers is a minimal load on almost any machine.
• tolmasky 10y ago
  I think a good approach would be to have web browsers limit the amount of memory ads can use on a given page. This would hopefully align incentives: we understand that ads are necessary for the web, but ad makers have to work on efficiency to increase revenue. This would theoretically be like "AMP for ads". If you use too much memory, your ads drop because you keep crashing on the page (just the ad of course). If you wanted to be perverse, you could have a limit on TOTAL memory all ads could use on a page, so you end up creating group pressure on any individual that's not playing nice (they might start demanding not to be served on the same page as those ads etc). But maybe this is too much. Just limiting the total amount of "memory usage" is a good start. The important thing here is that it hopefully leads to the world we actually want: REASONABLE ads that don't require crazy measures that end up hurting the sites we love. Browsers COULD ship this by default without hurting the ecosystem.
  • cpeterso 10y ago
    Mozilla is looking to use Firefox's Tracking Protection list to lower the priority of ads' HTTP requests and more aggressively throttle them when they are not visible. But setting a fixed ad budget per page, as you suggest, or maybe forcing all ads from all tabs to share one process could be interesting.
  • superflyguy 10y ago
    >I think a good approach would be to have web browsers limit the amount of memory ads can use on a given page. This assumes you can identify ads, or that they identify themselves.
    • scarhill 10y ago
      Ad-blockers seem to be able to identify them pretty reliably.
  • marssaxman 10y ago
    have web browsers limit the amount of memory ads can use on a given page That's easily done by installing an adblocker! Can't beat memory limit = 0. we understand that ads are necessary for the web Well, hold on now. The web existed before ads did, and it was pretty cool. If ads disappeared, we'd still have a web - lots of its most annoying parts would disappear, and we'd have a lot of readjusting to do, but what we'd end up with would keep all the best parts of what we have now, because the best parts of the web aren't based on ads.
• dflock 10y ago
  I have over 100 tabs open in chrome on my phone right now. Lord only knows how many I have open across desktop browsers. This is why.
• a3n 10y ago
  I did a fresh linux install a few months ago. Installed Firefox, no addons, went to the New York Times. My underpowered laptop screamed while it waited for the page and all its beautiful javascript to load, and then whined annoyingly, opened another page somewhere else, more screaming and whining; the browser was essentially unusable. Closed the pages, installed uBlockOrigin, and I had my browser back. Sorry NYT, but if you ever want me to see an ad again (I'm not opposed to them), you're going to have to do something about your pages, and you're going to have to police your ad networks for my privacy and protection. (But, I suppose it's specifically my privacy that you're selling, so I guess the wait will be long.)
  • digi_owl 10y ago
    Been using Noscript for pretty much the same reason.
• krylon 10y ago
  The trouble begins when you have something like 30-40 tabs open, I think. Firefox is among the first programs I open after logging in, and I usually leave it running until I either shutdown/reboot or a browser update makes me restart it. And I tend to only reboot my computers (both at home and at work) when system updates make it necessary. Often I will open a page and then just leave the tab open for "later" (which might be hours or days later). It's not uncommon for Firefox to grow to 1-1.5 GB in size. Personally, I consider that an acceptable tradeoff, given its usefulness, but it is a rather heavyweight program. (On lower-end machines I prefer either dillo or w3m. Pages with layouts that can be even remotely considered "fancy" will look kind of strange in dillo, but it is incredibly fast, and I have never seen it use more than 150MB of RAM.)
  • hashhar 10y ago
    Hah, you've never seen what would happen to Chrome on similar workloads. But yes, your RAM usage is spectacularly high compared to mine beacause I have 326 tabs open right now (90 something loaded in memory) and FF is using 1.1 GB (750+180+170+40 MB) of RAM.
• snovv_crash 10y ago
  At least on Ubuntu 16.04, the "Ubuntu integration" add-on that is auto-installed prevents e10s from running, so you get a choppy, single-threaded UI. I'm sure a fair amount of the plugins people install are actually what lead to the large memory consumption. That, and the hundreds of tabs they leave open. I feel like tabs have become the new bookmark. Maybe what we really need is some sort of ephemeral bookmark system?
• nialv7 10y ago
  I have 103 tabs open. Guess that's the difference..
  • superflyguy 10y ago
    Given that you can only read from one tab at a time, why not have 103 (or more) bookmarks but only, say, 1 to 5 tabs open. What's the workflow? It seems obvious to me that if each page is a few megs in size and might have CPU taxing JavaScript etc that it's going to tie up a bunch of resources. Why not just open them when you need them?
    • MaulingMonkey 10y ago
      > What's the workflow? Tabs are my 'pending reading queue'. 1) Start investigating a topic. MMB the first few google results that look relevant/useful. 2) Ctrl+Tab. I'll be back to that google query in short order if they weren't. 3) Ctrl+W the first few results - they weren't useful. 4) Oh, hey, here's something. Read, scan down, and MMB 'future reading'. 5) Unread 'queue' (everything right of my current tab) is slowly growing. There will sometimes be duplicates. Read 'queue' that I want to keep open for reference / high level overview / branching off of (most things left of my current tab) also grows. 6) An hour later, I'm perhaps up to 50 tabs. Often less, but sometimes more. Oh, here's a high priority question/bug/problem/task from my valued coworkers. I recall relevant documentation, but not the exact keywords. I open a new window, and repeat the process. Oh, hey, lunchtime! Interesting discussion over lunch prompts me to investigate another related topic. I open a new window when I return to the office. Aha, results! A whirlwind of coding Oh, end of day already? Hmm, I have 5 chrome windows open... LET THE HARVEST OF BOOKMARKS COMMENCE! Hundreds of tabs becomes 0 as I do a quick glance kneejerk yay/nay on bookmarking every one of them and doing some kind of basic organization by topic. Other coworkers use browser extensions to save their tabs instead, instead of engaging in this organization ritual. The computers shut off. The lights go out. The sun has set, and silence descends, despite the open office floorplan. ...and then, some time later... a new day dawns... > Why not just open them when you need them? I don't want to wait for the webpage to finish loading when I switch to it. I don't have a clever way to rebind MMB to bookmarking new pages that I haven't even visited yet. I don't want my bookmarks cluttered with potentially useless tangent topics - I already have too many (thousands? tens of thousands?) I have 32GB of RAM. I can spare a few gigs for Chrome.