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Chrome is improving on the resource usage front. It's far from perfect but it's getting better. As for privacy you could use the open source chromium, there's

by zacmps 9y ago

Chrome is improving on the resource usage front. It's far from perfect but it's getting better. As for privacy you could use the open source chromium, there's a fork somewhere which has all the Google removed.

wolco 9y ago
On windows firefox does everything in one thread while chrome opens many. Depending on the usage both can be fast or slow. Firefox handles multiple tabs better. Chrome handles multiple tabs of videos better
- krzyk 9y ago
  Chrome handles few tabs better, Firefox handles hundreds of tabs better.
  - imron 9y ago
    And that's one of the reasons why, with my hundreds of tabs open, I don't use Chrome.
  - dEnigma 9y ago
    This ultimately was what made me switch back to Firefox after I had used Chrome for a couple of years. I regularly have several hundred tabs opened in my browser, and Chrome was completely unusable in that situation, at least back then.
    - PatentTroll 9y ago
      Honest question: why do you use hundreds of tabs at the same time? Why not bookmarks and leave a couple of the most important ones open? I have never understood the use case for "hundreds" of browser tabs
      - 659087 9y ago
        If you want to be 10x, you need at least 10 stackoverflow tabs open to copy and paste from. I've always assumed people talking about having hundreds of tabs open just don't understand how to properly use a browser. My grandmother, for example, usually has 100 or so open by the time I get a call about her having computer problems. There's no logical reason I can come up with for doing this instead of using bookmarks.
        nirvdrum 9y ago
        I have a lot of tabs open. Not multiples of hundreds at the moment, but probably around 100. I use the same computer for work and personal, so I have different contexts I switch through at least once a day. Increasingly, things are becoming web apps, so I have a dozen just to do basic tasks these days: email, multiple chat clients, music player, code repository, issue tracker, Twitter, online office suite, etc. Sure, I could bookmark and close and re-open every time, but that's a waste of time when I want to quickly switch back to something. And not every app has sensible bookmarking semantics. Then throughout the course of the day I end up looking up API docs, get linked to blog posts, news articles, and YouTube videos, and read articles which themselves have relevant links to follow. Most of these I just open in a background tab to check out later in the day. These accumulate until I have time to go through and quickly review them. Those that I want to read and don't have the time currently go to Pocket. The rest get read or summarily closed out. I find bookmarks to be a terrible way to triage tabs. This workflow works for me (and evidently others). It's faster than bookmarking. It's less prone to failure, in my experience (I've suffered bookmark corruption more than once). And a modern computer ought to handle many background tabs just fine. Moreover, if browsers aren't expected to be used in this fashion, they really should set an upper-limit on the number of tabs that can be opened. Hopefully this gives you some perspective on alternative use cases. It sounds like your workflow works out well for you. I've tried it and couldn't get it to stick. If that means I don't know how to use a browser, so be it. At this point, there's enough of us (your grandmother included) that maybe the browser vendors should just find a way to cope with it better.
        sysadmin420 9y ago
    - mercer 9y ago
      For those who still use Chrome and load lots of tabs: OneTab and The Great Suspender have been life-savers for me (in the trivial scheme of things). So has cVim, but that has no relation to any of this.
    - TheKarateKid 9y ago
      Use The Great Suspender for Chrome. Still not as good as a native solution like Firefox built in, but it works wonders.
- sp332 9y ago
  This hasn't been true since last August when it hit release. Multi-process (which I'm assuming you meant instead of multi-thread) has been enabled by default since January, except in specific cases where it's likely to cause compatibility issues. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule
- zokula 9y ago
  Sigh ntsa. Firefox on my Windows 10 machine right now is using 81 threads. Firefox has used many threads for over 10 years at least.
petre 9y ago
One of the privacy enhanced Cromium clones is called Iridium Browser. https://iridiumbrowser.de/ https://iridiumbrowser.de/
- fasquoika 9y ago
  Gotta love the <section id="marquee" class="marquee"> on that page
- known 9y ago
  My primary browser :)
MBCook 9y ago
I find it shameful they ever let it become such an incredible energy hog in the first place. It's been well known for years among mini Mac people that you can get drastically better battery life by using Safari. I mean it wasn't like it was a 10 or 15% problem, it's orders of magnitude. It's nice there working on it, but why didn't they ever care before?
- themihai 9y ago
  Safari sucks under heavy usage
campuscodi 9y ago
"getting better" ?!?! Chrome using less resources than Firefox and IE was their sales pitch. Now they've become what they made fun of, while Firefox is smooth as a baby's butt.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  No firefox actually uses more and more memory after each.build. check the stats available, the trend is very clear even in Firefox.
- pythonaut_16 9y ago
  Chrome being faster and less bloated was their sales pitch. Keep in mind that Chrome came out as a counterpoint to IE and Firefox in what was then still a very desktop centered market. No one was talking about battery life back then. The solution to battery life on laptops was to create better power profiles, lower powered hardware, and shove in bigger batteries. Chrome is still a huge improvement compared to the browsers it was competing against. Chrome changed the market and now the other browsers are competing in the world Chrome created. So while Chrome might fall behind in some areas now, it's naive to say that it's become what they made fun of.
josefx 9y ago
The sad thing is you can't trust chromium since it takes effort to keep the Google out. We already had one black box DRM module sneak its way in via background download because the commits aren't checked for sneaky code.

by zacmps 9y ago

wolco 9y ago

On windows firefox does everything in one thread while chrome opens many. Depending on the usage both can be fast or slow. Firefox handles multiple tabs better. Chrome handles multiple tabs of videos better

krzyk 9y ago
Chrome handles few tabs better, Firefox handles hundreds of tabs better.
- imron 9y ago
  And that's one of the reasons why, with my hundreds of tabs open, I don't use Chrome.
- dEnigma 9y ago
  This ultimately was what made me switch back to Firefox after I had used Chrome for a couple of years. I regularly have several hundred tabs opened in my browser, and Chrome was completely unusable in that situation, at least back then.
  - PatentTroll 9y ago
    Honest question: why do you use hundreds of tabs at the same time? Why not bookmarks and leave a couple of the most important ones open? I have never understood the use case for "hundreds" of browser tabs
    - 659087 9y ago
      If you want to be 10x, you need at least 10 stackoverflow tabs open to copy and paste from. I've always assumed people talking about having hundreds of tabs open just don't understand how to properly use a browser. My grandmother, for example, usually has 100 or so open by the time I get a call about her having computer problems. There's no logical reason I can come up with for doing this instead of using bookmarks.
      - nirvdrum 9y ago
        I have a lot of tabs open. Not multiples of hundreds at the moment, but probably around 100. I use the same computer for work and personal, so I have different contexts I switch through at least once a day. Increasingly, things are becoming web apps, so I have a dozen just to do basic tasks these days: email, multiple chat clients, music player, code repository, issue tracker, Twitter, online office suite, etc. Sure, I could bookmark and close and re-open every time, but that's a waste of time when I want to quickly switch back to something. And not every app has sensible bookmarking semantics. Then throughout the course of the day I end up looking up API docs, get linked to blog posts, news articles, and YouTube videos, and read articles which themselves have relevant links to follow. Most of these I just open in a background tab to check out later in the day. These accumulate until I have time to go through and quickly review them. Those that I want to read and don't have the time currently go to Pocket. The rest get read or summarily closed out. I find bookmarks to be a terrible way to triage tabs. This workflow works for me (and evidently others). It's faster than bookmarking. It's less prone to failure, in my experience (I've suffered bookmark corruption more than once). And a modern computer ought to handle many background tabs just fine. Moreover, if browsers aren't expected to be used in this fashion, they really should set an upper-limit on the number of tabs that can be opened. Hopefully this gives you some perspective on alternative use cases. It sounds like your workflow works out well for you. I've tried it and couldn't get it to stick. If that means I don't know how to use a browser, so be it. At this point, there's enough of us (your grandmother included) that maybe the browser vendors should just find a way to cope with it better.
        sysadmin420 9y ago
  - mercer 9y ago
    For those who still use Chrome and load lots of tabs: OneTab and The Great Suspender have been life-savers for me (in the trivial scheme of things). So has cVim, but that has no relation to any of this.
  - TheKarateKid 9y ago
    Use The Great Suspender for Chrome. Still not as good as a native solution like Firefox built in, but it works wonders.
sp332 9y ago
This hasn't been true since last August when it hit release. Multi-process (which I'm assuming you meant instead of multi-thread) has been enabled by default since January, except in specific cases where it's likely to cause compatibility issues. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule
zokula 9y ago
Sigh ntsa. Firefox on my Windows 10 machine right now is using 81 threads. Firefox has used many threads for over 10 years at least.

petre 9y ago

One of the privacy enhanced Cromium clones is called Iridium Browser. https://iridiumbrowser.de/ https://iridiumbrowser.de/

fasquoika 9y ago
Gotta love the <section id="marquee" class="marquee"> on that page
known 9y ago
My primary browser :)

MBCook 9y ago

I find it shameful they ever let it become such an incredible energy hog in the first place. It's been well known for years among mini Mac people that you can get drastically better battery life by using Safari. I mean it wasn't like it was a 10 or 15% problem, it's orders of magnitude. It's nice there working on it, but why didn't they ever care before?

themihai 9y ago
Safari sucks under heavy usage

campuscodi 9y ago

"getting better" ?!?! Chrome using less resources than Firefox and IE was their sales pitch. Now they've become what they made fun of, while Firefox is smooth as a baby's butt.

ekianjo 9y ago
No firefox actually uses more and more memory after each.build. check the stats available, the trend is very clear even in Firefox.
pythonaut_16 9y ago
Chrome being faster and less bloated was their sales pitch. Keep in mind that Chrome came out as a counterpoint to IE and Firefox in what was then still a very desktop centered market. No one was talking about battery life back then. The solution to battery life on laptops was to create better power profiles, lower powered hardware, and shove in bigger batteries. Chrome is still a huge improvement compared to the browsers it was competing against. Chrome changed the market and now the other browsers are competing in the world Chrome created. So while Chrome might fall behind in some areas now, it's naive to say that it's become what they made fun of.

josefx 9y ago

The sad thing is you can't trust chromium since it takes effort to keep the Google out. We already had one black box DRM module sneak its way in via background download because the commits aren't checked for sneaky code.