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I like Firefox but I'm also a heavy tab user. Usually around 70-100 open with ~10-13GB RAM. Chrome is just better in that aspect, much better performance. Altho

I like Firefox but I'm also a heavy tab user. Usually around 70-100 open with ~10-13GB RAM. Chrome is just better in that aspect, much better performance. Altho I use ungoogled-chromium not retail Chrome https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

foepys 7y ago
Counterpoint: A work colleague of mine has over 1000 tabs open at all times and his work machine only has 12GB of total RAM. Those 12 GB run Firefox, Visual Studio (!), and Windows and everything is working fine.
- prox 7y ago
  Is 1000 tabs open a replacement for bookmarks? I can’t imagine a workflow where having this many open would be advantageous.
  - rishav_sharan 7y ago
    sort of. I have 100-200 tabs in FF as well and i just use these open tabs like bookmarks.
  - jeltz 7y ago
    In my case yes. I do not like the UI for bookmarks and the UI for tabs is closer to what I would want for a bookmark UI.
sam_goody 7y ago
I am a heavy tab user as well (sometimes crawling above 500) and have found Firefox MUCH better than Chrome. Way, incomparably much better. Better memory and usability of computer (Chrome lugs and lags and my iMac and Macbook). Normal tabs instead of vanishingly small tabs. All my tabs on restart (Chrome has several times been unable to recover tabs on a restart over the past few years) and quick restart. And, though I don't use it, there is sidebar tabs for FF. I have 4GB ram on laptop. Curious why our experience differs. What platform are you on?
- zachwood 7y ago
  How do you use this workflow? Do you ever get around to those 500 tabs? Whenever I get to ~30 I feel like it's time to figure out what my focus actually is and I'm always so baffled by people that operate like you do.
  - snypox 7y ago
    Whenever I get to ~8 I start to feel nervous and most probably close every tab I have except for the current one. My boss also likes to have 20+ tabs, it’s just insane to me.
  - livueta 7y ago
    Not them, but with my usual work pattern it is really easy to end up with hundreds to thousands of tabs. New issue? New i3 workspace with a new ff window and a new tmux session, which each accumulate tabs related to that issue. Workspaces can live for weeks or months and while each instance of ff rarely grows beyond 50 tabs, scale that across 10 workspaces and you've got a lot of tabs. Yes, the 32gb ram in my work-workstation gets a workout.
KaiserPro 7y ago
I have >30 tabs open most of the time. It seems to perform without a slowdown. There was a time about 3 months ago when that wasnt the case, and it needed a restart every few days to keep performance.
mantap 7y ago
I use an extension that automatically closes tabs after 30 minutes of inactivity. So my tab counts never get super high. I think when people say they want a lot of tabs, they mean they want better bookmarking and history search. There's almost no reason to keep more than a few dozen tabs open in the background, wasting CPU and RAM.
- jeltz 7y ago
  Yes, what I want are two things: 1. Work spaces so that I can return to the same set of tabs with the same scroll positions as last time I worked on a certain project (e.g. one for work, one for leisure and one for my open source projects). 2. A better UI for bookmarks. The current bookmark UI is just too many clicks and too much manual management.
- timbit42 7y ago
  They are not wasting CPU and RAM until you click on the tab because Firefox doesn't load the tab at startup.
matsemann 7y ago
My experience and what's often echoed here on HN is that Fx is better with multiple tabs, as Chrome's one process per tab can hog too many resources. With Fx, that actually has a usable history search in theaaddress bar (Chrome wants you to google), I also really don't need to keep stuff open not to lose it.

foepys 7y ago

Counterpoint: A work colleague of mine has over 1000 tabs open at all times and his work machine only has 12GB of total RAM. Those 12 GB run Firefox, Visual Studio (!), and Windows and everything is working fine.

prox 7y ago
Is 1000 tabs open a replacement for bookmarks? I can’t imagine a workflow where having this many open would be advantageous.
- rishav_sharan 7y ago
  sort of. I have 100-200 tabs in FF as well and i just use these open tabs like bookmarks.
- jeltz 7y ago
  In my case yes. I do not like the UI for bookmarks and the UI for tabs is closer to what I would want for a bookmark UI.

sam_goody 7y ago

I am a heavy tab user as well (sometimes crawling above 500) and have found Firefox MUCH better than Chrome. Way, incomparably much better. Better memory and usability of computer (Chrome lugs and lags and my iMac and Macbook). Normal tabs instead of vanishingly small tabs. All my tabs on restart (Chrome has several times been unable to recover tabs on a restart over the past few years) and quick restart. And, though I don't use it, there is sidebar tabs for FF. I have 4GB ram on laptop. Curious why our experience differs. What platform are you on?

zachwood 7y ago
How do you use this workflow? Do you ever get around to those 500 tabs? Whenever I get to ~30 I feel like it's time to figure out what my focus actually is and I'm always so baffled by people that operate like you do.
- snypox 7y ago
  Whenever I get to ~8 I start to feel nervous and most probably close every tab I have except for the current one. My boss also likes to have 20+ tabs, it’s just insane to me.
- livueta 7y ago
  Not them, but with my usual work pattern it is really easy to end up with hundreds to thousands of tabs. New issue? New i3 workspace with a new ff window and a new tmux session, which each accumulate tabs related to that issue. Workspaces can live for weeks or months and while each instance of ff rarely grows beyond 50 tabs, scale that across 10 workspaces and you've got a lot of tabs. Yes, the 32gb ram in my work-workstation gets a workout.

KaiserPro 7y ago

I have >30 tabs open most of the time. It seems to perform without a slowdown. There was a time about 3 months ago when that wasnt the case, and it needed a restart every few days to keep performance.

mantap 7y ago

I use an extension that automatically closes tabs after 30 minutes of inactivity. So my tab counts never get super high. I think when people say they want a lot of tabs, they mean they want better bookmarking and history search. There's almost no reason to keep more than a few dozen tabs open in the background, wasting CPU and RAM.

jeltz 7y ago
Yes, what I want are two things: 1. Work spaces so that I can return to the same set of tabs with the same scroll positions as last time I worked on a certain project (e.g. one for work, one for leisure and one for my open source projects). 2. A better UI for bookmarks. The current bookmark UI is just too many clicks and too much manual management.
timbit42 7y ago
They are not wasting CPU and RAM until you click on the tab because Firefox doesn't load the tab at startup.

matsemann 7y ago

My experience and what's often echoed here on HN is that Fx is better with multiple tabs, as Chrome's one process per tab can hog too many resources. With Fx, that actually has a usable history search in theaaddress bar (Chrome wants you to google), I also really don't need to keep stuff open not to lose it.