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Personal experience: Battery drain was always my problem with Firefox on MacOs. Why when using Safari it is nice and full day surfing w/o recharge; but doing th

Personal experience: Battery drain was always my problem with Firefox on MacOs. Why when using Safari it is nice and full day surfing w/o recharge; but doing the same with Firefox would discharge laptops battery much faster.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
Battery life seems like an afterthought for anything other than Safari (and back when it was Trident-based, MS Edge on Windows), which is kinda weird when one considers how laptops have come to dominate computing.
- plonk 4y ago
  Was Edge based on Trident? I thought they re-wrote an engine from scratch.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    Edge technically used EdgeHTML, but EdgeHTML was a fork of Trident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgeHTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgeHTML
  - cobalt 4y ago
    old edge was trident (which came from IE) new edge is based on chromium
    - jaxrtech 4y ago
      From my understanding, Chromium/WebKit/V8 and Firefox/Gecko/Spidermonkey are the last (major) contenders in the browser engine space. After Opera switched to WebKit in 2013. And Edge in 2020. I'm sure there are numerous lesser known ones...
      - KptMarchewa 4y ago
        Google forked from WebKit in 2013, at this point there might be huge differences between WebKit and blink. Someone more knowledgeable might add something to this.
      - dmitriid 4y ago
        Chrome (Blink) and WebKit are two different engines. It's Chrome dominating, Webkit a somewhat distant second [1], and Firefox a third, quickly disappearing into oblivion [2]. [1] There's a huge number of weird versions of WebKit running on TVs and such. [2] It's barely around 200M users, but it's bleeding users slowly and surely https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity and https://news.itsfoss.com/firefox-decline/ https://news.itsfoss.com/firefox-decline/
      - ho_schi 4y ago
        * Blink (Google) * WebKit2 (Apple and some folks, mainly WebKit2Gtk) * Gecko (Mozilla) Microsofts Trident is dead, they now use Blink. Operas Presto is dead, they now use Blink. KDEs KHTML (the predecessor of WebKit1) is dead. Google is dominating, pushing through Android, all Googles-Services and Microsoft Edge. A reason to worry because Google controls the Web and the Engine. Furthermore implementing an entire new engine seems an enormous effort. For instance Microsoft only allows usage of Microsoft Teams Web with a webbrowser based upon Blink. So were back in 2002? WebKit features also WebKit2Gtk (Epiphany) and Qt5-webkit (Otter) with native integration. Both use the native toolkits, which is an advantage! Interaction with the open-source community around WebKit seems rather good and the engine is integrated by others. Gecko seems not to be integrated by others but by forks only? You remember when Chrome was considered slick and fast? Originally Chrome used the native toolkit on every platform. Now Chrome ships an own toolkit, similar to Firefox. And? Maybe there is a new engine on the block: https://github.com/SerenityOS/ladybird https://github.com/SerenityOS/ladybird PS: I think the Epiphany guys doing a nice job but need more developers. The upcoming release will support Web-Extensions.
        thrusong 4y ago
        I use teams.microsoft.com in Firefox all work week without issue.
- bjeanes 4y ago
  I wish Mozilla had been able to keep pushing harder with their servo project. IIRC, one of the earliest upsides I remember hearing about to justify creating Rust (in order to build servo) was that the increased safety with regards to concurrency could allow a web renderer to parallelise computation across _underclocked_ cores, thereby setting a new benchmark for battery consumption. Granted, that was more about mobile devices but it still stuck with me. Effortless and safe concurrency would tip the scales to having hundreds of low power cores instead of a dozen high powered cores. I want that world, esp for mobile devices and laptops.
- dblohm7 4y ago
  When I worked on Firefox for Android, we were constantly fighting for the broader Firefox org to take mobile more seriously —- if Gecko excelled on mobile with respect to power consumption, then a lot of that would spill over to desktop platforms “for free.” Unfortunately nothing had improved by the time I left in 2021.
Humphrey 4y ago
This. Firefox drains battery, but still less than Docker & a TypeScript dev environment. Using those three together means my M1 Air falls a LONG WAY SHORT of the 18hr battery life I was promised
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Sounds like a problem with the os. Ever consider switching?
  - orhmeh09 4y ago
    Is there an OS and hardware combination you suggest for 18 hours of Firefox, TypeScript, and Docker?
    - maccam94 4y ago
      I had to do a double take when I read the parent, but I suspect they were referring to running Linux to avoid the Virtual Machine overhead on MacOS. However I doubt the Linux driver support for the M1/M2 has anywhere near the level of power optimization as the MacOS drivers.
    - kuschku 4y ago
      Linux, ThinkPad T470 with the big 95Wh battery. Bonus: Charging your mobile phone takes less percents off your battery life than with a macbook.
  - pxc 4y ago
    There isn't any other OS that you'd want to run as a daily driver on that hardware platform atm. Linux support is still immature/incomplete, and IIRC Windows support is completely absent. (Some of the people working on the Linuc port are also porting to some of the free Unices, too, which I assume are in a similarly incomplete state.)
  - girvo 4y ago
    If you think that persons battery life woes are bad, you should see how horrible my Windows/Ubuntu Intel work laptop is when running the same software.
hvis 4y ago
To quote the article: Did they work? Yes! Performance on lightly loaded systems was about the same as OSSpinLock but on loaded ones, they provided massively better responsiveness. They also did something extremely useful for laptop users: they cut down power consumption as a lot less cycles were wasted having the CPUs spinning on locks that couldn’t be acquired. To no one's surprise, one has to use Apple's undocumented APIs to be able to match Safari's power use.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  This conclusion does not have sufficient supporting evidence in the blog post.
  - jabedude 4y ago
    Odd that you’re being downvoted. If the article had shown that Safari or the system allocator used this locking strategy then that would be evidence, otherwise the person you responded to is just making things up
    - azinman2 4y ago
      Memory allocation is one of many differences between the browsers.
- jhatax 4y ago
  Or implement their own locks and support structures to eke out performance [1]. Hat tip to @pizlonator. 1. https://webkit.org/blog/6161/locking-in-webkit/ https://webkit.org/blog/6161/locking-in-webkit/

kitsunesoba 4y ago

Battery life seems like an afterthought for anything other than Safari (and back when it was Trident-based, MS Edge on Windows), which is kinda weird when one considers how laptops have come to dominate computing.

plonk 4y ago
Was Edge based on Trident? I thought they re-wrote an engine from scratch.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Edge technically used EdgeHTML, but EdgeHTML was a fork of Trident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgeHTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgeHTML
- cobalt 4y ago
  old edge was trident (which came from IE) new edge is based on chromium
  - jaxrtech 4y ago
    From my understanding, Chromium/WebKit/V8 and Firefox/Gecko/Spidermonkey are the last (major) contenders in the browser engine space. After Opera switched to WebKit in 2013. And Edge in 2020. I'm sure there are numerous lesser known ones...
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      Google forked from WebKit in 2013, at this point there might be huge differences between WebKit and blink. Someone more knowledgeable might add something to this.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      Chrome (Blink) and WebKit are two different engines. It's Chrome dominating, Webkit a somewhat distant second [1], and Firefox a third, quickly disappearing into oblivion [2]. [1] There's a huge number of weird versions of WebKit running on TVs and such. [2] It's barely around 200M users, but it's bleeding users slowly and surely https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity and https://news.itsfoss.com/firefox-decline/ https://news.itsfoss.com/firefox-decline/
    - ho_schi 4y ago
      * Blink (Google) * WebKit2 (Apple and some folks, mainly WebKit2Gtk) * Gecko (Mozilla) Microsofts Trident is dead, they now use Blink. Operas Presto is dead, they now use Blink. KDEs KHTML (the predecessor of WebKit1) is dead. Google is dominating, pushing through Android, all Googles-Services and Microsoft Edge. A reason to worry because Google controls the Web and the Engine. Furthermore implementing an entire new engine seems an enormous effort. For instance Microsoft only allows usage of Microsoft Teams Web with a webbrowser based upon Blink. So were back in 2002? WebKit features also WebKit2Gtk (Epiphany) and Qt5-webkit (Otter) with native integration. Both use the native toolkits, which is an advantage! Interaction with the open-source community around WebKit seems rather good and the engine is integrated by others. Gecko seems not to be integrated by others but by forks only? You remember when Chrome was considered slick and fast? Originally Chrome used the native toolkit on every platform. Now Chrome ships an own toolkit, similar to Firefox. And? Maybe there is a new engine on the block: https://github.com/SerenityOS/ladybird https://github.com/SerenityOS/ladybird PS: I think the Epiphany guys doing a nice job but need more developers. The upcoming release will support Web-Extensions.
      - thrusong 4y ago
        I use teams.microsoft.com in Firefox all work week without issue.
bjeanes 4y ago
I wish Mozilla had been able to keep pushing harder with their servo project. IIRC, one of the earliest upsides I remember hearing about to justify creating Rust (in order to build servo) was that the increased safety with regards to concurrency could allow a web renderer to parallelise computation across _underclocked_ cores, thereby setting a new benchmark for battery consumption. Granted, that was more about mobile devices but it still stuck with me. Effortless and safe concurrency would tip the scales to having hundreds of low power cores instead of a dozen high powered cores. I want that world, esp for mobile devices and laptops.
dblohm7 4y ago
When I worked on Firefox for Android, we were constantly fighting for the broader Firefox org to take mobile more seriously —- if Gecko excelled on mobile with respect to power consumption, then a lot of that would spill over to desktop platforms “for free.” Unfortunately nothing had improved by the time I left in 2021.

Humphrey 4y ago

This. Firefox drains battery, but still less than Docker & a TypeScript dev environment. Using those three together means my M1 Air falls a LONG WAY SHORT of the 18hr battery life I was promised

ipaddr 4y ago
Sounds like a problem with the os. Ever consider switching?
- orhmeh09 4y ago
  Is there an OS and hardware combination you suggest for 18 hours of Firefox, TypeScript, and Docker?
  - maccam94 4y ago
    I had to do a double take when I read the parent, but I suspect they were referring to running Linux to avoid the Virtual Machine overhead on MacOS. However I doubt the Linux driver support for the M1/M2 has anywhere near the level of power optimization as the MacOS drivers.
  - kuschku 4y ago
    Linux, ThinkPad T470 with the big 95Wh battery. Bonus: Charging your mobile phone takes less percents off your battery life than with a macbook.
- pxc 4y ago
  There isn't any other OS that you'd want to run as a daily driver on that hardware platform atm. Linux support is still immature/incomplete, and IIRC Windows support is completely absent. (Some of the people working on the Linuc port are also porting to some of the free Unices, too, which I assume are in a similarly incomplete state.)
- girvo 4y ago
  If you think that persons battery life woes are bad, you should see how horrible my Windows/Ubuntu Intel work laptop is when running the same software.

hvis 4y ago

To quote the article: Did they work? Yes! Performance on lightly loaded systems was about the same as OSSpinLock but on loaded ones, they provided massively better responsiveness. They also did something extremely useful for laptop users: they cut down power consumption as a lot less cycles were wasted having the CPUs spinning on locks that couldn’t be acquired. To no one's surprise, one has to use Apple's undocumented APIs to be able to match Safari's power use.

saagarjha 4y ago
This conclusion does not have sufficient supporting evidence in the blog post.
- jabedude 4y ago
  Odd that you’re being downvoted. If the article had shown that Safari or the system allocator used this locking strategy then that would be evidence, otherwise the person you responded to is just making things up
  - azinman2 4y ago
    Memory allocation is one of many differences between the browsers.
jhatax 4y ago
Or implement their own locks and support structures to eke out performance [1]. Hat tip to @pizlonator. 1. https://webkit.org/blog/6161/locking-in-webkit/ https://webkit.org/blog/6161/locking-in-webkit/