4 ms·

It's been about 15 years since I've used Firefox as my main browser but I'm not sure what their value proposition is at this point. They're not faster than the

It's been about 15 years since I've used Firefox as my main browser but I'm not sure what their value proposition is at this point. They're not faster than the best browsers, and if they're not going to be better on things like privacy I don't see where they are going to position themselves. I mostly use brave now and some chrome when the occasional site doesn't work in brave.

thinkingtoilet 2y ago
The value is it has ublock origin.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  As compared to Brave, that isn't much value since the built-in ad blocking in Brave works great.
  - nickthegreek 2y ago
    Its other value is the engine not being owned by Google. Those were 2 strong value propositions for many people.
db48x 2y ago
Firefox is actually faster in practice than Chrome. It also uses less memory, often far less, to accomplish the same tasks.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  It absolutely is not faster. It just isn't. I have no doubt you can find some bollocks benchmark which proves your point but in real world usage it's just not. Memory is there to be used. Have at it.
  - capitainenemo 2y ago
    At least on our ram limited work VMs I literally can't launch Chrome without it crashing on launch. Firefox runs with no issues dozens of tabs, although occasionally I do get a tab OOM crash, which restarting Firefox resolves.. And yes, this is even if I completely quit Firefox to ensure Chrome gets as much RAM as possible. If I've just restarted the machine, sometimes I can launch Chrome. Chrome print preview never renders about 90% of the time when I am able to launch it. Firefox, no issues. On a large complex page, when Chrome does manage to launch and print preview does load, it takes tens of seconds to render. Firefox, no issues. I pretty much just use Chrome when I absolutely have to do a cross-browser test these days. BTW, a Chrome-tangential annoyance is that the code process in VSCode which is basically an embedded browser sometimes runs wild sucking up gigabytes of RAM on another VM dedicated pretty much just to VSCode (and a couple of other minor tools on a lightweight desktop). The irritating thing there is that due to, apparently, a limitation of the blink embed they are using, you can't restrict the RAM available to VSCode to any number (even 100% of system ram) so you basically have to wait for the oomkiller to kill it, or run a parallel monitor to kill it once it sucks up too much ram.
    - j_maffe 2y ago
      What you're describing is <0.1% of browser use case though.
      - capitainenemo 2y ago
        shrug This is a Windows VM with 8GB of RAM - if 8GB is no longer enough for Chrome, that's kinda sad. But does mean it is useless for at least the longer tail of lower end hardware.
      - johnea 2y ago
        This is not a good argument. Many different users have many different use cases. What you're basically saying is: It works OK for me, so the fact that it doesn't work for you is insignificant.
- Eikon 2y ago
  > Firefox is actually faster in practice than Chrome. If you are going to make such a wild claim, you should back this up with data, your “feelings” are not enough.
  - db48x 2y ago
    There are benchmarks on https://arewefastyet.com https://arewefastyet.com. Sadly they do not go as far back in time as they used to; the absolute speed increase that Firefox has had over its lifetime is quite impressive. They’ve made progress in virtually every release since version 4.0.
    - Eikon 2y ago
      Firefox is slower in pretty much every benchmark though?
- eitau_1 2y ago
  Chrome's UI is written in C++/native GUI toolkit. Firefox's UI is written in JavaScript/HTML (thinly wrapped in native toolkit).
  - Groxx 2y ago
    You say this as if the GUI is a major part of a browser's compute budget, and not wildly smaller than rendering the page you asked for, in >95% of the window's available space. I wouldn't care one bit if the GUI was rendered in immediate-mode software rendering, if it worked. I interact with websites far more.

thinkingtoilet 2y ago

The value is it has ublock origin.

bigstrat2003 2y ago
As compared to Brave, that isn't much value since the built-in ad blocking in Brave works great.
- nickthegreek 2y ago
  Its other value is the engine not being owned by Google. Those were 2 strong value propositions for many people.

db48x 2y ago

Firefox is actually faster in practice than Chrome. It also uses less memory, often far less, to accomplish the same tasks.

mvdtnz 2y ago
It absolutely is not faster. It just isn't. I have no doubt you can find some bollocks benchmark which proves your point but in real world usage it's just not. Memory is there to be used. Have at it.
- capitainenemo 2y ago
  At least on our ram limited work VMs I literally can't launch Chrome without it crashing on launch. Firefox runs with no issues dozens of tabs, although occasionally I do get a tab OOM crash, which restarting Firefox resolves.. And yes, this is even if I completely quit Firefox to ensure Chrome gets as much RAM as possible. If I've just restarted the machine, sometimes I can launch Chrome. Chrome print preview never renders about 90% of the time when I am able to launch it. Firefox, no issues. On a large complex page, when Chrome does manage to launch and print preview does load, it takes tens of seconds to render. Firefox, no issues. I pretty much just use Chrome when I absolutely have to do a cross-browser test these days. BTW, a Chrome-tangential annoyance is that the code process in VSCode which is basically an embedded browser sometimes runs wild sucking up gigabytes of RAM on another VM dedicated pretty much just to VSCode (and a couple of other minor tools on a lightweight desktop). The irritating thing there is that due to, apparently, a limitation of the blink embed they are using, you can't restrict the RAM available to VSCode to any number (even 100% of system ram) so you basically have to wait for the oomkiller to kill it, or run a parallel monitor to kill it once it sucks up too much ram.
  - j_maffe 2y ago
    What you're describing is <0.1% of browser use case though.
    - capitainenemo 2y ago
      shrug This is a Windows VM with 8GB of RAM - if 8GB is no longer enough for Chrome, that's kinda sad. But does mean it is useless for at least the longer tail of lower end hardware.
    - johnea 2y ago
      This is not a good argument. Many different users have many different use cases. What you're basically saying is: It works OK for me, so the fact that it doesn't work for you is insignificant.
Eikon 2y ago
> Firefox is actually faster in practice than Chrome. If you are going to make such a wild claim, you should back this up with data, your “feelings” are not enough.
- db48x 2y ago
  There are benchmarks on https://arewefastyet.com https://arewefastyet.com. Sadly they do not go as far back in time as they used to; the absolute speed increase that Firefox has had over its lifetime is quite impressive. They’ve made progress in virtually every release since version 4.0.
  - Eikon 2y ago
    Firefox is slower in pretty much every benchmark though?
eitau_1 2y ago
Chrome's UI is written in C++/native GUI toolkit. Firefox's UI is written in JavaScript/HTML (thinly wrapped in native toolkit).
- Groxx 2y ago
  You say this as if the GUI is a major part of a browser's compute budget, and not wildly smaller than rendering the page you asked for, in >95% of the window's available space. I wouldn't care one bit if the GUI was rendered in immediate-mode software rendering, if it worked. I interact with websites far more.