21 ms·

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

by db48x 2y ago

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.
      - j_maffe 2y ago
        No, I'm saying it's working for >99% of the users.
  - capitainenemo 2y ago
    (oh, and I suspect about:memory might fix the demanding sites that OOM, but restarting is easy enough too)
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Memory is there to be used by all my applications, not to be hogged by one application when it could get by just fine with less.
- jay_kyburz 2y ago
  Keep in mind that Mozilla is heavily focused on Windows. It's very fast and responsive on Windows, but I fund it unusable on Mac and Linux.
- seba_dos1 2y ago
  In my experience, Chromium can feel somewhat faster when you keep a low number of open tabs. It doesn't deal with many tabs as well as Firefox though. That said, these days I only use Chromium occasionally, so this could have changed over the least few years.
- bossyTeacher 2y ago
  I use both and I think they are similar in speed.
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.

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

by 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.
    - j_maffe 2y ago
      No, I'm saying it's working for >99% of the users.
- capitainenemo 2y ago
  (oh, and I suspect about:memory might fix the demanding sites that OOM, but restarting is easy enough too)
bigstrat2003 2y ago
Memory is there to be used by all my applications, not to be hogged by one application when it could get by just fine with less.
jay_kyburz 2y ago
Keep in mind that Mozilla is heavily focused on Windows. It's very fast and responsive on Windows, but I fund it unusable on Mac and Linux.
seba_dos1 2y ago
In my experience, Chromium can feel somewhat faster when you keep a low number of open tabs. It doesn't deal with many tabs as well as Firefox though. That said, these days I only use Chromium occasionally, so this could have changed over the least few years.
bossyTeacher 2y ago
I use both and I think they are similar in speed.

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.