14 ms·

Yay, now firefox can waste just as much memory as Chrome. Guess 1GB for the whole browser wasn't enough; they had to go for ~100MB/tab. Got to keep up with Chr

Yay, now firefox can waste just as much memory as Chrome. Guess 1GB for the whole browser wasn't enough; they had to go for ~100MB/tab. Got to keep up with Chrome after all.</s> If I use chrome for normal browsing (I don't normally because its feature set is poor, customisability is a dirty words, and I don't like the privacy risk), it can rapidly slurp 4GB or more of memory (with perhaps two key addons, adblock and DoNotTrackMe). Even firefox at its worst rarely if ever goes over 1.5GB, even with very heavy customisation and plenty of privacy/adblocking/etc addons. >Performance would improve because the browser UI would not be affected by poor performance of content code (be it layout or JavaScript). What about by the overhead from task switching hundreds of processes and mapping all the memory when each one takes up 50MB or more?

ck2 12y ago
Except in Firefox, at least for now, you can turn it off and make it monolithic again if that is your desire. I've had too many stalled pages for my liking so I welcome this when it is finally stable and extensions catch up.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Great, now what happens when they do a google and stealth remove that feature? (cf: The option to have the tab close button on the right, the status bar, the option to disable javascript, the option to have tabs in a sane place instead of on top...) Somehow, I doubt disabling multiple processes will be within the scope of an addon.
  - ck2 12y ago
    You can switch to Palemoon, Waterfox, Cyberfox, or one of the other forks that still run all the extensions? Firefox is not for lack of options, I'd say it is the *nix of the browser world. ps. You can also solve all of the tab issues with TabMixPlus and the UI issues with ClassicThemeRestorer - my Firefox 33 looks virtually identical to Firefox 4
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      Yeah, I've already done that - Status4Evar, Classic Theme Restorer, Old Location Bar, Switch To Tab No More, Show Go!, etc. My point is I shouldn't need that many addons to get a normal browser out of the mess firefox is becoming.
blinkingled 12y ago
This makes sandboxing possible which is a huge security win and the reason I still use Chrome where I can. RAM is cheap and browsers 64-bit so a bunch of extra memory in the name of security is not a big deal really. At least that's how I see it.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  >RAM is cheap Great, buy me another 32GB then please</s>. People shouldn't have to have high end gaming rigs to run a sodding browser. Mozilla (and google) are deluding themselves in thinking that their particular software is the be all and end all of a computer, and should be introduced to this strange concept called 'multitasking'. Firefox: 1.5GB Thunderbird: ~1GB OS: 1GB (conservative estimate) Various background programs: 1GB Suddenly doesn't look so cheap.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    OS: 1GB (conservative estimate) What are you using, Windows? I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 and the "OS" (X, window manager, daemons) is certainly not even close to 1GB, more like ~100MB.
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      Windows,and multiple Linux distros. Windows needs >1GB to run smoothly, while most Linux gets by in <1GB, it still feels very sluggish if I can't actually get 1GB when it needs it.
  - phkahler 12y ago
    I run firefox on Fedora 20, on a dual core AMD64 from 2005. It worked ok with 1GB, but as indicated things went south when it ran out of memory. I upgraded to 2GB and useage rarely goes above 1, so everything is fine now. That said, I'm not one of the people who use tabs instead of bookmarks. My expectations are probably lower than many too, but I am all too familiar with content in one tab destroying performance of the browser as a whole. So I'm all for this e10s thing.
  - 12y ago
taeric 12y ago
I think performance is often overblown on this as well. However, I don't think the overhead from task switching will really enter into it. If you have hundreds of tabs open that are trying to do work, that is work that was having to be done regardless. Meaning they would already be thrashing. Now, that will just be in a different way. Otherwise, if you are idling most of those processes, they should be the same as before. Just idle. Memory, on the other hand, I think will go up. Not sure by how much, though. I would think the rendered content would be the largest consumer of memory. And again, if you have hundreds of tabs open with high memory usage per tab, that should already be a problem. Right?
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Firefox: Averages ~5MB/tab (200 tabs, 1GB memory) Chrome: Anywhere from 50MB/tab up. A much better performance fix would be to suspend javascript execution on tabs that aren't visible.
  - hippich 12y ago
    I am not questioning reasons to have 200 open tabs, but wonder how do you manage it? I would imagine tab bar become very long?
    - adamtulinius 12y ago
      It helps that Firefox offers to change to an existing tab when you try to open the same page in a new tab. Another suggestion is to not manage it. I create tabs all the time, and often have many similar tabs. There's no need to manage it, only to clean up once in a while. (I like many tabs. A few weeks ago I performed some tab-cleaning -- 550 tabs were a bit much, as it made Firefox start slower.) Personally i just use it for things I would like to read at some point, instead of filling up my bookmarks with 50-10 entries every day.
      - blueskin_ 12y ago
        >It helps that Firefox offers to change to an existing tab when you try to open the same page in a new tab. Disabled that as soon as it was dumped on me. There are an almost infinite list of reasons to have multiple copies of tabs. Honestly, I cleanup every week or two, and it works fine. Windows are by category of different things I do, and I tend to leave frequent sites open all the time.
XzetaU8 12y ago
http://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/multiprocess-firefox/ http://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/multiprocess-f... "The total memory usage for multiprocess Firefox is only 10MB greater than single-process Firefox. We should be able to shrink this difference with some effort" As for the excess memory usage on chrome, "OneTab" might help https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo... (It's available on Firefox) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/onetab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/onetab/
aen0 12y ago
Be aware that Adblock Plus for Chrome increases significantly RAM usage for each open tab. uBlock author has extensive benchmarks about this issue. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-...
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Whichever one it is for chrome I have, it isn't ABP, it's a generic named Adblock. I don't use ABP due to the developer accepting money to whitelist google adverts.
  - abrowne 12y ago
    If you don't like that behavior, you probably wouldn't like Ablock's either: https://palant.de/2014/07/29/which-is-better-adblock-or-adblock-plus https://palant.de/2014/07/29/which-is-better-adblock-or-adbl... (Admittedly the author is biased towards ABP. My biases: former Adblock user, former ABP user, current Adblock Edge and µblock user.)
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      Thanks. Probably going to evaluate http://alternativeto.net/software/ublock/ http://alternativeto.net/software/ublock/ instead next time I have to use chrome.
  - gorhill 12y ago
    AdBlock is significantly worst than ABP memory usage-wise (edit: on Chromium, I didn't benchmark elsewhere). I believe this is also the case CPU-wise from observing Task Manager during benchmarks.
- sp332 12y ago
  Would it have the same problem with a multiprocess Firefox?
  - 12y ago
Igglyboo 12y ago
I have 16GB of ram in my machine, I'd rather use 4 of that for a responsive browser than 1.5 for something that is constantly locking up with more than a few tabs. FF might be better for older, low end machines but now a days low end machines are shipping with 4GB and modest machines will have 8.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  In my main rig, I have 8 currently, and would need to replace it all to upgrade (4x 2GB DIMMs) and presently can't afford to build a new one for at least a few months. I do not want a browser to waste 4GB where it would be 1 with all the bloat stripped out.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    Whilst you're browsing what are you using the other 7GB for?
gorhill 12y ago
In the big picture, sandboxing may actually help memory consumption in the long run. When a tab close, a process close, and the OS ensure that all memory for that process is freed as well.

ck2 12y ago

Except in Firefox, at least for now, you can turn it off and make it monolithic again if that is your desire. I've had too many stalled pages for my liking so I welcome this when it is finally stable and extensions catch up.

blueskin_ 12y ago
Great, now what happens when they do a google and stealth remove that feature? (cf: The option to have the tab close button on the right, the status bar, the option to disable javascript, the option to have tabs in a sane place instead of on top...) Somehow, I doubt disabling multiple processes will be within the scope of an addon.
- ck2 12y ago
  You can switch to Palemoon, Waterfox, Cyberfox, or one of the other forks that still run all the extensions? Firefox is not for lack of options, I'd say it is the *nix of the browser world. ps. You can also solve all of the tab issues with TabMixPlus and the UI issues with ClassicThemeRestorer - my Firefox 33 looks virtually identical to Firefox 4
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Yeah, I've already done that - Status4Evar, Classic Theme Restorer, Old Location Bar, Switch To Tab No More, Show Go!, etc. My point is I shouldn't need that many addons to get a normal browser out of the mess firefox is becoming.

blinkingled 12y ago

This makes sandboxing possible which is a huge security win and the reason I still use Chrome where I can. RAM is cheap and browsers 64-bit so a bunch of extra memory in the name of security is not a big deal really. At least that's how I see it.

blueskin_ 12y ago
>RAM is cheap Great, buy me another 32GB then please</s>. People shouldn't have to have high end gaming rigs to run a sodding browser. Mozilla (and google) are deluding themselves in thinking that their particular software is the be all and end all of a computer, and should be introduced to this strange concept called 'multitasking'. Firefox: 1.5GB Thunderbird: ~1GB OS: 1GB (conservative estimate) Various background programs: 1GB Suddenly doesn't look so cheap.
- icebraining 12y ago
  OS: 1GB (conservative estimate) What are you using, Windows? I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 and the "OS" (X, window manager, daemons) is certainly not even close to 1GB, more like ~100MB.
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Windows,and multiple Linux distros. Windows needs >1GB to run smoothly, while most Linux gets by in <1GB, it still feels very sluggish if I can't actually get 1GB when it needs it.
- phkahler 12y ago
  I run firefox on Fedora 20, on a dual core AMD64 from 2005. It worked ok with 1GB, but as indicated things went south when it ran out of memory. I upgraded to 2GB and useage rarely goes above 1, so everything is fine now. That said, I'm not one of the people who use tabs instead of bookmarks. My expectations are probably lower than many too, but I am all too familiar with content in one tab destroying performance of the browser as a whole. So I'm all for this e10s thing.
- 12y ago

taeric 12y ago

I think performance is often overblown on this as well. However, I don't think the overhead from task switching will really enter into it. If you have hundreds of tabs open that are trying to do work, that is work that was having to be done regardless. Meaning they would already be thrashing. Now, that will just be in a different way. Otherwise, if you are idling most of those processes, they should be the same as before. Just idle. Memory, on the other hand, I think will go up. Not sure by how much, though. I would think the rendered content would be the largest consumer of memory. And again, if you have hundreds of tabs open with high memory usage per tab, that should already be a problem. Right?

blueskin_ 12y ago
Firefox: Averages ~5MB/tab (200 tabs, 1GB memory) Chrome: Anywhere from 50MB/tab up. A much better performance fix would be to suspend javascript execution on tabs that aren't visible.
- hippich 12y ago
  I am not questioning reasons to have 200 open tabs, but wonder how do you manage it? I would imagine tab bar become very long?
  - adamtulinius 12y ago
    It helps that Firefox offers to change to an existing tab when you try to open the same page in a new tab. Another suggestion is to not manage it. I create tabs all the time, and often have many similar tabs. There's no need to manage it, only to clean up once in a while. (I like many tabs. A few weeks ago I performed some tab-cleaning -- 550 tabs were a bit much, as it made Firefox start slower.) Personally i just use it for things I would like to read at some point, instead of filling up my bookmarks with 50-10 entries every day.
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      >It helps that Firefox offers to change to an existing tab when you try to open the same page in a new tab. Disabled that as soon as it was dumped on me. There are an almost infinite list of reasons to have multiple copies of tabs. Honestly, I cleanup every week or two, and it works fine. Windows are by category of different things I do, and I tend to leave frequent sites open all the time.

XzetaU8 12y ago

http://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/multiprocess-firefox/ http://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/multiprocess-f... "The total memory usage for multiprocess Firefox is only 10MB greater than single-process Firefox. We should be able to shrink this difference with some effort" As for the excess memory usage on chrome, "OneTab" might help https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo... (It's available on Firefox) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/onetab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/onetab/

aen0 12y ago

Be aware that Adblock Plus for Chrome increases significantly RAM usage for each open tab. uBlock author has extensive benchmarks about this issue. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-...

blueskin_ 12y ago
Whichever one it is for chrome I have, it isn't ABP, it's a generic named Adblock. I don't use ABP due to the developer accepting money to whitelist google adverts.
- abrowne 12y ago
  If you don't like that behavior, you probably wouldn't like Ablock's either: https://palant.de/2014/07/29/which-is-better-adblock-or-adblock-plus https://palant.de/2014/07/29/which-is-better-adblock-or-adbl... (Admittedly the author is biased towards ABP. My biases: former Adblock user, former ABP user, current Adblock Edge and µblock user.)
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Thanks. Probably going to evaluate http://alternativeto.net/software/ublock/ http://alternativeto.net/software/ublock/ instead next time I have to use chrome.
- gorhill 12y ago
  AdBlock is significantly worst than ABP memory usage-wise (edit: on Chromium, I didn't benchmark elsewhere). I believe this is also the case CPU-wise from observing Task Manager during benchmarks.
sp332 12y ago
Would it have the same problem with a multiprocess Firefox?
- 12y ago

Igglyboo 12y ago

I have 16GB of ram in my machine, I'd rather use 4 of that for a responsive browser than 1.5 for something that is constantly locking up with more than a few tabs. FF might be better for older, low end machines but now a days low end machines are shipping with 4GB and modest machines will have 8.

blueskin_ 12y ago
In my main rig, I have 8 currently, and would need to replace it all to upgrade (4x 2GB DIMMs) and presently can't afford to build a new one for at least a few months. I do not want a browser to waste 4GB where it would be 1 with all the bloat stripped out.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  Whilst you're browsing what are you using the other 7GB for?

gorhill 12y ago

In the big picture, sandboxing may actually help memory consumption in the long run. When a tab close, a process close, and the OS ensure that all memory for that process is freed as well.