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Waterfox – A fast browser

waterfoxproject.org

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Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#11

Post by sirn »

Albright wrote: post #7

I saw the screenshot and was hoping for crapware-free Firefox, but upon downloading it, the damned Hello icon was there in the toolbar. Presumably later versions will add Pocket too, once they start working off a later upstream Firefox version. Meh.

Have you looked at Pale Moon[1]? They're known to be stripping out a lot of components from core browser (no Australis or even Tab Group, though the latter is available as an addon). Biggest weak point is the lack of non-Windows build, but non-official versions are usually available in the forum.

[1]: https://www.palemoon.org/

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#12

Post by rockdoe »

sirn wrote: post #11
Albright wrote: post #7

I saw the screenshot and was hoping for crapware-free Firefox, but upon downloading it, the damned Hello icon was there in the toolbar. Presumably later versions will add Pocket too, once they start working off a later upstream Firefox version. Meh.

Have you looked at Pale Moon[1]? They're known to be stripping out a lot of components from core browser (no Australis or even Tab Group, though the latter is available as an addon). Biggest weak point is the lack of non-Windows build, but non-official versions are usually available in the forum. [1]: https://www.palemoon.org/

They don't have Australis because they're based on an older Firefox ESR.

Stripping out features that are lazily-loaded JS files and in return being stuck with outdated stuff feels like a very weird tradeoff to me.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#17

Post by gsnedders »

rockdoe wrote: post #3

So this is basically older versions of Firefox compiled with the Intel C++ Compiler? Given that most of Firefox is in JS so the actual code that you end up running is the JIT output, I'd be very skeptical it's any faster. They certainly don't provide any objective data that it is. (And if it were, I'd assume Mozilla would just Intel C for the official builds, too?)

> Given that most of Firefox is in JS so the actual code that you end up running is the JIT output, I'd be very skeptical it's any faster.

Most of Firefox is JS? Almost all of the lines of code are C++, as far as I'm aware. Certainly the UI is drawn using XUL/XBL/web-stuff, but how often is web performance bounded by UI performance? It's bounded by the performance of the rendering engine, and that is C++.

> (And if it were, I'd assume Mozilla would just Intel C for the official builds, too?)

Seems unlikely, given the output of ICC is crippled for non-Intel x86 chips (which de-facto means AMD nowadays).

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#18

Post by cordite »

tombert wrote: post #13

Is the Intel Compiler even appreciably faster these days? I thought CLang and GCC had basically caught up...

It can be for compute bound processes compiled on and for the latest Xeon servers.

But, for end user apps with syscalls everywhere, I don't think the difference is notably different.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#19

Post by jsizz »

"What makes Waterfox so fast? It's built with Intel's C++ compiler. One of the most powerful compilers out there. This enables us to make the fastest possible web browser for all the code changes we make. This potent combination makes for an unparalleled browsing experience."

Mm-Hm. How's that working out?

https://www.waterfoxproject.org/blog/ "Just a quick heads up why there hasn’t been any news from me in regards to the latest Firefox release. Mozilla have a new tuple header that they’ve created and gets used fairly frequently and unfortunately, this causes an internal compiler error as can be seen here." [Written by Alex Kontos November 9th, 2015]

Always a pleasure to count the number of clicks needed before you can establish that the only platforms are Mac and Windows.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#20

Post by nkozyra »

I'm assuming the largely useless animation on the homepage is meant to make Chrome or Firefox start eating CPU and increase the perceived need for a new browser? I opened the tab, walked away for two minutes and came back to a hot and angry Chrome on my MBP.
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