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Waterfox – A fast browser

waterfoxproject.org

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Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#21

Post by DannyBee »

tombert wrote: post #13

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

Assuming you compare apples to apples (IE put them both in the same precision modes, tell them both to actually follow the standard[1], etc), it's not appreciably faster for anything except really specialized kernels.

[1] A lot of compilers take "liberties" with the standard by default in the name of performance.

See for example, IBM's qstrict and qstrict_induction.

The default at O2 and above is Qstrict and Qnostrict_induction (IE "change the semantics of my program").

So if you really want to compare performance numbers between compilers, you have to normalize them to something first, be it "go crazy and do what you want to my program" or "follow the standard"

People who compare compiler benchmarks rarely actually do this.

Note that the use cases of the compilers are very different, so it's probably reasonable for IBM/Intel/etc to have these as defaults and GCC/LLVM to have different defaults, but it doesn't change what you would want to compare if you want to compare generated code performance.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#23

Post by rockdoe »

gsnedders wrote: post #17
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 i…

>Almost all of the lines of code are C++

Significant parts of the functionality are written in JS.

>but how often is web performance bounded by UI performance?

It's often bounded by JS performance. JS performance depends on the JIT output, much less so the speed with which the JIT itself runs.

The rendering engine may be a factor, but there HW acceleration also factors in. It's far from being clear cut.

Media decoding already uses optimized assembler, nothing for the compiler to do there.

I'd suppose most of the gain would be in layout?

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

You can patch that out. I'd hope this Waterfox is doing that...

Even so, Mozilla provides a stub installer that downloads the right binary nowadays. It could check the chip vendor and get the appropriate binary.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#24

Post by kbenson »

jsizz wrote: post #19

"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 t…

> Mm-Hm. How's that working out?

Why so critical? He's making a bold claim, but you're not even responding to that. You're just attacking him because he's using a different compiler suite? If you know of problems with the Intel compiler suite, how about you let us know what they are instead of passively aggressively pointing to a single recent problem which from the bug report I'm not sure is the fault of Intel's compiler not being conformant or not functioning with a recent feature, or GCC accepting a non-conformant structure, and whether being cross-compiler portable in that way is even a goal of the Firefox team.

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

Would you like to guess how many clicks it takes to determine that for Firefox itself when you aren't currently running Linux? It used to be you could easily get to a directory listing of Firefox builds. Apparently it's harder to find now, and Firefox just starts an auto-download for your OS and architecture based on your user agent, and if you search for how to install on Linux, they make it clear that may not be the best way to install ("Use the method that works best for your distro", which may be through the distro package manager).

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#25

Post by atombender »

Before we give this the traditional Hacker News baptism by fire, keep in mind that this is apparently just one guy's project, and he's very junior:

  Waterfox was started back in March 2011 by Alex Kontos,
  a then 16 year old student. He had a fascination for
  the web and wanted to help expand on the ideals of what
  Mozilla had for a free and open web.
Be constructive, not snarky.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#26

Post by davidaa »

I haven't seen speed benchmarks or anything like that, but out of the six browsers on my computer (Chrome, Vivaldi, Waterfox, Firefox, Tor, IE) I'd be using Waterfox if I wasn't so Google-dependent. It's fast, with a good UI, and somewhat less clunky than Firefox. Plus it's less likely than Chrome to be spying on me.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#27

Post by spyder »

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.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/lightfirefox/

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#28

Post by marssaxman »

rockdoe wrote: post #12
sirn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does "ESR" mean?

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#29

Post by rockdoe »

marssaxman wrote: post #28
rockdoe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does "ESR" mean?

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

Extended Support Release

They're released on a much slower schedule (once a year) and get security fixes backported. They're intended for big organizations that don't want 6-weekly updates and are willing to live with outdated software.

But obviously its also handy if you want to fork and can't deal with re-basing every 6 weeks. Especially if you don't intend to update your fork a lot. You still get the free security fixes.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#30

Post by [deleted] »

marssaxman wrote: post #28
rockdoe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does "ESR" mean?

[deleted]
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