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Waterfox – A fast browser

waterfoxproject.org

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Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#31

Post by SixSigma »

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…

You should try using something non-mainstream

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

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#32

Post by Albright »

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/

> Biggest weak point is the lack of non-Windows build

Indeed. I'm a Mac user, so that makes it a non-starter. =/

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#33

Post by Nexxxeh »

davidaa wrote: post #26

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.

I switched to Opera to escape some of Google's tentacles, and that was a smooth transition. If you want a compromise, it's worth a shot.

I then went the whole hog to Firefox.

uBlock Origin, Self Destructing Cookies, and a VPN (PrivateInternetAccess) and I figure I'm getting as good as I can.

The lack of Flash is a non-issue nowadays for me, especially now the BBC are trialing HTML5.

(Although I generally use get_iplayer anyway.)

My primary issue with Firefox is it seems to be really poorly optimised for multicore CPUs. That's entirely anecdotal, but Opera runs just fine on a low clockspeed quadcore system whereas FF is unusable for me.

On my main machine, I get one core with moderate to high usage, and next to nothing on the other cores. Even if it's maxing out one core and lagging.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#34

Post by tospgogww »

atombender wrote: post #25

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.

Well, he's 20 now. And he's stuck with it for four years? That's pretty impressive.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#35

Post by desireco42 »

I installed it and it is first firefox on my machine in a long time. It seems fast ... I tried hogs like theverge and they seem to be a tiny bit faster then on chrome, my goto browser.

Thank you Alex, keep up the good work!

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#36

Post by gsnedders »

rockdoe wrote: post #23
gsnedders wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 decodi…

> Significant parts of the functionality are written in JS.

Such as?

> 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.

On what? Last I looked, even things like FB & Gmail are largely bound by performance of C++ code. Sure, there's a few hot JS functions high-up in the profiles (esp. in the large data structures they build up when initially loading), but by and large time is spent in C++ code, not JS.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#38

Post by blinkingled »

I paused when I read Intel compiler - that thing is a steaming pile of crap, or at least was for godawful number of releases for a long time and I don't expect it to ever work in the real world with a non-trivial amount of C++ code base. And then I read about a Mozilla header causing it to ICE!

Years ago, I was forced to make a company's product faster by "simply" recompiling it with ICC. It was losing in the benchmarks department and they were told by customer to go away until they could compete. Addicted to easy money they blamed the compiler (VC on Windows, gcc on Linux - how conveniently both were bad at optimizing.) I had a hell of a time getting the compiler to be consistent - it would, for example, ICE on code after re-ordering headers! Their support was atrocious too - but that wasn't entirely their fault, at that level of messiness only a complete rewrite of the compilers by non-PhDs might have saved it.

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