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Waterfox – A fast browser

waterfoxproject.org

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Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#61

Post by chei0aiV »

rockdoe wrote: post #16
ntw1103 wrote: post #15

I prefer http://palemoon.org They offer a 64bit version.

PaleMoon is even more outdated, it's an old Firefox ESR.

Rumor: "Pale Moon is just a rebranded rebuild of an old Firefox version"

FALSE

Pale Moon has been on a divergent path with its own code for a long time already. It was a rebuild in 2009, yes. It was a rebuild with minor changes in the Firefox 4.0 era, yes. But we've come a very long way since then with an increasing amount of different code being carried over each time it was re-based on later Firefox code. It's a true fork now and has been employing rapid development (as opposed to rapid release) to solidify this independent direction with its own focus and attempt at keeping the browser sane, lean, and offering users choice and stability.

At the same time, Pale Moon's focus on security and evolving networking standards has added features and kept pace with those developments in other browsers, by e.g. adding TLS 1.1/1.2 support a while back, by offering OCSP-stapling, by keeping a close eye on encryption and the browser's security by continuing to port or re-implement security fixes that apply to Pale Moon as a browser. It is neither old nor outdated, it is not a "rebuild" and it does not use obsolete technologies or have security holes.

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7818&p=50895

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#62

Post by lobster_johnson »

blinkingled wrote: post #38

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 benchma…

For a number of years it also produced code that ran much slower on AMD processors. The Intel compiler is used to compile a bunch of benchmark tools that tech sites use in their reviews, so this (in conjunction with certain other brutal strategies on Intel's part to pressure and bribe vendors into selling Intel only) basically contributed to the destruction of AMD's market share in the early-to-mid 2000s.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#63

Post by chei0aiV »

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.

It's not outdated.

Rumor: "Pale Moon is just a rebranded rebuild of an old Firefox version"

FALSE

Pale Moon has been on a divergent path with its own code for a long time already. It was a rebuild in 2009, yes. It was a rebuild with minor changes in the Firefox 4.0 era, yes. But we've come a very long way since then with an increasing amount of different code being carried over each time it was re-based on later Firefox code. It's a true fork now and has been employing rapid development (as opposed to rapid release) to solidify this independent direction with its own focus and attempt at keeping the browser sane, lean, and offering users choice and stability.

At the same time, Pale Moon's focus on security and evolving networking standards has added features and kept pace with those developments in other browsers, by e.g. adding TLS 1.1/1.2 support a while back, by offering OCSP-stapling, by keeping a close eye on encryption and the browser's security by continuing to port or re-implement security fixes that apply to Pale Moon as a browser. It is neither old nor outdated, it is not a "rebuild" and it does not use obsolete technologies or have security holes.

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7818&p=50895

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#64

Post by MrAlex94 »

autonomy77 wrote: post #45

I'm always interested by alternative 'Foxes, but I'm intrigued as to why the installer is about 25MB bigger than Firefox. What's in there that makes it a 50% bigger installer?

ICL creates huge libraries, especially with all the flags I use (-O3 -no-prec-div -Qparallel -arch:SSE3 -QaxCORE-AVX2,CORE-AVX-I,AVX,SSE4.2,SSE4.1,SSSE3). XUL generated like this is about 150MB (and for comparison offical Firefox XUL DLL is about 37MB)!

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#65

Post by RussianCow »

rockdoe wrote: post #48
gsnedders wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

>Such as? Looks for .js and .jsm in the source tree. Bookmarks, Tab management, all UX, PDF viewer, Search, Prefs, Sync, parts of SafeBrowsing, WebRTC, Update Handling, Login and Form manager, Devtools, Reader Mode, and uh I think I've proven my point.

But none of those things will ever really bottleneck the browser except for maybe the PDF viewer. The performance of bookmarks, tab management, search, and basically all your other examples doesn't matter. The parts of the browser that benefit from speed are written in C++.

Not that I'm convinced simply compiling with ICC will actually have a noticeable impact on the day-to-day performance of the browser, but it might speed up layout and other specific CPU-bound tasks. I'd love to see some benchmarks, but I think it's silly to shrug it off by saying that it won't matter because the browser UI is written in JavaScript.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#66

Post by chei0aiV »

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/

http://linux.palemoon.org/

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#68

Post by gsnedders »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #62
blinkingled wrote: post #38

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 benchma…

For a number of years it also produced code that ran much slower on AMD processors. The Intel compiler is used to compile a bunch of benchmark tools that tech sites use in their reviews, so this (in conjunction with certain other brutal strategies on Intel's part to pressure and bribe vendors into selling Intel only) basically contributed to the destruction of AMD's market share in the early-to-mid 2000s.

It still does, as far as I'm aware. The current optimisation notice is " rel="nofollow">https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/optimization-notic....

For those who don't want to click a link or are using screen-readers (because yay textual content as an image!):

> Intel's compilers may or may not optimize to the same degree for non-Intel microprocessors for optimizations that are not unique to Intel microprocessors. These optimizations include SSE2, SSE3, and SSSE3 instruction sets and other optimizations. Intel does not guarantee the availability, functionality, or effectiveness of any optimization on microprocessors not manufactured by Intel. Microprocessor-dependent optimizations in this product are intended for use with Intel microprocessors. Certain optimizations not specific to Intel microarchitecture are reserved for Intel microprocessors. Please refer to the applicable product User and Reference Guides for more information regarding the specific instruction sets covered by this notice.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#69

Post by marssaxman »

rockdoe wrote: post #29
marssaxman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 up…

Ah, same as "LTS" then. Thanks.

Re: Waterfox – A fast browser

#70

Post by MrAlex94 »

jvoorhis wrote: post #6

> "Finally found an alternative to @firefox that supports Adobe Flash without all the errors - @Waterfoxproject works just wonderfully :)" ...no thanks, unless they want to share details of their sandboxing tech.

Yeah I think I'm going to remove it.. it was originally meant to be light-hearted but looking at it now it definitely looks arrogant
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