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Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

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Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#91

Post by gnud »

akerro wrote: post #17
nl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is the same issue as I'm seeing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12437130 Amazon works for me though. Hmmm.

Very similar issue! My gf walked into it recently on ArchLinux, she had the same problem, for her e10 was enabled by default. When she visisted pons.com the whole browser was frozen for at least 10seconds, and if it didn't unfreeze itself after that time, it was just consuming memory and freezing whole OS until Linux killed Firefox process. My issue was solved by disabling e10s, for her it didn't help so she switched…

I wouldn't switch to Opera though. Use vivaldi instead.

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#92

Post by ktta »

FT_intern wrote: post #68
nl wrote: post #7

I switched to Firefox from Chrome about 12 months ago. It isn't as good as Chrome, but I was trying to reduce my Google dependencies. It has been mostly fine (except for an annoying OS-X multi-screen bug where it screws up the sizing). I was really looking forward to this feature to help close the gap on Chrome performance. Until August (I think Firefox 48.x), when it became unusable on any site with... something. I'…

Firefox has been painfully slower than Chrome by great magnitudes for me on a cheap Dell Windows laptop. I have almost identical extensions except for NoScript which might be the culprit, although it is also the main reason why I use FF over Chrome (and for enabled extensions on private mode, which defeats the purpose of private mode but it has been used more as a "don't save history" mode than private mode if you kn…

you can enable extensions for incognito in chrome too.

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#93

Post by AstralStorm »

the8472 wrote: post #43
schoen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone describe what the "architecture that doesn't eat all your RAM" here is? Is it possible that it will inadvertently provide weaker security protections between tabs than the more naive and RAM-intensive architecture?

a) your security should not rely on process isolation. the javascript engine etc. should be secure in the first place. if you can break out of the JS sandbox you can already attack addon scripts (think password managers) b) hosting some tabs in the same, sandboxed process is still stronger than hosting all of them in the parent process.

So you mean the interpreter should be mathematically proven like SEL4 and generated from the proof? Otherwise I have no idea what "secure in the first place" means.

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#94

Post by [deleted] »

alyandon wrote: post #70
marcosdumay wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funniest thing is that FF memory usage didn't go down that much. For me it is even higher.

I'm currently at a little over 1 GB with 8 tabs open. I really wish I had the option to trade off responsiveness for memory usage by being able to mark tabs as "no background activity allowed" so FF could serialize that content to disk when the tab isn't in focus.

[deleted]

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#95

Post by wingless »

schoen wrote: post #28
rsp1984 wrote: post #19

“We can learn from the competition,” said Dotzler. “The way they implemented multi-process is RAM-intensive, it can get out of hand. We are learning from them and building an architecture that doesn’t eat all your RAM.” That's the money quote here. I've been waiting for this for a long time actually. Every browser I've tried except Firefox just basically eats all my RAM and other app performance (e.g. compiling stuff…

Can someone describe what the "architecture that doesn't eat all your RAM" here is? Is it possible that it will inadvertently provide weaker security protections between tabs than the more naive and RAM-intensive architecture?

Yes, that is definitely possible. Chrome isolates data as much as possible between processes. A shared cache would be a big improvement in memory usage, but security is the biggest concern.

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#96

Post by mintplant »

faragon wrote: post #12

Why? Except because of memory allocation serialization impact, there is no reason for a multithreaded process being slower than multiprocess. And if that's the cause, it could be solved using multiple heaps.

One near-future goal is to move the compositor out from the UI process into its own separate one. Mozilla currently maintains a sizeable blacklist of {feature, GPU, OS, driver} for hardware acceleration because glitchy drivers cause whole-process crashes. When this occurs a separate compositor process can be restarted instantly without the user noticing.

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#97

Post by mintplant »

akerro wrote: post #4
Zekio wrote: post #3

The speed is great as long as youtube doesn't autoplay a new video which freezes the whole browser for me until it is done loading.

Whole browser freezez for me on any amazon page. Just when it starts rendering it freezes everything inside Firefox window for a few seconds. It's so annoying that I'm considering dropping Firefox after over a decade for Opera or Brave browser.

What addons do you have installed, and what OS are you using?

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#98

Post by sp332 »

mccr8 wrote: post #78
alyandon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently at a little over 1 GB with 8 tabs open. I really wish I had the option to trade off responsiveness for memory usage by being able to mark tabs as "no background activity allowed" so FF could serialize that content to disk when the tab isn't in focus.

The main reason tabs aren't saved to disk isn't a concern about responsiveness, it is a concern about data loss. You have to be very sure that you restore the state exactly. What if you spent a few hours filling out some government form online, then you went and took a break by watching a few YouTube videos? Memory usage might spike up, and the browser decides to unload the tab with the form. You'd be mad if form sta…

This is the default. If you set it to restore from your previous session on startup (or if it restores your session after a crash, or you choose History->Restore Previous Session), then it will only load tabs when you switch to them.

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#99

Post by mintplant »

the8472 wrote: post #58
shmerl wrote: post #27

A pity it's now practically useless, since many add-ons need modification to keep electrolysis enabled. In a year or so things will be better I hope.

Only if addon authors fix them. Afaik mozilla devs aren't planning on adding additional compatibility shims.

There's currently a compatibility shim in place, however using it can lead to poor performance.

Re: Multi-process Firefox brings 400-700% improvement in responsiveness

#100

Post by sp332 »

alyandon wrote: post #70
marcosdumay wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funniest thing is that FF memory usage didn't go down that much. For me it is even higher.

I'm currently at a little over 1 GB with 8 tabs open. I really wish I had the option to trade off responsiveness for memory usage by being able to mark tabs as "no background activity allowed" so FF could serialize that content to disk when the tab isn't in focus.

There are several addons that do this. I think Suspend Tab is the most popular. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/suspend-tab/
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