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Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox

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Re: Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox

#11

Post by taeric »

blueskin_ wrote: post #7

Yay, now firefox can waste just as much memory as Chrome. Guess 1GB for the whole browser wasn't enough; they had to go for ~100MB/tab. Got to keep up with Chrome after all. If I use chrome for normal browsing (I don't normally because its feature set is poor, customisability is a dirty words, and I don't like the privacy risk), it can rapidly slurp 4GB or more of memory (with perhaps two key addons, adblock and DoNo…

I think performance is often overblown on this as well. However, I don't think the overhead from task switching will really enter into it. If you have hundreds of tabs open that are trying to do work, that is work that was having to be done regardless. Meaning they would already be thrashing. Now, that will just be in a different way.

Otherwise, if you are idling most of those processes, they should be the same as before. Just idle.

Memory, on the other hand, I think will go up. Not sure by how much, though. I would think the rendered content would be the largest consumer of memory. And again, if you have hundreds of tabs open with high memory usage per tab, that should already be a problem. Right?

Re: Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox

#12

Post by blueskin_ »

taeric wrote: post #11
blueskin_ wrote: post #7

Yay, now firefox can waste just as much memory as Chrome. Guess 1GB for the whole browser wasn't enough; they had to go for ~100MB/tab. Got to keep up with Chrome after all. If I use chrome for normal browsing (I don't normally because its feature set is poor, customisability is a dirty words, and I don't like the privacy risk), it can rapidly slurp 4GB or more of memory (with perhaps two key addons, adblock and DoNo…

I think performance is often overblown on this as well. However, I don't think the overhead from task switching will really enter into it. If you have hundreds of tabs open that are trying to do work, that is work that was having to be done regardless. Meaning they would already be thrashing. Now, that will just be in a different way. Otherwise, if you are idling most of those processes, they should be the same as be…

Firefox: Averages ~5MB/tab (200 tabs, 1GB memory)

Chrome: Anywhere from 50MB/tab up.

A much better performance fix would be to suspend javascript execution on tabs that aren't visible.

Re: Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox

#13

Post by blueskin_ »

ck2 wrote: post #8
blueskin_ wrote: post #7

Yay, now firefox can waste just as much memory as Chrome. Guess 1GB for the whole browser wasn't enough; they had to go for ~100MB/tab. Got to keep up with Chrome after all. If I use chrome for normal browsing (I don't normally because its feature set is poor, customisability is a dirty words, and I don't like the privacy risk), it can rapidly slurp 4GB or more of memory (with perhaps two key addons, adblock and DoNo…

Except in Firefox, at least for now, you can turn it off and make it monolithic again if that is your desire. I've had too many stalled pages for my liking so I welcome this when it is finally stable and extensions catch up.

Great, now what happens when they do a google and stealth remove that feature?

(cf: The option to have the tab close button on the right, the status bar, the option to disable javascript, the option to have tabs in a sane place instead of on top...)

Somehow, I doubt disabling multiple processes will be within the scope of an addon.

Re: Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox

#14

Post by ck2 »

blueskin_ wrote: post #13
ck2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in Firefox, at least for now, you can turn it off and make it monolithic again if that is your desire. I've had too many stalled pages for my liking so I welcome this when it is finally stable and extensions catch up.

Great, now what happens when they do a google and stealth remove that feature? (cf: The option to have the tab close button on the right, the status bar, the option to disable javascript, the option to have tabs in a sane place instead of on top...) Somehow, I doubt disabling multiple processes will be within the scope of an addon.

You can switch to Palemoon, Waterfox, Cyberfox, or one of the other forks that still run all the extensions?

Firefox is not for lack of options, I'd say it is the *nix of the browser world.

ps. You can also solve all of the tab issues with TabMixPlus and the UI issues with ClassicThemeRestorer - my Firefox 33 looks virtually identical to Firefox 4

Re: Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox

#15

Post by XzetaU8 »

blueskin_ wrote: post #7

Yay, now firefox can waste just as much memory as Chrome. Guess 1GB for the whole browser wasn't enough; they had to go for ~100MB/tab. Got to keep up with Chrome after all. If I use chrome for normal browsing (I don't normally because its feature set is poor, customisability is a dirty words, and I don't like the privacy risk), it can rapidly slurp 4GB or more of memory (with perhaps two key addons, adblock and DoNo…

http://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/multiprocess-f... "The total memory usage for multiprocess Firefox is only 10MB greater than single-process Firefox. We should be able to shrink this difference with some effort"

As for the excess memory usage on chrome, "OneTab" might help https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo... (It's available on Firefox) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/onetab/

Re: Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox

#16

Post by hippich »

blueskin_ wrote: post #12
taeric wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think performance is often overblown on this as well. However, I don't think the overhead from task switching will really enter into it. If you have hundreds of tabs open that are trying to do work, that is work that was having to be done regardless. Meaning they would already be thrashing. Now, that will just be in a different way. Otherwise, if you are idling most of those processes, they should be the same as be…

Firefox: Averages ~5MB/tab (200 tabs, 1GB memory) Chrome: Anywhere from 50MB/tab up. A much better performance fix would be to suspend javascript execution on tabs that aren't visible.

I am not questioning reasons to have 200 open tabs, but wonder how do you manage it? I would imagine tab bar become very long?

Re: Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox

#17

Post by whoisthemachine »

I use this occasionally, it works okay.

I have to say though, with the introduction of the GGC, and all of the improvements to the JS runtime recently in Firefox, that it has gotten much faster.

Electrolysis should bring "smoothness" to the entire UI as one site should not be able to halt the UI thread for the rest of the browser any more.

Re: Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox

#18

Post by icebraining »

blueskin_ wrote: post #10
blinkingled wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes sandboxing possible which is a huge security win and the reason I still use Chrome where I can. RAM is cheap and browsers 64-bit so a bunch of extra memory in the name of security is not a big deal really. At least that's how I see it.

>RAM is cheap Great, buy me another 32GB then please . People shouldn't have to have high end gaming rigs to run a sodding browser. Mozilla (and google) are deluding themselves in thinking that their particular software is the be all and end all of a computer, and should be introduced to this strange concept called 'multitasking'. Firefox: 1.5GB Thunderbird: ~1GB OS: 1GB (conservative estimate) Various background pro…

OS: 1GB (conservative estimate)

What are you using, Windows? I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 and the "OS" (X, window manager, daemons) is certainly not even close to 1GB, more like ~100MB.

Re: Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox

#19

Post by adamtulinius »

hippich wrote: post #16
blueskin_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox: Averages ~5MB/tab (200 tabs, 1GB memory) Chrome: Anywhere from 50MB/tab up. A much better performance fix would be to suspend javascript execution on tabs that aren't visible.

I am not questioning reasons to have 200 open tabs, but wonder how do you manage it? I would imagine tab bar become very long?

It helps that Firefox offers to change to an existing tab when you try to open the same page in a new tab.

Another suggestion is to not manage it. I create tabs all the time, and often have many similar tabs. There's no need to manage it, only to clean up once in a while.

(I like many tabs. A few weeks ago I performed some tab-cleaning -- 550 tabs were a bit much, as it made Firefox start slower.)

Personally i just use it for things I would like to read at some point, instead of filling up my bookmarks with 50-10 entries every day.

Re: Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox

#20

Post by aen0 »

blueskin_ wrote: post #7

Yay, now firefox can waste just as much memory as Chrome. Guess 1GB for the whole browser wasn't enough; they had to go for ~100MB/tab. Got to keep up with Chrome after all. If I use chrome for normal browsing (I don't normally because its feature set is poor, customisability is a dirty words, and I don't like the privacy risk), it can rapidly slurp 4GB or more of memory (with perhaps two key addons, adblock and DoNo…

Be aware that Adblock Plus for Chrome increases significantly RAM usage for each open tab.

uBlock author has extensive benchmarks about this issue.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-...

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