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Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

evilbrainjono.net

141–150 of 205 posts

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#141
I love Firefox updates. I've never had an issue. I click on the update link and it's done within seconds. Then I get all the new goodies like it was my birthday.

Seems like the only people who complain are home users. At least that's what I gather from the forums I visit. They just don't understand why things need to change even after a long drawn explanation.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#142
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it is much better than Chrome. If I have more than a handful of tabs open in Chrome then Chrome starts using significantly more than a GB of RAM (in total, across all the separate Chrome processes), while I've currently got a Firefox session that has been open for more than a week, with 30+ tabs, and is using just under 1 GB.

How are you adding together the Chrome processes? Often when you look at the memory usage of a process, it'll incude all the shared libraries it's using. So if you add together multiple processes, you'll multiply the memory used by that shared library by the number of processes you're adding, even though that memory is, well, shared.

Oh. Hadn't realised that, thanks for the info. :) (I am doing it naively, just from the output of ps, so your point applies. Is there an Chrome equivalent for Firefox's about:memory?)

Even so, with many tabs open, my computer hits swap far more under Chrome than Firefox.

Edit: Ah, yep, answered my own question: about:memory works in Chrome too. Using that, I've got Chrome at 360 MB with 5 tabs and 2 extensions, while Firefox is at 900 with 30+ loaded tabs and ~20 extensions.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#144
post #131
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing is that Chrome updates work. They've only broken something once in I think 3 years of daily use at this point (some update unchecked "warn before quitting"). They also don't generally create popups and the update process itself is literally invisible. Firefox on the other hand... sigh. I really liked that browser, but the updates, and the broken plugins, and the shit memory management, and the develop…

huh? Under heavy usage FireFox is better at memory management than Chrome. The memory problems were, what, three years ago or more?

That may be, but you can get rid of the memory that chrome uses. Just close the tab, which releases that memory - since one tab is run as a separate process which then exits and releases all memory.

With Firefox, you have to restart Firefox. All tabs run in the same process, and memory is generally not released back to the OS when someone just calls free() or delete.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#145
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> still leaking like Eratosthenes' sieve It leaks a lot when it's using a tiny amount of memory, and it leaks hardly at all when it's using a large amount of memory?

No, it leaks endlessly without any theoretical bounds and there's no amount of memory that it's leaking won't exceed given enough time.

So you're saying that it's more like a normal sieve than Eratosthenes' sieve?

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#148
post #43

So its been a few month without bashing firefox and thus its that time of the year for that again? Except it has better memory management than any other browser now. Except its the fastest browser on Android now. Except the upgrading no longer break addons as they're compat by default now Except upgrading is now silent (no dialog box, no UAC prompt, no "welcome to the new firefox tab" - yes; on windows) Except if you…

BTW, you're being downvoted (not by me, though it's tempting) because at least a few of those are untrue. edit: Chrome is still faster on Android for me, addons and extensions break all the time for me in Firefox, and I don't find the memory management to be any better. It's still horrendously slow in Linux and on my work machine with 12GB of ram it just freezes no matter what.

Chrome is still faster on Android for me

Please give some example where.

addons and extensions break all the time for me in Firefox

Which ones? I haven't had a broken extension in months (since Firefox 10), and I use quite a few.

on my work machine with 12GB of ram it just freezes no matter what

Are you implying Firefox is using 12G on your machine?

To be honest, I think what's happening is that one of those "extensions that keeps breaking" is crap and what is using all that memory. Real Firefox has none of the problems you describe (very vaguely and without specifics), so it's hard to take you seriously - let alone see how it could be fixed.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#149

The top three reasons I switched to Chrome: 1. Memory bloat on Firefox. It's ridiculous that I have to restart the browser every day or more often just to get back more memory. 2. Plugin breakage. I'm sure it's better now but too little too late? 3. Separate processes for each tab and speed. Chrome FEELS faster even if it might not be, but it's amazing that if one tab crashes the whole browser doesn't. #2 appears to…

Mozilla has already said they will never implement 3 because it's pointless. Separate processes per tab make the browser slower, not faster. Crash resilience is obtained through sandboxing the plugins that were crashing in the first place (hi Flash!), instead of entire browser instances. It's one of the reasons Firefox uses less memory than Chrome.
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