Multiprocess Firefox
billmccloskey.wordpress.com
Multiprocess Firefox
1–10 of 126 posts
Re: Multiprocess Firefox
#2It also brings the possibility to overcome ~4GB memory limit per x32 process. Which is nice.
Re: Multiprocess Firefox
#3I remember the days when for multiprocessing was the only option and multi-threading was only available on a few systems.
Now with the security exploits many plugins have exposed and the way a misbehaved thread can bring the whole application down, we are moving back to the multiprocess model as a better sandbox model.
Old becomes new as they say.
Re: Multiprocess Firefox
#4breaks LastPass add-on
Re: Multiprocess Firefox
#5I remember the days when for multiprocessing was the only option and multi-threading was only available on a few systems. Now with the security exploits many plugins have exposed and the way a misbehaved thread can bring the whole application down, we are moving back to the multiprocess model as a better sandbox model. Old becomes new as they say.
It's always been a better sandbox model, but message passing is still a pain to orchestrate compared to shared-memory data structures.
Re: Multiprocess Firefox
#6It also brings the possibility to overcome ~4GB memory limit per x32 process. Which is nice.
Very nice indeed, I crash Firefox a few times a day from hitting the memory limit.
Granted this is due to AB+ and Reddit Enhancement Suite. Although imo.im leaking memory over time doesn't help! (I am somewhat annoyed that an IM client takes up 500MB of memory, I miss Meebo!)
Right now FF is at a fairly svelte 1.8GB. Heh.
The other problem is that performance degrades dramatically as the number of open tabs increases. Once I hit 50 or so tabs scrolling becomes horribly jerky. From the sounds of it, this change may very well fix that as well.
(For reference I am on an insanely fast home built machine!)
Re: Multiprocess Firefox
#7I remember the days when for multiprocessing was the only option and multi-threading was only available on a few systems. Now with the security exploits many plugins have exposed and the way a misbehaved thread can bring the whole application down, we are moving back to the multiprocess model as a better sandbox model. Old becomes new as they say.
It's always been a better sandbox model, but message passing is still a pain to orchestrate compared to shared-memory data structures.
Personally I prefer message passing (over pipes).
Shared memory (be it shm/heap in same process) with associated mutexes, semaphores, locks and the like is a right pain to get right without introducing race conditions, deadlocks etc.
Go is interesting as it uses "micro threads" (goroutines) and message passing CSP style but I haven't found a use for it yet.
Re: Multiprocess Firefox
#8I'm very excited about this. I usually drive Firefox Beta without any sorts of complaints, but installed nightly just to try this out live.
With my list of extensions[1] this doesn't seem to be particularly stable. It fails to bring up my tabs from last time. That would be OK for experimentation, had it not been for the fact that it also crashes regularly.
These two combined really is test-stopper for me.
Note: I'm not complaining. I'm very pleased this is being worked on. I'm just commenting first-hand experience about the state of things, so that others can make up their minds if they want to give it a go as well.
[1] Installed extensions: Adblock Edge, Duckduckgo search, Firebug, Flashblock, Norwegian dictionary.
Re: Multiprocess Firefox
#9It also brings the possibility to overcome ~4GB memory limit per x32 process. Which is nice.
Very nice indeed, I crash Firefox a few times a day from hitting the memory limit. Granted this is due to AB+ and Reddit Enhancement Suite. Although imo.im leaking memory over time doesn't help! (I am somewhat annoyed that an IM client takes up 500MB of memory, I miss Meebo!) Right now FF is at a fairly svelte 1.8GB. Heh. The other problem is that performance degrades dramatically as the number of open tabs increases…
You can try Palemoon x64. I also had problems with crashing over memory limit. Was on Palemoon for 2 months and it works OK. I don't use many addons though.
Re: Multiprocess Firefox
#10I remember the days when for multiprocessing was the only option and multi-threading was only available on a few systems. Now with the security exploits many plugins have exposed and the way a misbehaved thread can bring the whole application down, we are moving back to the multiprocess model as a better sandbox model. Old becomes new as they say.
It's always been a better sandbox model, but message passing is still a pain to orchestrate compared to shared-memory data structures.
On most modern operating system you can selectively set up shared memory between processes as well. One can implement a lower latency (but more dangerous) buffer sharing / message passing-by-reference scheme.