[ARCH] [EASYAF] Use RAM for Firefox and boost performance and decrease drive wear

wiki.archlinux.org Firefox/Profile on RAM - ArchWiki

Might be late to the party, but I just discovered you can do this. Super simple and easy to do.

After having a read of the linked page, I backed up and just used this option:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Profile-sync-daemon

Installed, created config, and enabled service:

systemctl --user enable psd.service systemctl --user enable psd-resync.service

I definitely notice an increase in speed and less SSD usage should hopefully increase lifespan.

I'm sure there would be options for alternative distros, anything using Systemd should be able to use the daemon.

21 comments

I used to use this when I still had a hard drive, but this does nothing for performance if you're on an SSD and profile writes are so few with browsers that it doesn't significantly affect drive wear. In the end, all this does is make it more likely that something will break.
- Are you implying the tabs backups are not written into the profile folder? Because think 10 - 20 GB a day is still something to be convened about. https://www.servethehome.com/firefox-is-eating-your-ssd-here-is-how-to-fix-it/
  
  I have used Firefox in ram for a couple of months now without problems and am pretty happy with it.
  
  Can someone back up my claim that 10-20GB writes per day is nothing for a modern SSD?
  
  Edit: with a 256 TBW and a 20GB write/day it gives some 13.000 days so the lifespan of an SSD will largely be the limiting factor.
- Wrong. Using inotify-wait (inotify-tools), you see that FF has a bunch of read and write access on every page load (mostly in <profile>/storage). This is with the about:config option to use RAM as cache enabled.
  
  Every single webbrowser is one giant clusterfuck.
- Yeah, messing around with this stuff is how you break firefox. SSDs are plenty fast and durable, and that's not even mentioning how the Linux page cache means that you're already technically running in ram anyways. This program will just break things.
Is there a specific package I can install to increase my RAM?
- No I believe you have to download more RAM actually. But what would I know I'm just a proctologist.
  
  No, this is wrong. I saw this documentary, 'Johmny Neumonic' I think, and it specifically showed a computer scientist increasing his storage and RAM through software, but you need a special device to plug in to do it. I'm sure Best Buy sells it.
  
  Is it normal for a proctologist to have both his hands on my shoulders when checking my prostate?
- Have a look at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Zram - a compressed block device in RAM that can be formatted as swap. There are various tools to set it up, maybe your distro already includes one of them. And htop has a meter for it, so you can see how effective the compression is (besides its own zramctl tool).
  
  Nah i think the right way to do it is go to some site (you can Google some) and download some RAM. They even make the link flash so its easy to find. If you need more RAM just download some more
Finally, a way to use the loads of RAM I have other than Compiling and Blendering.
Well, I guess we also have RAM drives
- Just reconfigured /etc/makepkg.conf to use extra cores and tmpfs.. I've been compiling on the SSD with one core for so long it's embarrassing.
  
  While you're still in your makepkg.conf, don't forget to set march=native (and remove mtune) in your CFLAGS! (unless you're sharing your compiled packages with other systems)
- Mount .cache as tmpfs. Rarely needs a workaround for some offenders to XDG spec though.
Btw the private browsing mode is also RAM-only which is a hard requirement for the Tor browser ("no disk policy")

21 comments