When people say oh firefox performance is like so intolerably bad that they HAVE to use a chromium based browser, I always wonder what device people are using and how many things they got going on in the background. I don't understand why ANYONE would need to have like 200 tabs open at once and even if Firefox is slower loading source heavy stuff by like a second, I think that is a sacrifice worth making.
Personally Firefox has been perfectly fine for me even when Im running it on a Win 11 virtual machine on top of Linux that also has Firefox with 10 tabs open and like five other applications in the background on a very mid range laptop.
I do that (100+ tabs open at any given time) due to my work (research tends to take up a ton of windows) and because I'm too scatterbrained to focus on a single thing at once, but even then I find that Firefox is really good and arguably better than Chrome. Maybe Chrome has improved since I switched over, but Firefox uses significantly less resources than the Chrome that I remember
I have ~800 tabs open in Firefox, no real issues unless I flip through all of them or Tab Groups shuffles them all around. My desktop until recently was over a decade old and the new one is barely any faster.
People really got to learn how to use Bookmark All Tabs... properly.
If you're in the middle of something and you got to switch to something else, organize all the tabs to separate windows, and use Bookmark All Tabs... to Saved Sessions folder or whatever you want to name it. This will allow each window to be saved individually. Save it with a date and at topic name, like "20230625 Bread maker" then close the window.
I have a fear of crashing Firefox, restore failing, and losing all my tabs. This fixes most of that.
Using the Bookmark All Tabs... method has help me organize my tabs, makes syncing with devices easier, and has allowed me to keep browsing sessions completely off my mind until I need them again.
For years Firefox on Windows had this weird random bug for me where audio just would not work at random times. I tried every fix imaginable. I spent hours crawling the internet trying to find a solution. Couldn't fix it. I've used it on Linux but not on Windows for a few years now; I'm going to be doing a fresh install of Windows on my computer soon, so we'll see if the bug finally disappears then.
Windows audio issues are the most impossible shit to diagnose. So many programs fight over supremacy in order to control devices. It takes uninstalling vast swaths of shit to determine what the incongruity is. If you can't figure it out, link me to the most relevant post you got and I'll try to hack at it.
Sorry, friend. Figuring that shit out is hell. I know.
You sound like someone that doesn't open 200+ tabs of furry adult imagery on e621 while playing processor intensive games.
I mean... I'm obviously not that person either, but it would be cool to have the RAM to support it or the correct web browser if I was that type of person. But I'm not. But having that capability would be nice (not because I need it).
I only have three extensions - uBlock Origin, a 3rd party password manager, and SponsorBlock. A fairly minimal setup with only the things I need. Even the Return YT Dislikes extension is not as necessary as people would think.
I've had 5k+ tabs open at some points, because I just don't close any of them, and I often middle click as I want to navigate back to the page I was at. Additionally, a lot of sites break the back button, like collapsing comments re-expanding, or it loads slowly and I wanted to look at it quick. Organization is pretty nice with Tree-Style Tab for Firefox.
Every few months I purge all of my tabs, but for the most part, I just don't care when I have 32 GB of RAM.
What's with all these comments saying Firefox is slow!? I've never noticed FF slowing down? I also can't find anything online particularly damning (they all are pretty close in scores. No massive performance numbers for one or the other). I thought this was just a common misconception. Can anyone explain?
Can you show me data showing that Firefox with dark theme, does a first load on a website just as fast as Chrome or edge? Same data point for with video buffer in frame? Pretty sure its noticeably slower in both scenarios with a dark theme.
People complain about Firefox performance and site compatibility all the time and I have no idea what they are talking about. I use both it and other browsers all the time and Firefox for me is the better one.
Also browsing the web with the uBlock Origin installed, will signifiy improve the speed. Meanwhile protect you from various bad stuff, adds being nonexistent. :)
Check this app & also tick all the boxes within its Settings.
I used to to think the android mobile app was slow. It's gotten allot better though. Now that it supports uBlock I think it's the best browser for Android.
I think there were some bad releases many many years ago, but right now Firefox works great.
But unfortunately that reputation lingers, and people don't like changing their browsers often.
It's not slow, people are slow in their heads. Chrome may feel a bit faster but it's not even what matters when picking a web browser. Will it protect your privacy online? Yes or no.
@blotz@siriusmart, speed of browsers are very relative and the differences relay often to certain webpages, security soft or extensions. Anyway we are speaking of miliseconds. But its a fact that most webpages are optimized for the most used engine and this is Blink. This in turn is fed back, so most browser companies in turn use Blink, which is a path of no return.
If you go for speed, neither Gecko nor Blink can compete with, for example, the Otter Browser with an alternative engine and QT5.
I just switched recently from Firefox after about 5 years and when comparing them,specifically YouTube/YTmusic, it was much slower. Google services though so it's not shocking.
Disable ambient mode and set Firefox.exe to use your gpu both in your gpu control panel and windows display settings (settings > system > display > graphics settinge)
I had the issue of stuttering videos until I fixed that and I thought nvidia control panel was enough but I had to set it in Windows settings as well
@blotz@siriusmart I have like 32 gb of high speed ram and my browser would still run slow the last time I used firefox. This was a very very very very long time ago and I have like 400 tabs open but that's why I have a computer with 32gb of ram to browse the web.....
I've actually started using Firefox more because Chrome has been causing me problems. Recently downloading more than 3 files from Google takeout at a time broke Chrome. With Firefox I hit 20 simultaneous files with no slowdown. Chrome actually hung until my downloads finished. Made it impossible to work at all while I downloads files. Same issue in incognito. Firefox was great.
I recently built a PC and included 32GB of RAM specifically so I can have a hundred tabs open without any lag, never had a issue with Firefox.
first of all, this meme gets posted a lot. second, but more importantly, the format should be reversed. in this scene of the film, Peter Parker sees clearly without glasses, and blurred with glasses, coz he's been bitten and his eyesight is restored. /flies away
Didn't the memes sub on Reddit end up adding a rule that only allowed original memes (that people have "handmade" themselves), to avoid excessive reposts? Heh.
This is why I use Firefox. I honestly don't think that a browser engine monopoly is good for the world. Single point of failure for everyone with no alternatives is very bad if something nasty happens.
I think the creators of WINE said something similar about one of their reasons for creating WINE. Wish more browsers would use Gecko.
I just wish chrome wasnt so fucking useful by comparison. its integration into my android phone is equal to none. the firefox browser on android is ok but it does not integrate quite as well as the whole google platform. then there's the performance on linux. I hate to say it but chrome feels so much smoother and nicer to use on linux than even firefox does. I've tried making the full switch to firefox several times, last time I daily drove it for probably almost 3 months but eventually found my way back to chrome, it was just a more enjoyable experience.
then there is the fact that every website builds their code to ensure it works with chrome, that is one advantage of chrome being the vast majority of the browser user pool, web devs can focus on making sure the one thing works really well.
that all said, just like wine and linux, it is important that we have a completely separate alternative so we're not entirely reliant should the ship start to sink. I've already fully converted to linux and its been my daily driver for a few years now, not looking back. I know plenty of people are still on windows but with ever new release it feels like they're doing more and more to punch holes in the SS.Windows ship and i'll eventually be a sinking boat for enough people who see that an alternative exists. Same will need to be said for chrome vs firefox
Chromium being so prevalent means that it's a monopoly (internet explorer anyone?) and it can control the web standards, which is something Google already does to some extent.
They also push their agenda with extensions, manifest v3 being way less powerful for ad blocking extensions. All in all, the more people use Firefox, the less power Google has over web standards, and the more devs are forced to make sure that their site works on Firefox.
I actually use Edge as a daily, but I also use Firefox because I want to support them. Unfortunately, Edge and Chrome are superior to Firefox in performance. Edge especially is really really great at resource management, and it doesn't matter if I have 1 or 700 tabs and windows open. It'll manage it without any issues. Firefox however, won't. Sure, it's rich in features and it's very very flexible, but it's not as stable or fast as the former.
Well if you use Firefox Nightly with ad-blockers and the latest version of Windows Defender the performance will be comparable to edge and chrome, the only thing is that Firefox uses the RAM that you are not using and that means if you have something open it will run slower.
sadly, firefox is in fact hte lone bastion against the tide of evil. And even now, we need to abandon MS and IOS. I am not even sure Linux is thsat good. We need a new OS which will defeat all virii. Yes, an OS built on completely new mechanics, to again begin the new pc revolution!
I've been using linux mint for a year or two now maybe. It's fine, and actually there are several things I prefer compared to Windows.
One of the main issues with Linux as a PC OS is that you can't run as much different software as you can on Windows. This is largely due to the user base being smaller(IE, why develop an application for an OS when 99% of you userbase is not using that OS).
Creating a new OS to compete with Windows would have the same issue, and would also struggle to compete.
Also, there are so many different versions of Linux(distros), as in there are 600+ different distros so if you don't like one, there are many to choose from. Not liking Linux based on one distro is saying you don't like ice cream because you tried strawberry ice cream and didn't like the taste.
Edge used to be unique,but then they just copied chromium.... It had much smaller scrolling which was great on touch screens. Now I have no reason to use it.
Let's be clear: it's a very good browser, very HTML5 compliant, and perhaps one of the best browsers...
...Assuming you don't care about insane amounts of spyware - AND not having a lot of really cool browser add-ons (those having spyware and memory leaks is a separate topic, but I want to acknowledge these problems).
Edge makes more calls home per second than any other piece of software on my computer. I looked at my live log and it was a literal stream. Nearly every single action you do is tracked and sent.... (waves hands confusingly up in the air in circles) ...somewhere. Likely Microsoft, but I really don't know.
Almost all of Windows is like this too. I hate it so much. There's just no great way to have nice things right now.
I’m happy with edge. Been using it since the beta. Helps that my personal email is @outlook and I am an annual subscriber because of a work discount, so it has that nice ecosystem sync.
Qutebrowser is chromium-based, and barely anyone uses icecat since the modern web heavily relies on JS, iceraven is a Firefox for Android fork, which could maybe have like 50 users and librewolf is unusable for daily usage because of RFP (resist fingerprinting worsens a lot of sites that rely on canvas).
(This is just my opinion)
I've switched to Firefox 2 years ago and I never missed Chrome since. Out of curiosity I've tried Opera GX a week ago only to find out that it is basically another chromium skin. Honestly I'm quite worried by the lacking of alternatives. 🦊 Be Strong Foxy✊️
As a web developer, I would love to root for Firefox but they've made some really odd decisions regarding the implementation of web standards (which are published on the Mozilla MDN site, oddly enough), async/defer script loading order for example. Firefox is also often multiple years late with implementing new tech, being surpassed by Chromium and even Safari most of the time.
While I love the non-profit style of Mozilla and think competition in the browser space is a good thing. The reality is just that their browser lags behind the other two.
Firefox is a large part of the reason polyfills are still used in this world of evergreen browsers, and requires multi-browser testing/tweaking even though I exclusively follow the standards written on the MDN website...
Yeah it lags behind because Chromium is developed by Google, which is the 4th biggest company in the world. And Safari is obviously from Apple which is the largest company in the world. I don't think the fact that Mozilla lags behind should upset anyone. The fact they can compete at all is impressive I think.
exactly, and that's what matters more than anything else. modern websites are insanely bloated anyway; i care more about blocking the 50MB of ads, trackers, third-party cookies and other garbage every site shoves down your throat, than shiny new stuff that arguably is often part of that overengineered bloat.
look at this. it's fucking beautiful. as far as i'm concerned, websites like these put the modern web and web developers to shame.
I see it the other way around. I have a feeling that FireFox follows the specs while Chromium kind of has its own plan and directly introduce new behavior without much care for standards.
Since Chromium based browsers have the majority of the market share, you have the feeling that FireFox is awkward/lag behind. Now look back at Opera when they still have their own engine and you will see that while they try to introduce new behaviors just like Chromium, their limited market share means that people don't feel the need to make use of these "innovations".
You want an even more unpopular opinion? I use WebKit based browsers for web developing because of the clarity of the devtools, performance and Interop.
You can go take a look at the web inspector documentation on WebKit.org to check the features.
So one and only thing I miss from Chrome is Lighthouse.
I don't know why, but even on my machine which gets 40-60 FPS in FFXIV while simultaneously encoding a movie, Firefox was always slower than chromium browsers.
It's web builders deliberately building their sites and webapps for chromium based browsers only, because it has over 80% market share. They only test on firefox rudimentally. The experience is subpar and people use chromium instead because of it, cementing chromium as the most used browser. Some site builders do this because they don't have the time to extensively test a browser with low market share, others, like Google, do it deliberately.
And of course: wgich extensions do you have in firefox and how old is your profile. Try it out with new, clean profile and than you will feel it.
I mean this is fair, but eventually the profile ages and I may choose to add more extensions, no? Why would a selling point be "we're fast on a brand new install, but after a couple years and adding some extensions, we're gonna slow down like fuck"?
Blink is somewhat faster than Gecko in most sites, but it use somewhat more resources, because render every tab independly. Because of this some Chromium hibernate tabs in background (Chrome itself don't)
The problem is the lack of diversity. Google controls Chromium and almost all browsers are Chromium based so Google controlls the supported web features of almost all browsers, giving them the power to decide which web features are supported on the internet and which aren't. They use this for example to push their own file formats for the web instead of better alternatlives. Remember when everyone was mad that ublock origin wouldn't work on Chromium browsers anymore? Same thing. They get money from ads so they make it harder to block them. Google shouldn't have that much power over the web.
No, Google no controls Chromium, despite Chromium as is use a lot or Google APIs. But Chromium is FOSS and because of this a lot of Chromiums are "degoogled" or parcial "degoogled" leaving some APIs as Option in the settings (Vivaldi permits even to quit the API for the Chrome Store in the settings page, if you don't want extension from there). The difference in Chrome itself, EDGE, Opera and others, is that they all use a lot of own tracking APIs above the default from Chromium.
Rules for thee and not for me kind of stance when it comes to who is collecting all the sweet data from its users, it wont be possible to block every tracker and ad from Google in the future because every add-on will have a limit of how many domains they are trying to block.
I mean what could possibly go wrong if the biggest data collector and ad provider has a monopoly on web browser?
Why is it bad to use chromium base browsers?
If the market is essentially only Chromium and Safari, Firefox compatibility will be even less important and broken sites will only lead to a bigger monopoly because users will switch.
Mostly having the centralized backbone of chromium makes people uncomfortable since it can do a lot from behind the scenes if it wanted to. But the raw base form is pretty much fine AFAIK, it's just very rare among browsers to do so.
Firefox is indeed amazing
but since chrome is so widespread a lot of sites primarily focus on supporting that - and thus i cant always use firefox. its a bit annoying
I believe they’ve also mentioned that they developed the browser with the possibility of swapping engines later on. Would be the best if it had WebKit instead of Chromium
How will my donation be used?
At Mozilla, our mission is to keep the Internet healthy, open, and accessible for all. To learn how your donation is put to use, click here.
You can find more details about Mozilla’s expenditures and governance here.
Don’t Mozilla products, like Firefox, earn income?
Firefox is maintained by the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. While Firefox does produce revenue — chiefly through search partnerships — this earned income is largely reinvested back into the Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation’s education and advocacy efforts, which span several continents and reach millions of people, are supported by philanthropic donations.
It is funny to me how the first link doesn't actually tell you how you money is used, but just points to Mozilla Foundation home page.
In short, if you donate expecting that your money helps Firefox, you're doing it wrong.
I don't know if it's just ethical or their unwillingness to improve but they have left a lot of issues open for several years.
Issues like -
Auto dark mode for web pages - they removed it when Chrome for Android dropped it, but never picked it back up. All other browsers have it now
Geolocation on Mac. Their argument is weird for this and the issue is still there for over 5 years
A lot of changes nobody asked, something like address bar auto complete, which they forcefully changed to top sites without even giving options
Slowdown because of bloat - while a lot cliam that it isn't the case, Vivaldi has brought my M1 Mac to its knees, even with brand new instace. Again only one to do so
You can make Firefox crazy fast if you fiddle with the settings and with the ublock origin enough. There's no reason to be using Chromium unless you're daily driving a website that doesn't support the Gecko engine
Arc has been an experiment when I got a Mac for work and it really is super helpful managing information and contexts. It really helps. For my private stuff, I changed back to firefox recently. That thing was super slow but now works like a charm again.
I would love to use Firefox more regularly, but the shortcut keys built into the browser are a pain in the butt. I haven't found a way to turn off the onboard keybindings so my own system wide keybinds will work.
Parts of it are. Vivaldi wants to retain its brand and doesn’t want people making forks and potentially tarnishing its reputation. And given how unpopular it is, they can’t really afford that to happen. I personally have no issues with Vivaldi wanting to keep things that way and I don’t mind it not being completely FOSS. Given how absolutely amazing the browser is and how customizable and feature-packed it is, it’s absolutely irresistible for me not to use it.
Here's a blog post from Vivaldi about it not being completely FOSS and their reasoning
They've also got a great privacy policy so I'm not concerned with privacy either.
Fun fact: Vivaldi is the go to browser for car makers such as Lamborghini, Mercedes, Audi and other car manufacturers
https://vivaldi.com/android/automotive/
@pingu, I've been using it for 7 years and it has never appeared overloaded. There are some of the functions that I do not use and because of that I have hidden, however there are many others that come in very handy. But this is handled differently for each user, depending on how they use the browser. You can use extensions from the Chrome Store, but most are redundant in Vivaldi and not needed. You can give it the simple look of an old IE or of an Eurofighter panel and everything in between.
Folks, I don't care what under the hood. Brave serves me much better than Firefox did. And, frankly speaking, "not being chromium" isn't enough anymore. Mozilla has ruined Firefox for me when they started removing features (e.g., FTP support) and dumbing its UI/UX. So, goodbye FF, it's been a long ride, but I'm on Brave right now.
Crypto on Brave is disabled by default. The FTP support was just an example. The last straw for me was the idiotic UI "refreshement". I'm not touching that thing. And yes, I know UI on FF can be tuned using CSS, but I've no time, nor the will to fix Mozilla's fuckups. It's not like there's a shortage of browsers out there.
Brave is managed by Brendan Eich who had to leave Mozilla because he is a homophobe.
That and they have been doing some selfserving things with BAT to the point where I wouldn't trust them even if BAT became something worthwhile or maybe even especially then.
Brave is managed by Brendan Eich who had to leave Mozilla because he is a homophobe.
Eich was a cofounder of Mozilla. Wasn't him an homophobe back then? Did someone stopped using FF because Mozilla's cofounder was an homophobe?
And, frankly speaking, I couldn't care less about him or his believing. I need a good browser. Brave is a good browser (better than Firefox, for me). The day I find something better, I'll migrate. Full stop.
That and they have been doing some selfserving things with BAT to the point where I wouldn’t trust them even if BAT became something worthwhile or maybe even especially then.
Again, the whole BAT thing is opt-in and it's not the point here.