Notes On Reducing Firefox's Memory Consumption 297
Skuto writes "At yesterdays linux.conf.au Browser miniconference in Ballarat, Australia, Mozilla engineer Nicholas Nethercote gave a detailed presentation about the history of Firefox's memory consumption. The 37 slides-with-notes explain in gritty detail what caused Firefox 4's memory usage to be higher than expected, how many leaks and accidental memory use bugs were tracked down with Valgrind plugins, as well as the pitfalls of common memory allocation strategies. Current work is now focused on reducing the memory usage of popular add-ons such as AdBlock, GreaseMonkey and Firebug. Required reading for people working on large software projects, or those who missed that Firefox is now one of the most memory-efficient browsers in heavy usage."
In my experience... (Score:3, Funny)
Firefox is the app that uses the most RAM in my system, has always been, even more that Skyrim under WINE. I tried Chrome for a while, and while I didn't dislike it, I simply didn't want to forfeit my customized environment.
However, I never saw Chrome as using any less RAM. I usually got Firefox with 20+ tabs open (and around 100 in "not loaded in RAM" mode with the new features, think old BarTab) grouped in Panorama groups. In Chrome, because tab space is small, I usually had around 20, and both browsers were consuming 400mb of RAM each. I'd say Firefox uses LESS memory overall.
Thing is, firefox FEELS slow. Try to open Youtube's subscriptions page and you'll lose control of the browser for at least one second.
I can easily see people unable to close their porn when their significant other enters the room. Porn moves the world, thus people would prefer to use Chrome for porn. Thus Chrome's usage rises while Firefox's decreases. If Mozilla makes it more convenient to use Firefox for porn, the browser usage will crush Chrome.
Re:i'll do my own tests (Score:5, Funny)
with over 340 open tabs
I think it's time for PybusJ to admit he has a pr0n problem...