Firefox 77 / 78 Beta vs. Chrome 83 Linux Browser Benchmarks

[omer666]

Firefox does feel heavier, but it also feels more complete than Chromium, as a tool. I also like the GUI better, but that's only a matter of taste. Either way, both are great, but Firefox is definitely the choice for freedom. I would have hoped more alternative rendering engines would have survived, though...

[Aryma]

to be honest i will switch to FF if they give me same GUI as chrome or Chromium I hate change I like think to be in the same place I used to find

[finalzone]

to be honest i will switch to FF if they give me same GUI as chrome or Chromium I hate change I like think to be in the same place I used to find

Firefox interface is very similar to Chrome or Chromium (both latter tooks the rounded tabs concept from the old Firefox interface). On Fedora, the former is more integrated into the desktop.

[mbello]

Firefox' container tabs became a must-have feature for me and it is what made me finally switch back from Chrome.

[polarathene]

Firefox performances in Linux are really so bad just because you saw a bunch of senseless bars? Do you really feel that Firefox is unusable on Linux systems?

It was for me when I used it as my daily choice years back. It was either a bug with Firefox session management or one with a session plugin I used(before the new plugin system arrived which also made it difficult for plugins like this to offer the functionality they did due to limitations of the new system, and was one of my motivations to move away). Fairly sure it was due to Firefox's own session management code, I think it was saving my session or profile to disk every 20-30 minutes, and the more tabs I had open or longer the session had been running, it seemed to make the problem worse. I was regularly experiencing my CPU(i5-6500 4/4 cores/threads) hit 100% load for about 10 minutes, with SSD disk and 32GB RAM, when this happened RAM usage spiked up by about 10GB IIRC).

I'm not the average user though, I can have many browser windows open with many tabs, hence the 32GB of RAM which I make use of (20GB atm, Chrome probably has about 30-40 windows open each with a tonne of tabs, I do use session management extension, mostly as a backup, bookmarks isn't a solution for me). Most tabs are for different projects that I jump between and relate to research on technical topics I'd be investigating, if I've got what I wanted from the tab and have no more use for it I do close it, otherwise it's left open until I have time to store some notes on the tab, which might happen in a week or a few months later.

I think I also had less reliable session restore with firefox if I experienced a kernel panic or power cut. Perhaps it's much better now and I could look into giving it another go.

[TemplarGR]

A browser is much more than just some javascript benchmarks. Firefox is better all around, especially on Wayland, so i don't see why one would pick Chromium.

[Mez']

Mozilla has not the infinite amount of money Google has, they must have priorities and pushing to make benchmarks look better is clearly not one of them. Finetuning is an incredibly costly job that requires time (and thus money) and often provides small benefits.

At the moment it is the one and only competitor in the browser market against Google, since all the others joined the webkit bandwagon. Sincerely I still prefer Firefox because I feel a lot more comfortable about their policies than Google ones. And remember policies don't have benchmark numbers to be compared.

Also, Firefox performances in Linux are really so bad just because you saw a bunch of senseless bars? Do you really feel that Firefox is unusable on Linux systems?

Honestly, for using both (Chrome as a backup), you only see a difference when opening Chrome. When you get a 5-10 tabs going (which is very few, I can get to 100-150 quite fast), the difference can barely be spotted.

But the difference in usability is huge as you feel very limited in Chrome very quickly. I can tweak Firefox to my every need or almost, in Chrome I can do little. Tabs on bottom? No way. Bookmarks under an icon in the menubar? Nope.
I don't want that despicable favorite bar taking even more vertical space. Favorite bar is forced in new tab in Chrome. Did I ask for it? Nope. It's even admin forced at work, absolutely idiotic.
Theming? Not so much.
Can you block videos from playing automatically in Chrome? Not anymore. I don't want a per site basis. I want a global configuration.
Why did Chrome impose the tab grouping lately with a random purple-violet color for the main group (when clicking on a link from another app)? :facepalm:

Already huge blockers, and I'm just getting started... So, I believe a barely noticeable performance difference is really accessory to the reason why you're using a browser rather than another.

[treba]

CanvasMark: looks broken, Chrome and FF+WR in a flat 5000 points line.

Basemark: AFAIK this includes WebGL - so should heavily benefit by DMABUF (requires WR, currently only Wayland but X11 support on the way (1))

1: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bu...id=1619523#c15 (VAAPI support implies DMABUF support, thus zero-copy WebGL)

[AmericanLocomotive]

to be honest i will switch to FF if they give me same GUI as chrome or Chromium I hate change I like think to be in the same place I used to find

I'm the opposite - I absolutely hate the Chrome layout. It's over-simplified to the point where it makes it more annoying to use. Ever since Firefox started copying Chrome's UI, it has lost its identity and character. I absolutely loved the bright orange "Firefox" button in the top left on versions 28 and earlier. It made the browser really stand out among the others. When they got rid of it, I used the classic theme restorer for as long as I could until it stopped working. Then at some point they also got rid of the search bar by default (which was another Firefox defining characteristic). I still greatly prefer having a dedicated search bar since I can specify which search engine I want to use, and that it ensures my search term definitely won't try to be resolved as a website.

The problem is really bad at least on Windows:

https://i.imgur.com/3pVskK4.jpg

I mean just look at the above screenshot! To the average user Firefox is essentially visually identical to Edge, and it's not like Chrome is particularly unique either. To less observant people, all three of those browsers basically look the same. I think the Firefox team would do well by adding the search-bar back, emphasize the ability to easily search with different engines, and then put an orange "Firefox" button back on the left, or at least the logo. Something to give the browser some identity.

One of the mean reasons Firefox became so successful in the first place was because of all the features it had and the ability to customize it any way you want. When Chrome started becoming dominant because of Google's aggressive (and frankly anti-competitive) marketing tactics, Mozilla's response was to make FF look like chrome and strip away those features.

[gbcox]

A browser is much more than just some javascript benchmarks. Firefox is better all around, especially on Wayland, so i don't see why one would pick Chromium.

My thoughts exactly. I believe these type of benchmarks are somewhat interesting from a horse race point of view... but, in actual practice the differences are barely noticeable, if at all. If you compare the browsers holistically, Fx more often than not is the better choice.