Firefox 105 Now Available - Better Linux Performance Under Memory Pressure

[Slartifartblast]

To all those whining about Mozilla, at least they aren't going to mandate manifest V3 as Google are with Chromium.

[Vistaus]

Subjective opinion. Compared to what? A very vocal few still stuck in the early 10s with only 4GB of system RAM? People that don't clean up their open tabs (moot point, FF doesn't load the contents till they're brought to the front)? Chrome? Safari? If you're running out of RAM such that you're under memory pressure, you don't have enough RAM for whatever you're doing with your system. Yes, it's just that simple. It appears the vast majority of Firefox users just aren't 'abusing' Firefox in the way a handful are apparently doing so to have problems with its resource utilization. If you're going by top-like programs, those memory metrics aren't the whole story, especially if you don't know what they're actually reporting (hint, it's probably not what you think it is, example for those that report allocation it's not the same thing as active utilization.)

Yes, I don't have enough RAM. Guess I need 64 GB instead of the 32 GB I have now...
And for the record: I don't even have that many open tabs. I have about 25-40 tabs open on a daily basis, but only about 10 of them are actually loaded simultaneously. Yet FF manages to use a ridiculous amount of RAM per tab. And I do look at active utilization.

(And 10 loaded and 25-40 total tabs isn't all that much. Maybe a bit more than the average user, but a lot of people, esp. in tech communities, have over 100 total tabs, so compared to them, my usage is still pretty light.)

[bug77]

Calm down, this article is just about the release announcement. Michael tends to benchmark Firefox once or twice a year, he'll show you some results soon enough.

Also keep in mind memory pressure is not easy to replicate in an automated test. Not impossible, just not easy.

[bug77]

Subjective opinion. Compared to what? A very vocal few still stuck in the early 10s with only 4GB of system RAM? People that don't clean up their open tabs (moot point, FF doesn't load the contents till they're brought to the front)? Chrome? Safari? If you're running out of RAM such that you're under memory pressure, you don't have enough RAM for whatever you're doing with your system. Yes, it's just that simple. It appears the vast majority of Firefox users just aren't 'abusing' Firefox in the way a handful are apparently doing so to have problems with its resource utilization. If you're going by top-like programs, those memory metrics aren't the whole story, especially if you don't know what they're actually reporting (hint, it's probably not what you think it is, example for those that report allocation it's not the same thing as active utilization.)

It's not subjective, it's very, very objective. Somebody actually measured (a small study or something like that a few years back) and found that we routinely transfer a few MB of data just to convey 2-4kB of useful information (i.e. text). The rest is images, styles and whatnot. That alone puts a hard lower limit on RAM usage.

Otherwise, yes, it's ok to use free RAM for caching, but you need to give that back when the pressure on RAM rises (easier said than done).

[Quackdoc]

I think some people misunderstand something about browsers. a good browser should be able to utilize a lot of ram, but on the other side of the coin, be able to function under very slim amounts of ram. for me, firefox has been lacking under the dept of being able to work under serious ram constraints. will test this later and see how much better it is now

[Quackdoc]

Phoronix fails to report the facts once again. Better behavior when Firefox / OS is running out of memory is not a performance improvement in most cases nor for very many people. We don't run out of memory on a daily basis. It is also not a significant improvement especially when it isn't backed up with benchmarks.

speak for yourself and not for others, memory issues are a occurrence for a great many people

[ezst036]

Michael tends to benchmark Firefox once or twice a year, he'll show you some results soon enough.

I really hope we see some historical POV on it. Ex: Firefox 105 vs Firefox 92 vs Firefox 71.(I randomly picked version numbers)

Singular benchmarks are completely useless - Firefox got a 10,000 on Selenium. So what does that mean? And benchmarks against Chrome are not particularly helpful either. We already know going in right now, Chrome is going to be faster. We know. We get it. How does Firefox stack up against itself on Linux over a few years? That's the most useful information to display.

Oh, Firefox 71 got a 6,000 on Selenium and FF92 got what? Very useful comparisons here.

[andyprough]

Phoronix fails to report the facts once again. Better behavior when Firefox / OS is running out of memory is not a performance improvement in most cases nor for very many people. We don't run out of memory on a daily basis. It is also not a significant improvement especially when it isn't backed up with benchmarks.

Calm down, this article is just about the release announcement. Michael tends to benchmark Firefox once or twice a year, he'll show you some results soon enough.

[andyprough]

Firefox used to be pretty good wrt memory management. Back then, people were bashing it for not following Chrome and run a JS interpreter per tab. Well, today it does. And people bash it for running a JS interpreter per tab and chewing through RAM, just as fast as Chrome does.

I've been using Pale Moon quite a bit recently. It permanently forked off from Firefox code at about version 52, and still is a single process browser. You are correct in that the amount of memory used is substantially less than modern Firefox. It's also a stable amount of memory, as in it doesn't balloon out of control over time like Firefox often does.

Another Firefox fork I've found that uses noticeably less memory than Firefox is Librewolf, but I'm not sure why. I need to investigate its memory settings further.

[stormcrow]

It still uses a ridiculous amount of RAM per tab, though.

Subjective opinion. Compared to what? A very vocal few still stuck in the early 10s with only 4GB of system RAM? People that don't clean up their open tabs (moot point, FF doesn't load the contents till they're brought to the front)? Chrome? Safari? If you're running out of RAM such that you're under memory pressure, you don't have enough RAM for whatever you're doing with your system. Yes, it's just that simple. It appears the vast majority of Firefox users just aren't 'abusing' Firefox in the way a handful are apparently doing so to have problems with its resource utilization. If you're going by top-like programs, those memory metrics aren't the whole story, especially if you don't know what they're actually reporting (hint, it's probably not what you think it is, example for those that report allocation it's not the same thing as active utilization.)