Firefox 109 vs. Chrome 109 Browser Benchmarks On Ubuntu Linux + Core i9 13900K

[Artim]

It seems to be happier with wayland for some reason, the extra features means fewer slow JavaScript extensions to bog the browser down, and its at least a *little* more privacy friendly than Chrome.

The first part might be mainly because of more sane defaults in the flags. But for the bold part you really have to explain that. Last time I checked, Chromium Edge was so bad at privacy protection, Chrome looked like a saint. They send everything back to Microsoft, every single keystroke, even in instances where even Google doesn't bother to or decides at random when to send what information.

[Artim]

Who needs hw acceleration? Chrome is so fast it can decode any video in software and probably saves energy vs decoder ASIC on GPU chips.

This makes no sense at all. If there was any software decoder or encoder faster and/or more energy efficient than hardware codecs, the latter would have already been removed from the SoCs as they mainly exist for mobile devices to save energy and produce less heat. If software was better, OEMs would simply save precious silicon instead of wasting it for inefficient hardware. Also, if software was as good as or even better than hardware, stuff like VA-API or the Media Extensions for Vulkan would have already been deprecated as there was no use for it.

[Artim]

While Google does state for years now that they invest a lot into making Chrome less of a resource hog, it would have been nice to also see comparison of RAM usage and power draw during the Benchmarks. After all, running either on a laptop, a faster browser isn't of much help when it draw much more power for the same workload.

[avis]

Why is it important to know whether Firefox is as fast as Google spyware?

No matter how fast Chrome is, it's still spyware, there's still no reason to use it.

Why not compare Firefox to Brave? At least they are both actually attempting to browse the web, rather than to steal all your personal data and re-sell it.

Have you read and checked the entire Firefox source code? Has anyone here on Phoronix done that? No? Then how can you claim Firefox is not spyware?

Secondly, have you reverse engineered Google Chrome? Then what on Earth allows you to baselessly claim that Chrome is/contains spyware?

God, most vocal Linux/Open Source users are so embarrassing it's just cringe.

[f.dittmer]

There's a workaround which has existed since forever, e.g.

alias cr="FREETYPE_PROPERTIES=truetype:interpreter-version=35 chrome"

Sounds weird to hear about this "issue" from a person who runs Linux which requires workarounds, hacks and tweaks all the f-ing time.

Maybe you chose the wrong OS in the first place.

Thanks for taking the time to let me know. Indeed this changes the fonts to look more like the rest of my system, even though the fonts in Firefox still looks slightly different. But definitly an improvement over the default behaviour.
Nobody mentioned this option in the quoted bug report and I never stumbled upon this option even though I was actively searching for somthing like quiete a few times during the last years. So thanks again, will test this out further.

[avis]

Thanks for taking the time to let me know. Indeed this changes the fonts to look more like the rest of my system, even though the fonts in Firefox still looks slightly different. But definitly an improvement over the default behaviour.
Nobody mentioned this option in the quoted bug report and I never stumbled upon this option even though I was actively searching for somthing like quiete a few times during the last years. So thanks again, will test this out further.

Sorry, I sounded a bit hostile in my comment. I was the option was well known. More info on it.

And more on this option itself.

If you properly configure it, chrome/ium should render fonts exactly how other applications do.

To be honest in 2023 font rendering is outright broken in Linux.

Qt6/Qt5/GTK4/GTK3/Firefox/Chrome all render fonts ... differently. It's a stinking mess.

[stormcrow]

Have you read and checked the entire Firefox source code? Has anyone here on Phoronix done that? No? Then how can you claim Firefox is not spyware?

Secondly, have you reverse engineered Google Chrome? Then what on Earth allows you to baselessly claim that Chrome is/contains spyware?

God, most vocal Linux/Open Source users are so embarrassing it's just cringe.

Don't need to check the source code. You can monitor the network connections it makes and which options trigger which network connections. Even if you notice an encrypted connection deep packet inspection will likely tell you what's going on. If you really want to know the contents and using a MitM proxy doesn't tell you the contents, you CAN read the source code for the function associated with it. This is a red herring of an argument. You can't read Chrome's source code and there's no way to know if any given Chrome release ties to any given Chromium release, or what the binary modules vanilla Chromium builds import are actually doing without trying to disassemble them.

In short, it's EASIER to audit Firefox than Chrome if I and others so desire.

Apply a little logic next time you try to refute a solid argument.

[shanedav4]

Video performance with Chrome on Linux is horrible. Open two Chrome windows and play a web video in each one. Now try moving the windows around while the videos are playing. You'll find that the performance is horrid.

Firefox on the other hand has none of this problem and performs smoothly.

[kozman]

We need better benchmarks for sure. For once, Chrome feels faster both under Windows and Linux. It's really hard to explain but it shows up faster when you launch it, pages load faster, new empty tabs show up faster, everything about Chrome is just faster. I have a Ryzen 5800X and 64GB of RAM, so it's a pretty fast and modern PC yet Firefox is kinda sluggish both under Fedora 37 and Windows 10.

Microsoft stopped trying to swim upstream with an anchor tied around its waist and just adopted a Chrome base and let Google continue to do all the hard work and heavy lifting. And thus reaping the metrics and ad revenue while lifting nary a finger. From a biz standpoint, it's a smart move. We all know Microsoft can afford to but it's always better to work smarter, not harder. Do next to nothing, make money and increase your own browser usage for free? Who doesn't want that revenue stream? You don't buy the cow when you get the milk for free.

I suppose Microsoft can or does pass along all the hardware info and related crash / perf metrics to the Chrome code base because not doing so makes Edge (and thus Chrome) a shittier product on whatever various gear it's running on. Microsoft wins. Google wins. LAMF. I think FF on Linux isn't up to par with Windows or Mac because I think that's where their bread and butter comes from right now. From reading Phoronix articles and being a Mozilla bug tracker volunteer I read a lot of the bugs around Linux and it's improving. Sometimes glacially, but it's improving from where it was even 5+ years ago.

Some of those issues with FF and Linux that were long thought to be unfixable or could never be worked around have, to some degree, been fixed or worked around. Some smartypants figured it out eons later but some progress is better than what has felt like zero progress. There will always be more to do but the good work is built atop other's contribution so that's always a win for the Linux community. A lot of improvements and fixes to the kernel, GPU drivers and MESA has helped move the needle in areas that were lacking or hobbling furthering FF. Compared to a decade ago when a lot of us were just shaking our heads at what Mozilla management was doing to FF, they seem like they've pulled their head somewhat out of their asses. Time will tell.

[caligula]

While Google does state for years now that they invest a lot into making Chrome less of a resource hog, it would have been nice to also see comparison of RAM usage and power draw during the Benchmarks. After all, running either on a laptop, a faster browser isn't of much help when it draw much more power for the same workload.

OTOH modern laptops support tons of memory. 2 x 32 GB DDR5 + 90% ZRAM @ zstd helps a lot if you need dozens of active tabs.