I stopped using firefox because of performance. Nothing more, nothing less.
If I'm remembering this right, I think there was initially an about:config option for disabling the signature checks. But that was eventually removed from the stable releases. The workarounds were to waste my time getting the extensions signed, or to use some special unbranded build, or to use the Nightly or Developer Edition releases. None of those were acceptable to me. Then I learned about the planned WebExtensions changes, and knew it was time to move on.
I'm aware of the security-related reasons that were used to justify such changes. But for me they ended up taking away the main benefits that Firefox offered, namely being easy to extend, and giving me the freedom to use the browser as I see fit.
It seems to me disabling the xpinstall.signatures.required setting has no effect anymore, at least the last time I tried using it, it had no effect.
If somebody gave me a Ferrari for free with the caveat that there's a guy sitting on the passengers seat who keeps track of where I'm going at all times, I guess I'd still keep driving my current car (hint: it's not a Ferrari).
And before the downvote reflex sets in in some of you: I'm not saying that you should be like me. If you like Chrome, great, good for you! It's just that the speed difference to me personally has never been a good enough reason to switch. YMMV.
That could explain why it doesn't support multiprocessing. I disabled it because it doesn't do much. This is a list of its functionality from https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/what-are-the-ubuntu-firefox-...
* Enable searching for missing plugins from Ubuntu software catalog
* Add the following options to the Help menu
Get help on-line
Help translating Firefox
Ubuntu Release Notes
* Set homepage to Ubuntu Start Page
* Display a restart notification after upgrading Firefox
* Add ask.com to the search engines. You can uninstall this if you prefer to use a pristine Firefox install.
That's why I switched back from Chrome after using it for a month few years ago.
Now I would switch because Chrome is the new IE, some developers don't test on Firefox, they say "just use Chrome", no WAY.
I find it uses probably 50% of the memory that Chrome does in my typical use-cases as well (4-5 windows open with around 10-20 tabs in each).
I'm glad to hear that you found a web browser that makes you happy. So have I.
If it took a minute to render, it would matter. If it's a matter of a few seconds, it doesn't.
However, I also know that folks like my parents who do not deeply care about IT and performance in general don't really care too much. They do not spend their day in front of the screen like some of us do, but rather look something up once or twice a day. In the greater scheme of things, the difference in rendering times across different browsers doesn't make a measurable difference in their lives.
This gut-check test isn't particularly useful.
> If somebody gave me a Ferrari for free with the caveat that there's a guy sitting on the passengers seat who keeps track of where I'm going at all times
The price you pay is much higher than you think.
Think twice, you have a choice.
You seem to be implying that Chrome tracks every site that you go to and shares it with Google. Care to cite a source on that?
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068
Of course, this can be turned off, but it is very likely to be turned on if a user has set up an Android device (lots of prompts to do so).
Edit: link
I think majority of people just use Chrome because they either don't know better or because when it came out, it was legitimately a cooler more innovative browser than Firefox at the time.
Only very few people need a few extra codecs that Chrome provides or maybe the bundled Flash plugin.
In short screw you too mozilla.
Ohh, and the Chrome dev tools are just better. So that helps. But if Firefox weren't noticeably slow I'd use it without hesitation.