Is Firefox Okay? | Hacker News Reader

Is Firefox Okay?

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53 pointsVinnl16 comments

I used to use Firefox and I'd love to use it again on both desktop and mobile, but it's just so slow, memory-hungry and crashy compared to Chrome.

For example, I work on a wasm project in my spare time and it loads in a few seconds in Chrome. It does so, too, in Firefox, but just the first time. Reloading the page causes Firefox to leak a ton of memory and compiling my wasm suddenly takes dozens of seconds before crashing. And this is just a random anecdote, of course, but it's one of many over the years.

My experience is the opposite.

I use both, but my experience is different.

I use Firefox, for my trusted sites, mail, banking, various stores, documentation etc.

I use chrome, fore throwaway lookups etc.

Firefox runs for weeks at the time (I am on always on desktops (work and home)) (I restart firefox when new update hits.), but chrome gets laggy after few days.

And i am the type of person that has 100s of tabs open, over few windows each.

I do use primarily Linux though, if that makes any difference.

That's odd. I'm running MacOS so perhaps the leak is in the OS layer somewhere.

Oh well. Looks like I'll just have to give Firefox another chance _again_ at some point :)

We have similar usage patterns for Firefox vs chrome, only difference being I use various chromium based browsers(not just chrome) in private mode for throwaway, lookups etc and FF has not more than 30 tabs open all the time.

I can attest to the reliability of FF on Windows and Linux. And chrome with 10-12 tabs starts hoarding memory on Windows after keeping it open for a few days.

As others mentioned, my experience is the opposite. I'm on Mac, and I forced myself to ditch Chrome due to privacy concerns and, honestly, I don't miss it at all.

Occasionally, I have to fire it up to test something for work, or if a site doesn't support Firefox (it's 2022 devs, come on). And, each time it reminds me of why I prefer Firefox. It seems so bulky in comparison, and everything seems to slowdown with it open, where Firefox just happily stays open in the background, w/multiple windows and tabs and rarely causes any issues.

Give it a shot again if it's been awhile, it's great.

Well, as I said I gave it a try very recently and had to abandon it due to wasm related crashes. I'll see if I can restart using it for normal browsing though.

Adblock on mobile is a huge perf gain for me. Firefox is one of the few mobile browsers to support it without root on android.

When you find a web page that has such a big performance problem in Firefox, you can use the Firefox Profiler to record a performance profile and file a Bugzilla bug report. A performance profile can make these bugs much easier to fix.

https://profiler.firefox.com/

I can't help but feel that 'diversifying' Mozilla's product line up is one of the problems. I'd scrap everything else and just focus on the browser.

I know I have a skewed view of the software market, but I'd pay $$ per year for Firefox. It feels like many businesses would too if it offered some guarantees of data privacy.

Edge feels like it's moving AWAY from enterprises with the recent nonsense integrating deferred payments and price comparison tools. Brave is pushing Crypto which is kryptonite for many orgs. Chrome is feeding ad algorithms. Seems like a gap to me.

All that stuff is poison. It comes from a good place but corporate uses it to promote people who should never ever be in a leadership position. Suddenly they get a platform for promoting gender issues instead of focusing on the product.

"Diversifying" in this context is referring to making sure Mozilla is not as reliant on a single revenue source (from Google, even) by working on more products that can produce income.

Vivaldi is my daily driver. I don’t know why it isn’t more popular.

Essentials, classic or fully-loaded version? and does it support ublock-origin?

Vivaldi is a chromium-based browser, so it comes with the pros and cons of that. Pro being that it (currently) supports ublock... we will see if they decide to adopt manifest v3 or not.

They are too distracted by politics and a CEO that gets a raise despite the current performance stats.

I am enjoying Chromium Ungoogled with uBlock and Metamask which gives me the best web app testing and crypto facilities. I am a bit wary of Brave.

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