What’s with all these comments saying Firefox is slow!? I’ve never noticed FF slowing down? I also can’t find anything online particularly damning (they all are pretty close in scores. No massive performance numbers for one or the other). I thought this was just a common misconception. Can anyone explain?
People complain about Firefox performance and site compatibility all the time and I have no idea what they are talking about. I use both it and other browsers all the time and Firefox for me is the better one.
It is a common misconception, they perform functionally identical across multiple PC’s and updates. People are just slow to change their minds.
Can you show me data showing that Firefox with dark theme, does a first load on a website just as fast as Chrome or edge? Same data point for with video buffer in frame? Pretty sure its noticeably slower in both scenarios with a dark theme.
I run a dark theme by default, first load of google.com in chrome is functionally indentical in performance as I said. Statistically there is a difference, probably only 0.1 - 0.25s max faster load in Chrome but it’s not reliable at all in the few tests I did quick (t’s 4am), so something that does not effect function itself, only form, makes me still correct in what I said originally.
I used to to think the android mobile app was slow. It’s gotten allot better though. Now that it supports uBlock I think it’s the best browser for Android.
Also browsing the web with the uBlock Origin installed, will signifiy improve the speed. Meanwhile protect you from various bad stuff, adds being nonexistent. :)
Check this app & also tick all the boxes within its Settings.
“It works on my PC”
I think there were some bad releases many many years ago, but right now Firefox works great. But unfortunately that reputation lingers, and people don’t like changing their browsers often.
dark reader slows down firefox.
Firefox is slower on synthetic benchmarks compared to Chromium ones but I’ve never seen a noticeable difference while surfing sites.
It’s not slow, people are slow in their heads. Chrome may feel a bit faster but it’s not even what matters when picking a web browser. Will it protect your privacy online? Yes or no.
@blotz @siriusmart I have like 32 gb of high speed ram and my browser would still run slow the last time I used firefox. This was a very very very very long time ago and I have like 400 tabs open but that’s why I have a computer with 32gb of ram to browse the web…
I’ve actually started using Firefox more because Chrome has been causing me problems. Recently downloading more than 3 files from Google takeout at a time broke Chrome. With Firefox I hit 20 simultaneous files with no slowdown. Chrome actually hung until my downloads finished. Made it impossible to work at all while I downloads files. Same issue in incognito. Firefox was great.
I recently built a PC and included 32GB of RAM specifically so I can have a hundred tabs open without any lag, never had a issue with Firefox.
first of all, this meme gets posted a lot. second, but more importantly, the format should be reversed. in this scene of the film, Peter Parker sees clearly without glasses, and blurred with glasses, coz he’s been bitten and his eyesight is restored. /flies away
Didn’t the memes sub on Reddit end up adding a rule that only allowed original memes (that people have “handmade” themselves), to avoid excessive reposts? Heh.
But the point is that they may seem different but really all are using the same engine. So the order is correct.
I still remember version 2 of Firefox. It was an awesome feeling to install. Even today, just using Firefox still feels like I’m doing to right thing.
I think there is nothing like it. It’s not perfect but it’s damn good still.
More people should be aware of Nyxt as I believe it’s one of the greatest efforts towards a customizable browser out there. It aims at being renderer-agnostic, but it currently only supports Webkit and there are plans to support Blink via Electron. I built some extensions for it in Common Lisp and I can say the ecosystem is much more fun and open than standard browsers.
Do you know of any vi extensions or configs I can look at for Nyxt. The OOB experience isn’t great, but I see the potential. EDIT: Also tree tabs if possible
visupport is built into the browser, you only need to enablevi-modein yourdefault-modes. There is no concept of tree tabs, you manipulate tabs as “buffers” that you can switch to via fuzzy search, which IMO is far more efficient. You can take a look at one of the core maintainers’ config. Alternatively, I’ve recently added a Guix home service and feature into rde for those that want a more batteries-included config, which you can check how I use in my dotfilesThanks. I’m not so much interested in tree tabs for switching around, but to bulk close tabs based on origin. Basically to bulk delete tabs based on how they were created. But it seems flexible enough.
Firefox supremacy! Keep the non-chromiuim branch alive forevermore, no centralization please.
non-chromium branch
There’s a chromium branch‽
That’s just my werid phrasing, I mean the non-chromium branch that is Firefox and its backend.
This is why I use Firefox. I honestly don’t think that a browser engine monopoly is good for the world. Single point of failure for everyone with no alternatives is very bad if something nasty happens.
I think the creators of WINE said something similar about one of their reasons for creating WINE. Wish more browsers would use Gecko.
I just wish chrome wasnt so fucking useful by comparison. its integration into my android phone is equal to none. the firefox browser on android is ok but it does not integrate quite as well as the whole google platform. then there’s the performance on linux. I hate to say it but chrome feels so much smoother and nicer to use on linux than even firefox does. I’ve tried making the full switch to firefox several times, last time I daily drove it for probably almost 3 months but eventually found my way back to chrome, it was just a more enjoyable experience.
then there is the fact that every website builds their code to ensure it works with chrome, that is one advantage of chrome being the vast majority of the browser user pool, web devs can focus on making sure the one thing works really well.
that all said, just like wine and linux, it is important that we have a completely separate alternative so we’re not entirely reliant should the ship start to sink. I’ve already fully converted to linux and its been my daily driver for a few years now, not looking back. I know plenty of people are still on windows but with ever new release it feels like they’re doing more and more to punch holes in the SS.Windows ship and i’ll eventually be a sinking boat for enough people who see that an alternative exists. Same will need to be said for chrome vs firefox
Chromium being so prevalent means that it’s a monopoly (internet explorer anyone?) and it can control the web standards, which is something Google already does to some extent.
They also push their agenda with extensions, manifest v3 being way less powerful for ad blocking extensions. All in all, the more people use Firefox, the less power Google has over web standards, and the more devs are forced to make sure that their site works on Firefox.
I actually use Edge as a daily, but I also use Firefox because I want to support them. Unfortunately, Edge and Chrome are superior to Firefox in performance. Edge especially is really really great at resource management, and it doesn’t matter if I have 1 or 700 tabs and windows open. It’ll manage it without any issues. Firefox however, won’t. Sure, it’s rich in features and it’s very very flexible, but it’s not as stable or fast as the former.
Still love Firefox, though!
Well if you use Firefox Nightly with ad-blockers and the latest version of Windows Defender the performance will be comparable to edge and chrome, the only thing is that Firefox uses the RAM that you are not using and that means if you have something open it will run slower.
cpu and memory on my firefox and edge are about equivalent but I have some browser add ons for managing lots of tabs. I have way more on firefox because its my main browser but I have a fair amount on edge which I use like scratchpad.
I love Firefox
Librewolf, icecat, qutebrowser, iceraven, surf… are not chromium-based.
Qutebrowser is chromium-based, and barely anyone uses icecat since the modern web heavily relies on JS, iceraven is a Firefox for Android fork, which could maybe have like 50 users and librewolf is unusable for daily usage because of RFP (resist fingerprinting worsens a lot of sites that rely on canvas). (This is just my opinion)
I use Librewolf on a daily basis. (With disabled FPR)
Yeah, it’s a lot better if you disable RFP, but it still wouldn’t save my passwords and enabling Firefox Sync isn’t accessible. Again, it’s just my opinion.
Saving your password in your browser is a really really bad idea, use a password manager instead, like keepassxc (desktop), keepassxd (android).
Agree, but I use Bitwarden. I prefer it because it syncs my passwords from pc with my phone.
Same. But self-hosted with vaultwarden on my raspberry pi.
Very true !! For me Enpass On Linux pop-os and on my Pixel running graphene-os Perfect Enpass basically big database with more then just passwords Contacts, notes, files …😊
I think you could enable Firefox Sync from the settings
Unpopular opinion, brace yourselves.
As a web developer, I would love to root for Firefox but they’ve made some really odd decisions regarding the implementation of web standards (which are published on the Mozilla MDN site, oddly enough), async/defer script loading order for example. Firefox is also often multiple years late with implementing new tech, being surpassed by Chromium and even Safari most of the time.
While I love the non-profit style of Mozilla and think competition in the browser space is a good thing. The reality is just that their browser lags behind the other two. Firefox is a large part of the reason polyfills are still used in this world of evergreen browsers, and requires multi-browser testing/tweaking even though I exclusively follow the standards written on the MDN website…
Yeah it lags behind because Chromium is developed by Google, which is the 4th biggest company in the world. And Safari is obviously from Apple which is the largest company in the world. I don’t think the fact that Mozilla lags behind should upset anyone. The fact they can compete at all is impressive I think.
Or maybe, just maybe, it lags behind because Mozilla decided that their priorities are ruining the UI and to remove features.
Yeah, keep downvoting. 50M (and counting) users lost since 2019 are surely a proof of how well Mozilla roadmap for FF is working.
Please, feel free to engange to show me that I’m wrong.
Here’s a POV, and it’s important to note that in general most users don’t care (or even know) what their default browser is. At this point in time there are five “major” operating systems with the following global market shares [0]:
- Android 35%
- Windows 30%
- iOS 17%
- macOS 9%
- Linux 1.5%
If we can agree that most users (not being technically literate, interested or inclined) will not change their default browser, we can easily see why Firefox is losing market share. Basically 91% of the world is - by default - using a non Firefox browser. If their current one is working well enough, why should they care to change it? Can we blame Mozilla for losing some users? Yeah, maybe a few. But that’s not really the whole picture.
[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share
Edit: I should point out there’s a 6.6% group marked as “unknown” in the OS market share data - I left this out to keep things simple.
The statcounter web page uses data coming from trackers blocked by Firefox ETP, radar.cloudflare.com is more accurate.
No, I don’t agree. The loss was net, I mean 50M users migrated, the same users that before installed FF over the default browser. Something happened there.
Can we blame Mozilla for losing some users? Yeah, maybe a few. But that’s not really the whole picture.
50M (and counting) was 20% of their user base, not “some users”. There’s nothing wrong in admitting that Mozilla erratic development model has alienated at least some of “us” (by the way, I’ve been a FF user for almost 20 years before leaving). And, personally, I’ll make whatever I can to make more users leave FF. Fuck Mozilla, really. They’re just a cash-grab machine right now.
Firefox is behind in some areas, but ahead in others - eg. privacy/tracking.
exactly, and that’s what matters more than anything else. modern websites are insanely bloated anyway; i care more about blocking the 50MB of ads, trackers, third-party cookies and other garbage every site shoves down your throat, than shiny new stuff that arguably is often part of that overengineered bloat.
look at this. it’s fucking beautiful. as far as i’m concerned, websites like these put the modern web and web developers to shame.
So not the things that benefit website owners
Yeah. Instead, the things that benefit users
I see it the other way around. I have a feeling that FireFox follows the specs while Chromium kind of has its own plan and directly introduce new behavior without much care for standards.
Since Chromium based browsers have the majority of the market share, you have the feeling that FireFox is awkward/lag behind. Now look back at Opera when they still have their own engine and you will see that while they try to introduce new behaviors just like Chromium, their limited market share means that people don’t feel the need to make use of these “innovations”.
I miss old opera.
You want an even more unpopular opinion? I use WebKit based browsers for web developing because of the clarity of the devtools, performance and Interop.
You can go take a look at the web inspector documentation on WebKit.org to check the features.
So one and only thing I miss from Chrome is Lighthouse.
Honest question. What’s wrong with chromium? I understand why google/ms and other corpo flavours are bad, but why is base chromium bad
The problem is the lack of diversity. Google controls Chromium and almost all browsers are Chromium based so Google controlls the supported web features of almost all browsers, giving them the power to decide which web features are supported on the internet and which aren’t. They use this for example to push their own file formats for the web instead of better alternatlives. Remember when everyone was mad that ublock origin wouldn’t work on Chromium browsers anymore? Same thing. They get money from ads so they make it harder to block them. Google shouldn’t have that much power over the web.
No, Google no controls Chromium, despite Chromium as is use a lot or Google APIs. But Chromium is FOSS and because of this a lot of Chromiums are “degoogled” or parcial “degoogled” leaving some APIs as Option in the settings (Vivaldi permits even to quit the API for the Chrome Store in the settings page, if you don’t want extension from there). The difference in Chrome itself, EDGE, Opera and others, is that they all use a lot of own tracking APIs above the default from Chromium.
Sure it’s FOSS, but who’s actually working on the codebase? That’s right, google employees. Good luck submitting patch if your patch runs counter to google’s interests.
Not a problem, in Vivaldi there a lot of patches against Google interests. Even Google can do nothing if the devs of other companies eliminate the tracking APIs from Chromium, precisely because it’s FOSS an even Google can’t revert it and can’t do nothing against modified forks. There are several intends in the past, with idle tracking, FloC, and some others, also cutting of Google sync for others than Chrome, discriminative Browsersniffing in some websites to block Vivaldi and others. Nothing of this worked. Vivaldi is a small european cooperative with few devs, but which are among the bests out there. Now on top of that they have managed to introduce Vivaldi into the world of Browsers and its use in Mercedes, Renault and VAG, that has not even been achieved by Google and with this also eliminated the possibility of acting against Vivaldi, without messing with these Companies. This is showing a really big middle finger.
Yeah? Manifest V3 wants to have a word with you and your completely independent de-googled Browser. Some might be able to put in the work to delay the rollout but at one point anything not supporting V3 will just break compability, completely unintentional obviously.
It’s FOSS but the ‘look but don’t touch’ kind of FOSS.
One big life-changing thing will be something like Manifest V3, limiting ad-blockers capabilities. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation
Rules for thee and not for me kind of stance when it comes to who is collecting all the sweet data from its users, it wont be possible to block every tracker and ad from Google in the future because every add-on will have a limit of how many domains they are trying to block.
I mean what could possibly go wrong if the biggest data collector and ad provider has a monopoly on web browser?
Why is it bad to use chromium base browsers? If the market is essentially only Chromium and Safari, Firefox compatibility will be even less important and broken sites will only lead to a bigger monopoly because users will switch.
And people still support and use Google search so the monster just continues growing.
I guess we get what we deserve as a species.
I’ve tried to move away from Google search so many times but honestly it’s just too convenient…
Startpage, Google results without Google tracking.
They still get some data, but you can use something like DuckDuckGo as main and Startpage as fallback.
Kagi did it for me. I set it as default search engine when it was new, and I actually forgot about it. Thats how good it is.
It’s the same results as Google, just ranked differently so you don’t get all the junk. You will discover lots of new web sites that are quite good.
Try it!
I think duck duck go is better personally. There are still a ton of Google services id have trouble leaving though. Google photos, Maps, Docs ect. I don’t think I could quit google altogether.
Isn’t it Duck Duck Go that sent metadata to Microsoft, also if they denied it.
Interesting so I guess they use Microsoft ad services and thus send data to Microsoft. I just like their search results because they’re less spammy than Google. Also I found Google sensors their search results a bit more. Let’s say your trying to find a site for pirate streaming. You’ll have better luck with DuckDuckGo.
Searching for pirate streaming/illegal websites on Google is in general not a good idea…
Sorry, I remembered it wrong… the problem was that DuckDuckGo stopped blocking Microsoft trackers. But it seems that the contract with Microsoft was terminated after the discovery.
I started using Startpage it takes Google searches and gives it to the user anonymously. The results are quite good because it’s essential Google results.
@pingu @BrokenToshy, Startpage is my secondary search engine, mainly for images, the other secondary most used is Mojeek, but my main and first search is Andisearch (AI) with unique features and one of the most private search engine out there
Just tried it a bit, and it seems good, the summary on the left and the website on the right is a great UI (my preferences). I will test/try it for daily use and see if it can handle my often complicated problems…
Mostly having the centralized backbone of chromium makes people uncomfortable since it can do a lot from behind the scenes if it wanted to. But the raw base form is pretty much fine AFAIK, it’s just very rare among browsers to do so.
“Wait, it’s all Chrome?”
“Always has been 🌏👨🚀🔫👨🚀🌌”
sadly, firefox is in fact hte lone bastion against the tide of evil. And even now, we need to abandon MS and IOS. I am not even sure Linux is thsat good. We need a new OS which will defeat all virii. Yes, an OS built on completely new mechanics, to again begin the new pc revolution!
I’ve been using TempleOS to fight back against the demons.
Make a man spit his tea.
Dude was insane… But he made a hell of an OS lmao
you bastard. I though some nifty form of linux was out. That was a cringe click.
I am not even sure Linux is thsat good.
I’ve been using linux mint for a year or two now maybe. It’s fine, and actually there are several things I prefer compared to Windows.
One of the main issues with Linux as a PC OS is that you can’t run as much different software as you can on Windows. This is largely due to the user base being smaller(IE, why develop an application for an OS when 99% of you userbase is not using that OS).
Creating a new OS to compete with Windows would have the same issue, and would also struggle to compete.
Also, there are so many different versions of Linux(distros), as in there are 600+ different distros so if you don’t like one, there are many to choose from. Not liking Linux based on one distro is saying you don’t like ice cream because you tried strawberry ice cream and didn’t like the taste.
That’s my main complaint with Linux. I really want to switch over, but the software compatibility is abysmal, and I would rather not run a virtual machine or dual boot. I’m really glad that Valve is at least helping out with software compatibility on the gaming side, but compatibility really just needs to improve across all software in general
The many different distros are also bad thing for the same reason. The same way 100 different types of flour in the shelve would be overwhelming.
Everyone is quick to shit on Apple and MS, but let’s be real, Google is also a piece of shit company that needs to be lumped into that group.
They removed “Don’t be evil” as their big motto. So indeed fuck them. And yes I know it is still somewhere in their code of conduct or something, but holy cow why would they ever feel the need to move that in the back? Was that after employees did not want to work for military stuff?
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO TRUE.👍
I’ve switched to Firefox 2 years ago and I never missed Chrome since. Out of curiosity I’ve tried Opera GX a week ago only to find out that it is basically another chromium skin. Honestly I’m quite worried by the lacking of alternatives. 🦊 Be Strong Foxy✊️
Firefox 🥰
Arc and Orion are the best browsers I’ve used. GNOME Web looks nice, too.
Arc is real fun. I’ve been using it quite a bit lately
I believe they’ve also mentioned that they developed the browser with the possibility of swapping engines later on. Would be the best if it had WebKit instead of Chromium
I don’t know why, but even on my machine which gets 40-60 FPS in FFXIV while simultaneously encoding a movie, Firefox was always slower than chromium browsers.
I truly don’t understand it.
It’s web builders deliberately building their sites and webapps for chromium based browsers only, because it has over 80% market share. They only test on firefox rudimentally. The experience is subpar and people use chromium instead because of it, cementing chromium as the most used browser. Some site builders do this because they don’t have the time to extensively test a browser with low market share, others, like Google, do it deliberately.
I mean everybody is free to block them trash scripts from these developers with uMatrix or NoScript.
I just wish I didn’t have to! I’m always hunting through uMatrix to find the filter that broke the website I need.
UMatrix is no longer under development, right? uBlock has that functionality built in iirc. It came from the same dev, unless I’m confusing them with something else.
I’ve been using both, side by side. Had no clue I could block scripts with uBlock. I thought it just handled ads.
Are the ad block changes from the new manifest going to be opt-in?
Depends on what sites you are using, google sites are slower for me, others are faster.
Also looks like chrome is better at looking faster somehow, probably starts to render page sooner.
And of course: wgich extensions do you have in firefox and how old is your profile. Try it out with new, clean profile and than you will feel it.
And of course: wgich extensions do you have in firefox and how old is your profile. Try it out with new, clean profile and than you will feel it.
I mean this is fair, but eventually the profile ages and I may choose to add more extensions, no? Why would a selling point be “we’re fast on a brand new install, but after a couple years and adding some extensions, we’re gonna slow down like fuck”?
It is not perfect, I know. I also know that firefox keeping history locally, sqlite database gets huge and slow and fragmented.
There are solutions, but at the end it is easiest to create new profile. They also have some success with “refreshing” profiles. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings but it is removing some settings.
Blink is somewhat faster than Gecko in most sites, but it use somewhat more resources, because render every tab independly. Because of this some Chromium hibernate tabs in background (Chrome itself don’t)
