ReneKMueller.com: Computer Diary *

Here my little rant and praise place, where the daily experiences of my programming work are expressed. I publish them with the idea that others might find it useful and benefit from it.

2009/01/22
Firefox 2.0.x / 3.0.x - Memory Waste
last edited 2009/03/28 12:47 (*)

Ranting About Something like a Web-Browser

Software: Firefox 2.0.0.x (Update: also applies to 3.0.x)
Summary: Using intense amount of memory
Remedy: Opera for FreeBSD
Ok, I have been fan of open source for . . . since I can think - seriously, I have used Linux first, back when it came on 3 1/4" floppy disks even, then switched to FreeBSD because of the cleaner setup, but more overhead to get a decent desktop system. And yes, I still waste time to get /etc/X11/xorg.conf working to do exactly what I want, use the resolutions I want on both or all three monitors. But let's get back to the topic, adding a second monitor seemed an easy thing, considering I ran a 4 monitor Xinerama setup a few years ago successfully.
I have a 2GHz Celeron, with 1GB RAM PC - and I still thinking it's a fast machine. I run KDE-3.5 for FreeBSD, great - not really MacOS-X but nice try to be Windows-like crap, when I use Konqueror intensively moving, copying or renaming files, and maybe at the same time within an xterm moving, or copying or deleting files, Konquerors just crashes - a piece of cr^H^Hunfinished software.
Ok, there are still things to vent on you know.
But despite tiny, and small problems of daily life with computers - and don't even start to think I should run Windows XP or Vista-Disaster on my machine, no way - running Firefox has pleased me so far, installed AdsBlockPlus and Session Manager and a few other add-ons, useful things, nothing fancy.

What Happened?

Dual Monitor with KDE-3.5

Now, here comes the real rant, I use Firefox intensively, I have 5 windows of Firefox, within each window multiple sites, total maybe 50-60 sites. Yes, that's kind of a lot, but I'm a power-user, and I like to have the most important sites just open and ready to reload and read. Since I added a 2nd monitor, set a background picture, X11 requires more and more memory - and Firefox runs instead 1-2 days til it crashes only 2-3 hours til it crashes, sometimes even 1-2 minutes before it crashes.
What happened? It ran out of "pixmap" memory, somehow Firefox wants to store information on the X11 server, why? I don't know. It fails - more frequent, and it has become unuseable.
I started to use Opera - not open source - be aware - well, and I have 40 sites open, in 4 windows, and it uses 200MB, the X11 only 195MB still.

Firefox-2.0.0.1 for Linux ¹⁾: X11: 300MB, Firefox: 500MB - Total 800MB (207%)
Opera-9.24 for FreeBSD: X11: 185MB, Opera: 200MB - Total 385MB (100%)
1) I have enabled Linux compatibility on FreeBSD so I can use the Linux Flash Plugin.
Fixing Firefox?

I consider myself a moderate skilled programmer, I don't have the time to dive in the source-code of Firefox - as simple as this. I'm not the only one who noticed this problem, but it's not been fixed yet - and I can't wait, sorry.
I gonna use Firefox when it uses the same or less amount of memory as Opera.
Tags: Firefox, Bloatware, Opera | Permalink

All posts or individual posts:
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My Cellphones & Smartphone (2010-2013) (2013/09/02 23:15)
KDE / Kubuntu 12.04: 10+ years terrible GUI, A Systemic Problem of OSS (2013/04/27 12:18)
UNIX Man on Windows 7: VirtualBox + Ubuntu + LXC (2012/11/27 19:24)
Metadata - The Unresolved Mess (2012/07/10 20:59)
Cellphone Networks: Thieves, Insanity & Crap (2010/01/26 13:57)
MacOS-X for a UNIX Man with a PC (2009/09/26 20:43)
Windows XP for a UNIX Man (2009/09/22 18:28)
Server Counting (2009/05/18 11:50)
Automatically Geotag Photos without GPS (2009/04/22 08:28)
Rebirth of FastCGI (2009/04/15 17:17)
Online Advertisement & Income for Web-Site Owners (2009/03/18 22:10)
iPhone JavaScript Frameworks (aka Avoiding Objective-C) (2009/03/14 22:08)
Google - The Almighty Tracker & Advertising Blocking (2009/03/12 22:09)
How To Save 300MB RAM (2009/03/07 22:07)
Verbosity of Programming Languages (2009/03/06 22:06)
Problems with MacOSX (2009/03/03 22:03)
MacOSX: My First Steps (2009/02/24 09:57)
Catch 22 with HDD/DVD Recorder Medion Life (2009/02/24 09:27)
Kubuntu 8.1 as guest on VirtualBox MacOSX host (2009/02/24 01:33)
VirtualBox vs VMWare Fusion on MacOSX (2009/02/24 01:19)
SQL vs GREP with 230K lines (12MB) GeoLite (2009/02/23 20:10)
Kubuntu 8.1: Eye-Candy & Memory Waste (2009/01/24 09:57)
Firefox 2.0.x / 3.0.x - Memory Waste (2009/01/22 19:34)

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