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.

Tag <Bloatware>

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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

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