# Mozilla complaining about Linux



## drhowarddrfine (Sep 11, 2011)

http://people.mozilla.com/~tglek/lpc2011/

One of the Mozilla people complaining about Firefox starting up slow in Linux. He states that it's not just Mozilla but ALL applications start slower than they should due to Linux internal 'plumbing'.


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## fonz (Sep 11, 2011)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> http://people.mozilla.com/~tglek/lpc2011/


Ouch, my eyes. That's unreadable. And that guy works for Mozilla?

Fonz


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## da1 (Sep 11, 2011)

Ouch ... nice font.


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## graudeejs (Sep 11, 2011)

Is that a presentation? So BIG font ...


wtf, I can't zoom out....


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## kpedersen (Sep 11, 2011)

The title is... *Optimizing Firefox: Why Large Applications Start Slowly on Linux*

The real question is why firefox is called a *large* application?.. All it does is display pictures and text :S

Although linux (and most unix) operating systems *do not provide the user with a choice* of installing older software. I doubt firefox v1 or v2 would start slowly.


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 12, 2011)

kpedersen said:
			
		

> The real question is why firefox is called a *large* application?.. All it does is display pictures and text :S



You're kidding, right?


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 12, 2011)

graudeejs said:
			
		

> Is that a presentation?


Yes. Just click anywhere and it changes slides.


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## fonz (Sep 12, 2011)

kpedersen said:
			
		

> The real question is why firefox is called a *large* application?..


This has been discussed before. It's large because it actually has more parts than one might think.



			
				kpedersen said:
			
		

> All it does is display pictures and text :S


In my opinion that's a gross oversimplification.

Fonz


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 12, 2011)

How browsers work.


> The browser's main components are:
> 
> The user interface - this includes the address bar, back/forward button, bookmarking menu etc. Every part of the browser display except the main window where you see the requested page.
> 
> ...


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## Crivens (Sep 12, 2011)

graudeejs said:
			
		

> Is that a presentation? So BIG font ...
> 
> 
> wtf, I can't zoom out....



What I get to see is a presentation-like formatted page in which I can zoom out - but then again I do not allow JS by default.

Would like to see that test redone with ZFS and a SSD-Cache...


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## nekoexmachina (Sep 12, 2011)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> You're kidding, right?



Then what actually does it do?
And what should browser do?



//xxxterm user now.


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 12, 2011)

See post #9 above


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## Crivens (Sep 12, 2011)

nekoexmachina said:
			
		

> Then what actually does it do?


Bomard you with flash ads, store and hide tracking cookies, ask for updates any random(100) seconds, install spyware, require GL for rendering, create new demand for increased file system space, ...


			
				nekoexmachina said:
			
		

> And what should browser do?


Mostly nothing of the aforementioned 

Ok, seriously now: a browser does more than display text and graphics. It should do more, like manage my bookmarks. 
There are more requirements to it than just "what do _I_ need it to do?" but "what does it need to be useful for mostly anyone without getting in the way of almost anything".
Putting that into words is complicated, I would say.


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## aragon (Sep 12, 2011)

Even so, chromium starts up significantly faster than firefox, and I don't think anyone can claim that it does significantly less than firefox?


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 12, 2011)

You can't go by start up time to determine what a program does compared to another. Firefox 7 starts up a lot faster than FF5 but does more things. Firefox is far more customizable and programmable than Chrome but even that may not be the reason it starts up slower.


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## kpedersen (Sep 12, 2011)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> You're kidding, right?



Hah. Looking back at my post, I did sound like a bit of a troll. Sorry.

Perhaps what I meant to say is:- What extra features does Firefox offer us nowerdays that can justify the ~500% increase in cpu / memory requirements from say Netscape or even IE6.

Surely Firefox is more at fault than the linux kernel (this time) since even IE6 in wine starts faster than a native instance of Firefox 5.

I strongly believe that Firefox should be rewritten. Especially if the future of computers is going to rely so much on a web browser.

I would say that Firefox is a prime example of feature creep but... there havn't even really been any new features. It is just slower with almost every new version :S


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## Slurp (Sep 12, 2011)

aragon said:
			
		

> Even so, chromium starts up significantly faster than firefox, and I don't think anyone can claim that it does significantly less than firefox?


Yes, I can.
There's a ton of ways in which you can customize FF that are unavailable on Chromium.
And while it is dog slow, which I hate, my productivity on competing browsers is way lower.


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## Slurp (Sep 12, 2011)

2 forum staff:
It sucks to be unable to edit my messages. WTF is that? x(


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## graudeejs (Sep 12, 2011)

Slurp said:
			
		

> 2 forum staff:
> It sucks to be unable to edit my messages. WTF is that? x(



10 days + 10 posts, then you can edit.  Read FAQ and/or email you received when you registered


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## xibo (Sep 12, 2011)

Crivens said:
			
		

> Bomard you with flash ads, store and hide tracking cookies, ask for updates any random(100) seconds, install spyware, require GL for rendering, create new demand for increased file system space, ...


Nice one. I would have said my konqueror can do all that but do it better, but there i forgot konqi can't do flash (on SuSE, never had flash instaled on FreeBSD).



> Ok, seriously now: a browser does more than display text and graphics. It should do more, like manage my bookmarks.


Managing your bookmarks (including the management dialog), won't take much more then some dozen kB of x86 code if you refer to some rather sophisticated frameworks as firefox does.

A browser is more or less an interpreter, as that is 90% of it's complexity. Rendering text and images into some widget and drawing it and some UI or managing some tcp connections and caches is hardly an issue.

Web servers, like browsers, like often do not conform to the HTTP specification these days, but you want your transfers to be made and don't care whether the server is properly replying or not. Also CMS just like "web designers" often are providing faulty/invalid html, javascript, css, ... so the next step would be "correcting" the content/logic - if your browser doesn't properly display my AJAX page that doesn't have a single semicolon in any javascript code, I won't tell you that I'm a poor programmer but "your browser sucks" instead. So have fun at interpreting what the original author was intending when programming, and next step is actually compiling the whole blob and running it - obviously you need it to run fast and compile even faster.



> Surely Firefox is more at fault than the linux kernel (this time) since even IE6 in wine starts faster than a native instance of Firefox 5.


I could be wrong/outdated, but isn't wine's mshtml actually mozilla's gecko?


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 12, 2011)

kpedersen said:
			
		

> Perhaps what I meant to say is:- What extra features does Firefox offer us nowerdays that can justify the ~500% increase in cpu / memory requirements from say Netscape or even IE6.


You're kidding, right, troll? :e

It's not just Firefox. All browsers have far more features that those could only dream of. Faster javascript engines, better network and parallel operation, asynchronous communication to the server, local storage, direct bit map drawing, image manipulation/rotation/transformation, more image format support, built in video and audio, built in form data and drag/drop between apps, and on and on. So much that I no longer have the ability to keep up with it all. At one time, I did everything to create a web site. Nowadays, I have to farm some of it out cause I just lose track of how things work.


> Surely Firefox is more at fault than the linux kernel (this time) since even IE6 in wine starts faster than a native instance of Firefox 5.


Wouldn't know but IE6 is a mediocre embarrassment compared to FF1.0.


> I strongly believe that Firefox should be rewritten. Especially if the future of computers is going to rely so much on a web browser.


It has been rewritten. Anyone with the current version, FF6, will testify to how well it starts up and runs and any statements about being a memory hog are a past memory. I'm on FF9, the nightly update. You'd be shocked.


> I would say that Firefox is a prime example of feature creep but... there havn't even really been any new features.


What version are you running man?!! While a user may not notice 3/4 of what's new, as a developer, there's so much going on, I can't keep up (as I said earlier)!


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## xibo (Sep 12, 2011)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> better network and parallel operation


HTTP 1.1 Specification Chapter 8, Section 1.4:

```
A single-user client SHOULD NOT maintain more than 2 connections with any server or proxy.
```

But it's not like anyone cares about such things any more these days. IIRC Firefox has never cared for it to begin with.


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 12, 2011)

ALL current browsers open more than two by default. I remember a lot of talk about that in the past but don't remember the conclusion. Note that SHOULD NOT does not make it a requirement so using more than two is not failing the specification. 

But that's not what I meant by parallel operation. I'm talking about the fetching of data that, in the past, would have tied the browser up in blocking.


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## kpedersen (Sep 12, 2011)

xibo said:
			
		

> I could be wrong/outdated, but isn't wine's mshtml actually mozilla's gecko?


I meant IE6 with a full install (IEs4Linux). Not the default IE6/gecko compatibility stuff.
Although most web developers do not hack in IE6 support these days... At least the thing starts up quickly lol.

Regarding the new features of Firefox. On comparison of v2 and v5. I honestly do not see any new features between them and yet v5 takes up more than 3x the amount of ram.

Perhaps I am just using it wrong


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 13, 2011)

kpedersen said:
			
		

> Although most web developers do not hack in IE6 support these days... At least the thing starts up quickly lol.


Don't say most. A lot of us still have to. One of the biggest customers of one of my clients is a big financial institution still entrenched with software that only runs on IE6. We charge them a 50% hourly premium for any work we do to hack IE6. Next year, we will do the same for IE7.


> On comparison of v2 and v5. I honestly do not see any new features between them and yet v5 takes up more than 3x the amount of ram.
> 
> Perhaps I am just using it wrong


We have not seen FF2 in years. You must be doing something wrong if you didn't see the UI changes alone going to FF3 and especially FF4. btw, FF6 is the current version and FF7 will be out soon. But don't go by the version numbers anymore. It'll drive you crazy.

Disclaimer: I almost became a Mozilla developer a few years ago.
Disclaimer: I started using Chrome exclusively this year.
Disclaimer: I LOVE FF6+.
Disclaimer: I wish I would make up my mind.


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## kpedersen (Sep 13, 2011)

I rarely see UI changes as a feature. If anything they annoy me. (Perhaps I am in the wrong profession ;p)

I was talking about features that makes it easier for me to browse websites on the internet. Apart from security updates (and better multithreading?) I just don't see anything to make Firefox any different from version 2.

Which, whilst a good thing (prevents crazyness like Gnome 3), it still uses the same amount of resources as it would if it was rendering pages in full 3D lol.

That said, I use Firefox exclusively... but only because everyone else does.
I will try out the latest firefox when I next update my ports tree. I predict it will be much the same... just even slower


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## drhowarddrfine (Sep 13, 2011)

kpedersen said:
			
		

> Apart from security updates (and better multithreading?) I just don't see anything to make Firefox any different from version 2.


Then you're talking about under the hood and, there, FF2 has no resemblence to FF5+ and can't do any of the things I listed above.


> I will try out the latest firefox when I next update my ports tree. I predict it will be much the same... just even slower


You will be in for a pleasant awakening.


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