Firefox Becomes the New Chrome As Users Complain of Huge Memory Usage

silversurfer

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Palemoon isn't really a trustworthy browser in terms of security, without kind of built-in sandbox and developed by one man show or a few people more, nobody knows how seriously fixing vulnerabilities etc.
 

Eggnog

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Actually the real memory hog in a modern browser is the GPU process IDK why they don't schedule a garbage collection every time you close a tab, the only browser that manages this in a more efficient way is the new Edge. You can reproduce this after a long browsing session and close all tabs, memory usage won't go down as it was when you launched it.

PD: IMHO Firefox is the best Windows browser (super smooth scrolling and animations) but the worst on Android (website incompatibilities, background tabs getting discarded after switching to other app, weird rendering artifacts, slow CSS animations, etc).

For personal use, I've been using Firefox for years with Windows and Linux and haven't had any problems that I can recall. Then again, I use very few extensions and don't normally have more than a handful of tabs open at a time. I've actually found, at least for me, that Edge works very well on my Android phone. I agree with you Firefox is horrible on Android. Chrome and Edge are the only two browsers our sys admins let us use at work, so I mostly use Chrome there.

I've pretty much become browser agnostic as time goes on, though. So I don't tend to get wound up about browsers. I'll use Firefox, Chrome, Edge ... whatever works for the situation. But I prefer Firefox if I get a choice.
 

plat

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I used to get minor memory leaks with Firefox but never nailed down the precise cause. They would show up in Event Viewer as RADAR Pre_Leak WOW_64. I wonder sometimes if certain plug-ins like Widevine and/or some add-ons from antivirus companies could play a role as a combination or if it's inherently Firefox.

Currently, I have no Widevine or antivirus-made add ons and use chromium Edge and Vivaldi, interchangeably w/ 3-7 tabs open. So, in the morning upon startup, the %memory in use is 10%. At the end of the session, when the computer goes nighty-night, %memory in use is 12%. That return of memory to the system is pretty good, and there was never a restart of the machine. This is with 16 GB of RAM.

I mean, the old argument is "RAM is there to be used." But there are these mental limits on what you're comfortable with when it comes to hardware resources. Anything over a certain typical limit causes concern.
I liked Firefox a lot. But these two chromium browsers are superior in too many ways for me to go back.
 

South Park

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I think some of the excessive Firefox RAM usage I observe is due to the *monkey script managers, with Violentmonkey causing even more RAM usage than Tamper in my latest test, although Tampermonkey runs smooth as silk on Chromium-based Slimjet. Unfortunately, I need a script manager for much of what I do online, including image viewing and saving on Twitter and Instagram.
 
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HarborFront

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I've found FF 75 to be rather unpleasant, so I'm giving Ungoogled Chromium another try. Although the measured RAM usage is about the same, Chromium (with mostly the same extensions) seems to load pages faster and to be more responsive.
Just remember a few things regarding Ungoogled Chromium

1) It's not using the latest Chromium version
2) If you want to install extensions please follow the steps I have laid out below. It's the only way to load extensions for now.........a bit tedious


3) Site like gmx mail is not supporting the browser even though it is using Chromium unlike Brave which works
 
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bayasdev

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Who still uses Firefox nowadays? Chromium all the way.
The only good Chromium browser is Edge but I dislike MS sync approach trying to link my Outlook to my local account, so I keep using FF as my daily driver. There are other good Chromium browsers like Vivaldi but they're memory hogs, FF at least has butter smooth scrolling.
 

DSD27

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Apr 15, 2020
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The only good Chromium browser is Edge but I dislike MS sync approach trying to link my Outlook to my local account, so I keep using FF as my daily driver. There are other good Chromium browsers like Vivaldi but they're memory hogs, FF at least has butter smooth scrolling.
Edge, Opera, Vivaldi... But I prefer Edge too, why install Firefox to take more space...
The Microsoft sync approach is one of the best things for me, it's very handy. All their apps automatedly logged in, I launch Edge and my Microsoft/outlook account is already logged in. It saves you so much hassle. Local accounts are history.
 
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bayasdev

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Never happened to me... Using Microsoft account for many years.
What exactly happens to you?
I had this problem in earlier W10 days, icons got corrupted and some UWP apps were unable to launch. IDK if it's solved but I still dislike MS accounts, other companies have a big button for resetting sync data while they don't.
 

blackice

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I had this problem in earlier W10 days, icons got corrupted and some UWP apps were unable to launch. IDK if it's solved but I still dislike MS accounts, other companies have a big button for resetting sync data while they don't.
YES, this is a problem. And god forbid you install a UWP app on a secondary hard drive and have to reinstall Windows. You can’t just say hey look here for installed M$ stuff. YOU CANNOT DELETE THE FOLDER! It’s insane. I had to move everything else off the HD and reformat.
 

DSD27

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Apr 15, 2020
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Unless you have an insanely small hard drive I don’t think a browser is a space concern. If it is you might need a bigger hard drive.
SSD... most people still have SSDs with like 250GB. If you want to put games on them... A browser will be slower on a hard drive.

I had this problem in earlier W10 days, icons got corrupted and some UWP apps were unable to launch. IDK if it's solved but I still dislike MS accounts, other companies have a big button for resetting sync data while they don't.
Earlier W10 days are long gone...never heard of it.
 
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blackice

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I did discover if you just tell it to install to that same drive it seems to find it. At least in one case...not counting on that always working.
 

ChoiceVoice

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Oct 10, 2014
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dunno. the last time i checked firefox was 4x lighter on my system than google chrome. it wasn't even remotely close. and I'm not a firefox shrill, i use yandex (which is heavy like chrome).
 
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SeriousHoax

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Mar 16, 2019
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The only good Chromium browser is Edge but I dislike MS sync approach trying to link my Outlook to my local account, so I keep using FF as my daily driver. There are other good Chromium browsers like Vivaldi but they're memory hogs, FF at least has butter smooth scrolling.
They also force you use their Your Phone app if you want to sync across multiple devices. I can't directly send any link to my Android or from Android to PC without having the app installed on my PC and Android. This is extremely stupid. On Firefox it's just a matter of two clicks, even Chrome now has this feature but for Edge I need to install this app which is extremely annoying.
 
L

Local Host

It's kinda funny that you need minimum 8GB in 2020 to run any browser comfortably. Like all browsers should be well optimize to even run on potato laptops.
Developers are lazy, no one optimizes their code to take full advantage of modern hardware (they exploit modern hardware to justify their unoptimized code).
They also force you use their Your Phone app if you want to sync across multiple devices. I can't directly send any link to my Android or from Android to PC without having the app installed on my PC and Android. This is extremely stupid. On Firefox it's just a matter of two clicks, even Chrome now has this feature but for Edge I need to install this app which is extremely annoying.
Your comment has no logic, the Phone APP is to connect your Desktop and Phone, it has nothing to do with Edge which has it's own Sync shared between devices.
 

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