V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 2, 2021 Share Posted June 2, 2021 Oooh, I'm havin' fun now! After upgrading my kernel and realizing that my herky-jerky mouse issues were possibly FF or Nvidia. I decided to see if I could upgrade away from this old obsolete v68.x ESR version of FF that is in stable Slackware 14.2. Back a few years ago, I tried to upgrade FF by building it on my Slackware. However, it didn't fly (no audio) because that version was the first version that required Pulse Audio. I was still running ALSA back then. I gave up on the project and stuck with the stable FF. Today, I was tootling around on LinuxQuestions.org and actually found that long time member Ruari Oedegaard had written a very cool script to create an install-able .tgz package for Slackware that utilizes the most recent stable version of FF (89.0). I figured what the heck... I can revert if it goes boom. Even if it REALLY GOES BOOM, I can bring up my mirrored rsync backup from earlier today (before the kernel upgrade). So... I DID IT. :) I'm running FF 89.0 fully sync'd and customized on my Slack 14.2 right this minute. It's BLAZING fast compared to that ol' ESR version. It's also much more efficient. With 11 tabs open, one playing music on YouTube, it's using about 540M of RAM and barely tickling the CPU @ 1.4% while I'm typing this. COOL, huh? I'm a HAPPY Firefox user! 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted June 3, 2021 Share Posted June 3, 2021 11 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said: Oooh, I'm havin' fun now! After upgrading my kernel and realizing that my herky-jerky mouse issues were possibly FF or Nvidia. I decided to see if I could upgrade away from this old obsolete v68.x ESR version of FF that is in stable Slackware 14.2. Back a few years ago, I tried to upgrade FF by building it on my Slackware. However, it didn't fly (no audio) because that version was the first version that required Pulse Audio. I was still running ALSA back then. I gave up on the project and stuck with the stable FF. Today, I was tootling around on LinuxQuestions.org and actually found that long time member Ruari Oedegaard had written a very cool script to create an install-able .tgz package for Slackware that utilizes the most recent stable version of FF (89.0). I figured what the heck... I can revert if it goes boom. Even if it REALLY GOES BOOM, I can bring up my mirrored rsync backup from earlier today (before the kernel upgrade). So... I DID IT. I'm running FF 89.0 fully sync'd and customized on my Slack 14.2 right this minute. It's BLAZING fast compared to that ol' ESR version. It's also much more efficient. With 11 tabs open, one playing music on YouTube, it's using about 540M of RAM and barely tickling the CPU @ 1.4% while I'm typing this. COOL, huh? I'm a HAPPY Firefox user! Neat. What are you using to measure memory use ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 3, 2021 Author Share Posted June 3, 2021 8 hours ago, abarbarian said: What are you using to measure memory use ? $ top in terminal and Xfce Task Manager in GUI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted June 3, 2021 Share Posted June 3, 2021 I think I should be seeing an update to Firefox 89.0 in Arch here soon. I had been using Firefox ESR in Debian, but lately I've been using the Brave browser in Debian. I'm sticking with Firefox in Arch, though; I didn't install Brave in Arch because I didn't want to add anything else from AUR at this time, and Brave isn't in Arch's main repos. I installed Brave in Debian to have it as a 2nd option, with FF being the primary browser, but Brave seems to be growing on me. Can't see myself giving up Firefox completely, in any case -- it's been my primary browser for most of the time since before I got started with Linux. I haven't checked anything re: performance but Brave does seem faster than Firefox. Could be my imagination, I guess. Not sure if anybody else here has been using it. Based on Chromium (!!). Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 2 hours ago, saturnian said: Based on Chromium (!!). Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's a bad thing. Support browser diversity, down with monocratic browser despotism. Firefox needs support, if it goes away, every browser will be based on the same core. Quote Brave does seem faster than Firefox. Could be my imagination, I guess. Can confirm it's your imagination. The speed and quality of internet connection has far greater effect on browser performance than different browsers. I now have a 256Mb/s pipe and the difference between FF and Chromium is imperceptible. And if you're revisiting pages which are cached, the speed of your processor, RAM, and storage also plays a small part. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 You have both Firefox and Chromium installed, sunrat? I like having two browsers. My secondary browser for the past few years has been Pale Moon. I am not gonna be uninstalling Firefox. Are there concerns that Firefox might be going away? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 37 minutes ago, saturnian said: You have both Firefox and Chromium installed, sunrat? I like having two browsers. My secondary browser for the past few years has been Pale Moon. I am not gonna be uninstalling Firefox. Are there concerns that Firefox might be going away? Yes I do have both. Chromium worked better with a couple of secret custom Tampermonkey scripts I was using for operating an Ingress anomaly event. Other than that 1% occasion I use Firefox always. Usage share of desktop browsers shows Firefox falling rapidly to under 7% whereas Chrome has 68%. Edge and Opera are also Chromium-based so the stats are even more dire when those are included. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers It's like what happened to Netscape when Internet Explorer surfaced and that turned out to be a travesty for the whole internet with standards being ignored and development stalling once market dominance was won. I am extremely worried history is repeating. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 "Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?" Well, the possible demise of Firefox is gonna be quite far down my list of things to worry about these days. I brought in the update to FF 89.0 in Arch, and I'm using it now. Looks fine so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 14 hours ago, saturnian said: Brave does seem faster than Firefox. Could be my imagination, I guess. Not sure if anybody else here has been using it. I used it for a couple of months but then it borked on me and I got rid of it. It did seem to be a tad faster than FF though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 (edited) 15 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said: $ top in terminal and Xfce Task Manager in GUI. Looks like your Slackware set up is faster than my Arch.FF with you Tube playing and 12 open tabs. Mind you the cpu use goes up and down with a high of around 8.5%. Edited June 4, 2021 by abarbarian 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 9 hours ago, abarbarian said: I used it for a couple of months but then it borked on me and I got rid of it. What happened? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 9 hours ago, abarbarian said: 12 open tabs. 6 open tabs is a lot for me! Very rare for me to have a lot of tabs open. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted June 5, 2021 Share Posted June 5, 2021 14 hours ago, saturnian said: What happened? No idea. It stopped working after an update. As I was just playing around with it I decided not to waste any more time trying to fix it. 14 hours ago, saturnian said: 6 open tabs is a lot for me! Very rare for me to have a lot of tabs open. I only had the 12 tabs open to recreate Eric's test run. I usually only have four or five sites open at once. I'm a guy I don't do multitasking well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 5, 2021 Author Share Posted June 5, 2021 Usually, the only time I have multiple tabs open is when they're from the same site... like Diaspora or here at Scot's, etc. I will check for unread posts and then open them in tabs. There might be a YouTube tab playing music occasionally, as the mood hits. Oh, and my homepage (custom_dial) is always open. It's a local file on my system, not on the Internet. I'm not one of those 37 tabs open kind of people. Browser w/ Custom_Dial Homepage Open 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 10, 2021 Author Share Posted June 10, 2021 I found a neat tweak for FF 89.x (Proton Interface) today. One of the things I didn't like about this new interface is that fact that the tabs are too fat (tall); wasting screen space, in my opinion. Using a config tweak, I was able to narrow them down about 25%, which is just the right size for me. - In address bar: type about:config -> agree to warning message -> browser.compact.mode.show -> make True - R-click toolbar -> Density Setting -> Compact mode (not supported) And POOF! Tabs now nice and slim. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted June 10, 2021 Share Posted June 10, 2021 I may be wrong, but I think that does the same thing as changing the value for browser.uidensity from the default "0" to "1" (for "compact mode"). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 10, 2021 Author Share Posted June 10, 2021 Well, without making the modification in about:config, I didn't even have the choice for Compact mode. I only had "Normal" and "Touch". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 10, 2021 Author Share Posted June 10, 2021 29 minutes ago, saturnian said: but I think that does the same thing as changing the value for browser.uidensity That could very well be true. I didn't know about that modification. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted June 10, 2021 Share Posted June 10, 2021 (edited) Hm. Changing browser.uidensity to "1" also puts the "Compact mode (not supported" option into the "Density" menu. But it also changes the browser to compact mode. The browser.compact.mode.show key puts the option into the menu, but it doesn't automatically enable compact mode for you. So they don't do exactly the same thing. looks like. Edited June 10, 2021 by saturnian 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 11, 2021 Author Share Posted June 11, 2021 Well, one thing's for sure. I definitely like the thinner tabs. I'm happy with FF 89.x now. I probably won't be tweaking much anymore. By the way, on my system, FF still renders fonts much more dark and richly than Chromium. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted June 11, 2021 Share Posted June 11, 2021 20 hours ago, saturnian said: Hm. Changing browser.uidensity to "1" also puts the "Compact mode (not supported" option into the "Density" menu. But it also changes the browser to compact mode. The browser.compact.mode.show key puts the option into the menu, but it doesn't automatically enable compact mode for you. So they don't do exactly the same thing. looks like. Neat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted June 11, 2021 Share Posted June 11, 2021 (edited) Firefox 89 - Another redesign, another rollercoaster Note the section, "All this said Firefox should still be your no.1 browser". I tend to agree with all that. I'm not sure what the big deal is about the icons in the menu. They're still showing up in FF 89 here. [Edit: My mistake, no icons in FF 89's main menu here.] The items in Brave's main menu don't have icons. Personally, I like it better without the icons. Edited June 11, 2021 by saturnian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted June 12, 2021 Share Posted June 12, 2021 Why do all these projects all choose the name Proton? That is also the name of steam's compatibility api for windows games on linux. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 12, 2021 Author Share Posted June 12, 2021 It's the name of my secure email, too... Proton Mail. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted June 12, 2021 Share Posted June 12, 2021 Just now, V.T. Eric Layton said: It's the name of my secure email, too... Proton Mail. Yeah, same 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 8 hours ago, securitybreach said: Why do all these projects all choose the name Proton? That is also the name of steam's compatibility api for windows games on linux. Roger Ramjet: I'll just take one of my Proton Energy Pills. They give me the strength of 20 atom bombs for a period of 20 seconds. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 On 6/12/2021 at 7:49 AM, saturnian said: Firefox 89 - Another redesign, another rollercoaster For once I agree with almost everything Dedoimedo says, particularly about development for development sake. There are virtually no new features in Firefox in the last 10 years that I would care if they never existed. The same goes for that other C-word browser and a plethora of other software out there. If only "development" would go back to meaning "better" rather than just "bigger, prettier, and/or different". Development should mean fixing bugs, improving performance, reducing overhead. There's nothing fundamentally different about how I use a browser from 20 years ago, and the way they looked was perfectly acceptable at the time way back then. One particular example of good development that comes to mind is Ardour the multitrack audio workstation software. It has had only minor UI changes in it's 16 years of life, but its functionality and performance are leagues ahead. All this said, Firefox should still be your no.1 browser Here he makes the same point I was talking about in several other recent topics: Quote Firefox does not use the Chromium engine - thus if Firefox disappears, there's nothing to stop total technology domination by a single product, and we go fully back to the Internet Explorer 6.0 era, when every computer-capable chimp hardcoded HTML/CSS declarations so they worked in this one particular browser. In fact, this is already happening, and there are tons of (useless) Web sites that only work in Chromium-based applications. Whenever I encounter a site like that, I think of education in the sunny expanses of the Gulag system, and then I add them to a permanent blacklist, so I never ever visit them again. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 8 hours ago, sunrat said: One particular example of good development that comes to mind is Ardour the multitrack audio workstation software. It has had only minor UI changes in it's 16 years of life, but its functionality and performance are leagues ahead. Pretty much why I use Window Maker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 There's hardly anything in Firefox 89 that I can find to complain about. I think the devs are actually doing a pretty good job. For me, from what I'm seeing here, the worst thing about the recent upgrade is the default has too space on the tabs. Certainly nothing that would make me want to stop using Firefox. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 How about Vivaldi? Just installed it in Arch on my old Toshiba. Seems responsive enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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