And people keep asking why I prefer Firefox
This is just another reason to add to the pile
this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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@Gormadt They say Firefox is slow. Because in the past it used to, especially with the old engine and when Chrome was new, that's true. But nowadays it does not matter anymore and the speed differences are negligible. If that is the only reason to not use Firefox, then people should reevaluate their decision.
Then there is the argument that people do not like Mozilla. But they like Google more? Even if you use a Chromium based browser by a different company, you give more power to Google this way, as the engine becomes a bigger part of the web. Am I crazy for thinking that?
I use Firefox since version 1 as my default. Occasionally I switched to a different browser, but always came back to good ol' Firefox.
Nothing wrong with Firefox. The problem though is that too many people have been convinced that some how Google is better. I personally do not think that it is about details people argue about. It more about using what they know, what their friends know, or what their friends will think is cool. In the end you either care about having an open web and user focused browser or you do not. Most people do not it seems.
The challenge for Firefox is that if user base is too small, developers will no longer test their sites against it. The other issue is that it is not clear if Firefox can keep pace with Google. For example Firefox desktop does not support WPA, and mobile versions it is not complete. It will be interesting how things will evolve. Maybe Google will even take steps to actually keep Mozilla and Firefox around and viable just to keep the Monopoly busters away. Who knows.
For me I do care, and will use Firefox until it is not feasible to do so if that day comes. At the moment it is just fine. Who knows the future.
Firefox has been slower to startup for a long time. Maybe a few seconds slower compared to Chrome. But it has always made up for it in it's memory usage. The more tabs you open, the worse Chrome gets.
@NaoPb Firefox starts in 2 seconds total for me on my 10 years old CPU, even with many plugins installed. While there are constantly 6 or more tabs open, most are not loaded in when starting Firefox, unless I click the tab itself. And opening a new private window is almost instant. I even use Firefox for reading PDFs, instead installing a dedicated application, because it is fast loading and does the job. All in all, it's probably not far away from Chrome in starting up Firefox. And it probably isn't that important, because the browser is open all the time for me.
As for the memory usage, I always thought Firefox is being bad here. Can't imagine Chrome being worse. Are people happy with that?
I remember Chrome starting nearly instantly. But that could be that it's doing some preloading. I haven't used Chrome in years though. 2 seconds for Firefox startup sounds about right yes.
As for memory, I wouldn't say Firefox is great. But I often have a lot of tabs open at once while I am researching some things and Firefox is just rock solid for me. It has had some memory leaks in the past but they seem to be mostly gone now. You'd probably find browsers that use less memory but I dare to question if they would use less memory than Firefox in my usecase.
In an unrelated note I am curious which modern browser (in Linux) uses the fewest amount of memory.
@NaoPb Hi, I just wanted report that the startup of Firefox is almost instant. I have a new modern PC build with a modern and fast M2 SSD and took the exact same Firefox profile over. Now running Firefox starts basically instant. The tabs are not loaded in however, so obviously the webpages would start loading once clicking the tab. But Firefox itself is now instant operation for me.
You are probably right. My memories are of using Firefox on a PC with a mechanical hard drive. Back then Chrome seemed to have the upper hand. But these days Firefox loads instantly when you have an SSD. So yes, please ignore my earlier argument.
This is the thing about Chrome and the whole Chromium based ecosystem. Why on earth would anyone use a browser from an Ad company.
By the way. They are planning on putting it in Android apps too. So there one gets little choice. A non-starter like Apple where you cannot even load your own apps and app stores or Android from an Ad company where you can with effort at least choose your own software and even image your own OS.
Hope other browser developers realize chromium is a ticking time bomb. I've used firefox for over 15 years and see no reason to change with the current landscape of browsers being so reliant on google .
Seriously… I’ve never once strayed from Firefox since its release.
I’m forced to use chrome for work and it is crap.
I guess that using safari on iOS devices is one exception, and it isn’t too bad.
I’ve used firefox for over 15 years and see no reason to change
Okay, but change to what then? All the other options are just Chrome, Safari, and Firefox again.
Ungoogle-Chromium, Brave, Vivaldi, Librewolf, anything that isn't paid by Google. That they are still based on Chrome or Firefox doesn't really matter, since they remove the undesirable parts of them.
Seemingly my Google pixel phone has stopped connecting to the Internet with other browsers. So I'm stuck using Google Chrome on it. 😠
I have a pixel 5a and haven't had that problem, currently using Fennec (firefox fork).
It’s a little ridiculous how people misunderstand this issue. This is literally to do away with the extremely privacy-invasive tracking that has been done using cookies and telemetry for years. You will be tracked less in Chrome than you did before, because the browser will hand off less information to sites you visit and there will be a degree of randomisation. This is to get rid of cookies soon, and to randomise the information a site gets when you visit instead of the whole deal.
It is, of course, more personalised than blocking all cookies and randomising telemetry, but if you were doing that, I expect you weren’t using Chrome to begin with. Using a Chrome browser with Topics is inherently more privacy-forward than using Chrome as it has been so far. Honestly, I hope that the deprecation of cookies will even help *Fox users down the lines as they become irrelevant to a large part of the web users.
If you want a solid explanation of what is actually happening with Topics, Security Now episode 935 explains the details. The transcript dives into Topics on page 9, explains the technicalities on page 12 and if you just want the conclusion, you can skip to the penultimate page and read the last few paragraphs in here: https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-935-notes.pdf (you can listen as well if you’d rather.)
Unlike Web Integrity Protection this is a reasonable step in the right direction. Can it break down the line? Sure. But then we’re back at where we were. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to use Firefox and Safari and hope that this will eventually help stop the cookie banner nightmare on those browsers as well (even if the cookies do nothing.)
It is only arguably better for Google Chrome because it is one of the worst browsers for tracking at the moment. Even Edge is probably better ironically. Personally I think it is a false decision and false logic. You can just get rid of the the tracking features like other browsers, no new feature needed. Google only has this option because frankly too many people have chosen go give google that power for whatever reason.
Frankly what the web needs is a micropayment system and this micropayment system should not go through Google or the Ad people. You do not see Google proposing this. Yes they had a beta program, but it was through them and you had to allow tracking to use it. So not a real solution.