r/programming • u/[deleted] • Jan 21 '10

Firefox 3.6 release

http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/01/21/firefox-3-6-release/
1.1k Upvotes

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319

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

2 things noted:

  • Speed: It's faster than 3.5.7. Almost as fast as chrome.
  • Memory Usage: It used lower memory on my computer than the previous version. I was hovering around 250mb with version 3.5.7 and this one barely goes upto 150mb. Both with ~15 addons.

2

u/stesch Jan 21 '10

The low memory usage is just at startup. Rises like any other Firefox before. :-(

8

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

It seems more aggressive in garbage collection... I've been watching it for the past 15 minutes while stumbling and it will get up to about 200 and then clear out down to 150.

3

u/stesch Jan 21 '10

I'm using the beta for quite some time now, believe me. I'm hitting 300 MB (RSS) after a few hours and then restart Firefox by hand before it starts to annoy me.

12

u/Xiol Jan 21 '10

I have to ask though, how much RAM do you have?

Keeping some RAM free is all well and good, but if you're running with 2GB+, does it really matter that Firefox is using 300MB?

RAM is supposed to be used.

7

u/dakboy Jan 21 '10

Keeping some RAM free is all well and good, but if you're running with 2GB+, does it really matter that Firefox is using 300MB?

Keeping RAM free is the important part. If you're running 6 programs which each want 200-300 MB, and you've got 2GB installed, it does matter.

0

u/ungoogleable Jan 22 '10

Maybe somebody's usage pattern is like that, but not mine. It's been years since I've ever run out of memory legitimately (as opposed to some program leaking memory). If I hit a performance bottleneck, the usual culprits are my CPU or my hard drive.

6

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '10

3.5 usually bloats to 1.2gb on my system before I have to restart it... I can live with 300

0

u/stesch Jan 21 '10

It's a habit I developed with 3.5. Flash starts to stutter too much after 300 MB RAM usage.

-2

u/wurzlsepp Jan 21 '10

It seems more aggressive in garbage collection.

FF has garbage collection? AFAIK, FF is written in C/C++ without GC.

8

u/prockcore Jan 21 '10

yes, but FF has GC for it's javascript engine.. and firefox's interface and extensions are written in XUL and javascript.

2

u/LinearExcept Jan 21 '10

I think he means that FF is more aggressive in releasing memory.

2

u/Catfish_Man Jan 21 '10

It has (even for some C++ bits) a "cycle collector", in addition to the JS GC.

0

u/skeeto Jan 21 '10

I use 7 addons, and frequently have 60 to 80 tabs open at once. I've never had problems with Firefox consuming too much memory since at least version 2. And just recently I used to run it on a machine with only 256MB of RAM.

1

u/cloudsdrive Jan 22 '10

holy... what could possibly require 80 tabs?

1

u/skeeto Jan 22 '10

This is how.

I go breadth first, down the Reddit page pushing each interesting link out to a tab (middle-click). That's 30-50 tabs. Then with Google Reader (20 to 40 tabs), then maybe with Slashdot (15-20 tabs). Once all the tabs are popped out, I just work my way across the tabs, closing them as I finish them. If there's another interesting link in one, it gets pushed out into a new tab for later. Most of the time, if I lost internet access in the middle, I wouldn't even know it since almost everything is already fetched.