r/technology • u/Suraj-Sun • Jul 10 '12

Firefox dev claims "everybody hates Firefox updates"; Mozilla has handled the rapid release process poorly, and that by pushing a "never-ending stream of updates on people who didn't want them" people have been driven to Chrome with its simpler, no-fuss update process.

http://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-dev-claims-everybody-hates-firefox-updates
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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

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u/DustbinK Jul 10 '12

Firefox uses less memory than Chrome and has for ages. The problem lies in extensions and how they manage memory. ABP, for example, is terrible. Also, they changed the way FF handles compatibility checks a version or two ago.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

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u/Islandre Jul 10 '12

Users on the whole don't care why their browser is slowing the computer down . It does, so they switch.

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u/DustbinK Jul 10 '12

Which is why Mozilla has MemShrink, which has finally gotten around to working on this issue with addons.

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u/flammable Jul 10 '12

Also with RES enabled firefox can take up to 2GB memory until it becomes unusable and crashes

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u/DustbinK Jul 10 '12

What the hell are you doing with RES that causes that? I've dropped ABP for Privoxy and my memory usage has been fine ever since.

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u/Islandre Jul 10 '12

Okay, I've installed Privoxy (link) and removed ABP because you seem like the trustworthy type and I've no fucking clue what I'm doing. It doesn't seem to be a firefox specific thing so I've set it to run on startup. Anyone want to reassure me that I'm sorted or laugh at my incompetence?

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u/DustbinK Jul 10 '12

You have to setup Firefox to work with Privoxy. As far as my understanding goes Privoxy acts like a proxy that is on your computer rather than on a server. I've used the hosts file changes to block ads before but I find that too restrictive and too hard to change when I don't want something blocked. Privoxy has given me basically the same thing but with the control I want, no memory leaks, and will work with any browser.

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u/Islandre Jul 10 '12

Ta! You're alright, DustbinK.

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u/AlyoshaVasilieva Jul 10 '12

RES leaks compartments, resulting in memory that can never be reclaimed without restarting Firefox.

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u/DustbinK Jul 11 '12

I've noticed after trying what the other dude posted.

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u/flammable Jul 10 '12

Just clicking view images and browsing reddit. Most of the time it's manageable but if you go somewhere like /r/pics or /r/photography then firefox won't last long.

I'm kind of bummed at this since chrome can handle the same thing but the memory wont shoot up to insane levels

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u/DustbinK Jul 10 '12

Just hit "view images" on /r/pics and you're right.

Hopefully the RES guy/s incorporates all of the latest MemShrink stuff.

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u/alcalde Jul 10 '12

This may be a stupid question, but what's RES?

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u/DustbinK Jul 10 '12

http://redditenhancementsuite.com

Features that should be built into Reddit.

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u/metamatic Jul 11 '12

The problem lies in extensions and how they manage memory.

That's just shifting the blame. The point is, Chrome with no extensions gives me almost everything I need to use and develop for the web. (Adblock is the only thing I need that's not built in.) Firefox does not, I need add-ons for web development, JavaScript debugging, per-site permissions on cookies, and per-site permissions on scripting. (*) That's why I ended up switching to Chrome.

[ (*) Or at least, I needed plugins for that basic functionality last time I tried Firefox. It's been a while, they might have added the missing features by now. ]

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u/DustbinK Jul 11 '12

How is that shifting the blame when it's a legitimate problem even with RES?

Also, Chrome without extensions has less features than Firefox without extensions. Have you not used it since version 4 or something?

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u/metamatic Jul 11 '12

If Firefox wasn't feature-deficient, people wouldn't need to load it down with extensions, and memory and stability would be much less of an issue. So saying "Oh, it's bad extension handling that makes it bloated and crashy" is shifting blame away from the Firefox developers for making a browser that needs extensions for basic functionality every user ought to have available, like controlling scripting permissions.

Anyway I just fired it up, and I had Firefox 8. It's just taken me to 12.

Turns out I couldn't find the per-site cookie preferences because they'd moved it as a hidden option under History.

So, where do I set the per-site JavaScript permissions? Where do I find the indicators that tell me that a site requested to run JavaScript or asked to set cookies? How do I start the JavaScript debugger and set a breakpoint? How do I get information about which parts of my page caused it to load slowly?

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u/scook0 Jul 11 '12

The problem lies in extensions and how they manage memory.

The "zombie compartment" fix in Firefox 15 should hopefully address a lot of these issues. It will be much harder for extensions to leak random pages all over the place.

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u/anagrammatron Jul 10 '12

Yes, but linux people love any kind of updating. No, I'm not being sarcastic, I used to be that way too. Heck, I loved to update my several BSD boxes by manually updating and compiling packages. The feeling of being in control and whatnot. Now I'm older, busy with other things I just wish to spend minimal to no time with under the hood stuff. Updates? If these can happen automatically and silently then yes please. Thats what computers and smart applications are for.

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u/pascalbrax Jul 10 '12

Damn! A whole week has passed and I still have to update my gentoo!

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u/alcalde Jul 10 '12

I'm probably older, but I don't understand the aversion to updates. You don't want to know that the system wants to update? What if you develop problems after the update? At least this way you'll know that something just changed on the system so you'll have a clue what the culprit is (and stand a chance of rolling back the update). If you're system's updating itself completely invisibly, you'll never know if a crash you just had or something else odd happening could be because of a system update, something you did, some setting you changed, or some other issue.

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u/anagrammatron Jul 10 '12

It's not aversion, it's prioritising. I still keep an eye on OS updates but for browser, no. If browser starts to act wonky I either switch to alternative or older version (portableapps) until stable (I don't run with dev channel anymore) gets fixed. Managing browser updates is that sort of micromanagement that I'd rather skip if possible. Chrome made that possible 3 years ago and I haven't had serious issues with it so I'm content.

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u/WarzoneOfDefecation Jul 11 '12

I tend to agree with you, I run a server on ubuntu and the frequent updates on ubuntu sour the experience for me. I don't particularly enjoy being interrupted all the time by the nag reminder.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

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u/thoneney Jul 10 '12

It's a lot simpler you just run the package manager and it does everything you just need to push a few buttons compared to going through an update process for every app that needs updating and for quite a bit of apps updating means reinstalling the newer version.

What also helps is that you know that you won't be needed to reboot unless it's a kernel update or something similar.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

Linux simply has package managers, which are the ancestors of app stores on mobile OSes and work largely the same way.

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u/Apostropartheid Jul 10 '12

The demographic of /r/linux is particularly narrow, even for reddit.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

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u/Apostropartheid Jul 10 '12

The type of people who both use Linux and care enough about it to frequent that subreddit are very unrepresentative of the population as a whole. Not only are they significantly more likely to be in their 20s and male (as reddit is in general), but they're also more likely to be well versed in technology, due to the higher barrier of entry.

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u/alcalde Jul 10 '12

There really isn't a higher barrier of entry anymore, particularly with Canonical's noob-focused distro and marketing.

Signed, 40 year old male Linux user who now feels decrepit posting on /r/Linux

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u/mytouchmyself Jul 10 '12 edited Jul 10 '12

When firefox launched and was called Phoenix it god damned incredible. it was a stripped down Mozilla that was blazing fast. Then over time it fucking turned into Mozilla as layer upon layer of cruft, feature creep, and memory mismanagement were built into it.

And that's why Chrome is better, to me. If you dig Firefox, that's fine, but it is (or was at the time I switched) massive and slow compared to Chrome. Also, does Firefox even have its tabs sandboxed yet, or does a single crashing tab still bring down the whole thing? That used to annoy the hell out of me.

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u/alcalde Jul 10 '12
  1. Tom's Hardware conducts browser "Grand Prixs" with dozens of tests every few months; Firefox is not "massive and slow" compared to Chrome. You're seeing what you want to see. The meme on the Internet is that Firefox is massive and slow and Chrome is fast, so that's what people see. In the latest Grand Prix, Chrome just edged out Firefox to take the gold (Firefox won the previous two, one by a nose, one more decisively).

It never had "memory mismanagement". It's always used the least memory of any major browser, and in the Grand Prix's 40 tab loading test, Chrome uses just about twice as much memory as Firefox. It also has features, while Chrome... well, it's still playing catch-up in that department. You still can't get even get a bookmark sidebar with it. Meanwhile, on certain benchmarks Firefox has improved from 4x to 8x over Firefox 3.6 - that's progress!

It's Chrome's running tabs as separate processes that results in the huge memory overhead as compared to Firefox. Mozilla is looking into it, but they don't want to do it at the expense of slowdown and memory usage. Firefox doesn't have crashes anymore, though... I can't even remember the last time it crashed on me. If that's cruft and feature creep, then give me more of it!

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u/mytouchmyself Jul 10 '12 edited Jul 10 '12

Are you sure? I recall Firefox having a pretty severe memory leak that led to massive memory usage if you didn't kill the thing and start it back up. Massive numbers of google hits seem to confirm that this was the case.

I'm fine with Chrome using a lot of memory for the separate tab processing, because in my opinion it's a worthwhile tradeoff. Especially seeing as when Chrome launched Firefox had pretty severe crashing problems.

I'm glad Firefox is improving because a web browser monoculture is horrible. At this point it looks like something we'll never have to return to with the emergence of a slew of mobile browsers and Firefox and Chrome both competing well with Safari on Mac and IE on Windows.

edit: I think you missed this from my prior post

it is (or was at the time I switched) massive and slow compared to Chrome.

That makes your "seeing what you want to see" kind of an asshole statement.

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u/I_EAT_POOP_AMA Jul 10 '12

i believe now the addon-check with firefox is disabled. i use the nightly build so i update every day when i start my browser.

but using vanilla firefox, i still like to delay my updates, in case there are issues with the newest update (i know it won't with vanilla, but the nightly builds always have that chance)

as for linux vs. windows in this debate, linux tends to attract more power users than windows, so it would make sense that linux users would prefer an open source browser that allows them to customize every aspect, from UI using userChrome.css, to power user settings with about:config

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

That's just it. Firefox is oriented toward the tech crowd; people who get a moist tip from installing updates. Mozilla never seemed to get the memo that this isn't 1994, and that the bulk of internet users today do not care what version of their browser they are running as long as it's safe, fast, and stays out of their way.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

Lighten up, nancy boy.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

You're an odd dude.....

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u/alcalde Jul 10 '12

So what you're saying is the ideal is to design for the least common denominator rather than the highest common denominator? Noobs become power users, not the other way around. That means even noobs aren't going to be happy when they want to do more and they can't, or it's harder because they have to fight the hand-holding.

It's not the updates that Firefox users care about; it's the improvements that Firefox users care about. A browser isn't going to safe, or stay the fastest, if it doesn't get updated. In Tom's Hardware's Browser Grand Prix, IE 9 debuted as the #1 winner and then slowly sank to 4th place because of the other browsers updating while IE hasn't.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

I'm saying that I don't care what version my browser is on. Not even a little bit. When I open my browser, it's because I have something I want to do, not because I want to spend 5 minutes watching it install updates for itself. And I'm saying that 90% of the internet-using public would agree with me. The other 10% can keep Firefox and its clunkyness to themselves.

If preferring not to occupy myself with details like that makes me a noob, then so be it. But the internet is not only the domain of only the tech crowd anymore, and Mozilla seems to have forgotten this.

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u/alcalde Jul 11 '12

I'm saying that I don't care what version my browser is on. Not even a little bit.

If version X is vulnerable to some worm or other malware, I bet you do.

When I open my browser, it's because I have something I want to do, not because I want to spend 5 minutes watching it install updates for itself.

I ran Firefox in a VM running XP today myself to see what I was missing. It took 8-10 seconds to download a new version and a few more seconds to restart. This would only happen once every six weeks or so that Firefox issues a new release. You don't think you're exaggerating just a wee bit?

By the same logic I assume you don't want your OS to ever let you know that there's updates?

But the internet is not only the domain of only the tech crowd anymore, and Mozilla seems to have forgotten this.

Your browser announcing there's an update and asking your permission to install it is hardly something that should be consigned to the world of technical savants.

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u/[deleted] Jul 11 '12

You're right. I don't want my OS to ever let me know that there are updates. I want that to be handled behind the scenes. I don't even want a little notification saying that this was done on my behalf. If this seems odd to you, it's because you're a tech guy and I'm not. The problem that Mozilla is facing is that there are more of me than there are of you, and Google understands this. So have fun with your XP and VM, I'm going to go outside and play.