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Re: Straw poll: What browser do you use?



On 09/07/2010 10:15 AM, Morgan Gangwere wrote:
> Normally, I use Iceweasel as my normal browser, but on the poor box I
> have (a 1Ghz p3 Coppermine w/256MiB of RAM) I get this odd problem...
> It just eats memory like candy, and I don't even /have/ flash
> installed!

You must not use Chromium/Chrome then. It chews through much more memory
with its process-per-tab feature. Much more than Firefox too.

> Its not plugins its the /rendering engine/ and its /memory management
> techniques/. I've seen a single instance of FF sit there and eat memory
> progressively over 4-5 hours if I have 10-30 tabs open (Generally over
> 5-6 windows). I've seen it eat almost all of my 2GB swap too, which I
> keep on a flash drive. 

Again, this is the feature of any tab-based browser. You are caching
each page in each tab. Not only are you caching the pages, but the
browser needs to keep track of what page is associated with what tab,
and the tabs history independent of the others. This is a feature, and
you can turn this off it if bothers you. Worst case, don't use tabs, and
you'll notice your browser using much less memory.

> I'm personally using Midori, a webkit one, at the moment. it doesn't
> eat memory like the hog that iceweasel is, and on the crappy 8mb gfx
> card I'm on (laptop), its no problem for me to spare 3 seconds waiting
> for a page to load.

Midori also doesn't have extension capability, and its plugin
architecture is severely limited. Your browser does a lot for you, a lot
more than I think you realize. Midori doesn't use the amount of RAM
Firefox does, because its feature set is substantially smaller. You
could call this "bloat" in Firefox, if you wish, or crucial productivity
tools.

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