Multiprocess Firefox [e10s] (Partial Release: Fx48)

[harhar]

In other words, there's no way turn on e10s in beta, right?

A few pages back, someone mentioned that you need to set "layers.offmainthreadcomposition.testing.enabled" to true. The normal "browser.tabs.remote.autostart" to enable e10s will then start working in beta and in stable.

[joeg]

In other words, there's no way turn on e10s in beta, right?

A few pages back, someone mentioned that you need to set "layers.offmainthreadcomposition.testing.enabled" to true. The normal "browser.tabs.remote.autostart" to enable e10s will then start working in beta and in stable.

OK, I've done it and having just seen the problem I have with Nightly, which I've mentioned previously in this thread, in Beta, I think it's working. This, though this is certainly not an "official" test.

I guess I should also add here that the issue appears related to one or more of the extensions in my ancient profile - which I plan to rebuild one of these years.

Anyway, what happens is that Fx crashes when I have only one tab open and in it is a Fx function, e.g. AOM, the Options panel, etc., and then I try to navigate away - in that same tab - to a website.

It happens every time.

Otherwise Electrolysis seems to work fine on my machines. Whether it's faster, slower, uses more or less memory, etc., I haven't yet tested in Beta. In Nightly, where it's easy to flip on and off, I've fooled around with it a bit, but subjectively, I haven't noticed any noticeable performance difference.

[revvo6]

Will Electrolysis ever come to Android Firefox?

I think it was already on it but they pulled the feature due to memory use being high.

Thanks. Maybe some day then.

Setting dom.ipc.processCount to higher than 1 gives what benefits?

[harhar]

Setting dom.ipc.processCount to higher than 1 gives what benefits?

If you increase the number, every tab you open will get its own process. The number you set is the limit where it will stop starting new processes.

If you open more tabs than that, it goes back to several tabs sharing processes. The default dom.ipc.processCount=1 means that the limit is one process and all tabs share this one process.

You need to experiment when increasing the number because each new process uses its own memory. Here for me with 8GB of RAM, setting it to 20 works well and limits Firefox to about 3GB memory overall (I don't have Flash installed and block ads on most websites).

What's perhaps nice is that if you close a tab, its process also get closed. This might help clean garbage out of memory and might keep Firefox from using more and more memory after a few hours of use, but I guess only works when not keeping a lot of tabs open.

When using hundreds of tabs, perhaps one of the addons that does "automatic unload" for tabs would work with this and regularly close processes and free memory. <- EDIT: I tried this just now, and it does not work. Firefox has a process running for each open tab, no matter if the tab is loaded or unloaded.

[mamooth]

Mozilla decided to not provide an easy opt-in to enable e10s in 43 beta. Their rationale was there were still too many e10s bugs in 43 (many of them fixed in 44 and 45), and that all those bugs (especially the crashes) getting reported would possibly hide significant non-e10s bugs. It seems telemetry in 43 did not differentiate between e10s and non-e10s, so they're upgrading telemetry. Will there be an e10s opt-in in 44beta? Unknown.

45 was the optimistic target for general release of e10s, but I don't see that happening. In the last 3 weeks, the number of e10s bugs on the burndown list has gone from 39 to 34. There are two weeks left in the cycle. The math isn't even close to working out.

[mamooth]

Mozilla's plan for 44beta is to randomly put each user on either an e10s or non-e10s path, a 50/50 split.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1225496

The plan is to not have a checkbox that allows switching between versions. Whether editing about:config will work isn't stated, but I suppose if that works now, it will keep working.

[NoisyNarrowBand]

Been going back and forth between Nightly and FF-Beta for a few months now and e10s is surprisingly performant and stable for me. I see frequent stalls in Beta that don't happen in e10s enabled Nightly and hence it' subjectively faster.

Only thing keeping me back from switching fully are unsigned Plug-Ins.

[joeg]

Sorry for the repeat, but is it possible to activate e10 in beta (43.0b6)?

I have the following set to "true", but I'm still not sure whether Electrolysis is actually functioning.
browser.tabs.remote.autostart
browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2
layers.offmainthreadcomposition.testing.enabled

Thanks.

[Josa]

To see if you have e10s enabled:
about:support -> Multiprocess Windows
If it's 0/x, then you don't have e10s enabled.

[joeg]

It says, "Multiprocess Windows 1/1 (default: true)".

[lithopsian]

It says, "Multiprocess Windows 1/1 (default: true)".

You're in!

[joeg]

It says, "Multiprocess Windows 1/1 (default: true)".

You're in!

OK, thanks.

[trustjmh]

43.0b7 now has e10s change added for running blind testing. To run e10s anyway set in about:config;
experiments.enabled to false
browser.tabs.remote.autostart to true
Reset whatever else you have tried previously.
Possibly will change for 44.0b

[sabret00the]

I know this isn't the right place, but there was an about:config change I could make to make the Firefox usable on a larger screen. It increased the size of the tab bar and what not. I have to set it to 125% IIRC, can anyone remember what the pref is called?

[streetwolf]

I know this isn't the right place, but there was an about:config change I could make to make the Firefox usable on a larger screen. It increased the size of the tab bar and what not. I have to set it to 125% IIRC, can anyone remember what the pref is called?

layout.css.devPixelsPerPx