Seamonkey vs Firefox; whay is FF such a resource hog?

Discussion of general topics about Seamonkey
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videobruce
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Seamonkey vs Firefox; whay is FF such a resource hog?

Post by videobruce »

I have been using FF (v56 Portable) for a almost a year now since I was forced to abandon Opera Classic (v12.18) due to the increasing number of lame sites that keep changing their security & java script issues among others. :evil:

The problems I find with FF are the additional number of "firefox.exe" entries under processes (three instead on just one) and the massive load it places on the processor, especially on older systems (10 year old Laptops for example) maxing out and "chocking" the processors.
SeaMonkey doesn't seem to have those problems on the same systems. Mind you, on current multi-core systems, there really isn't a problem, but that doesn't excuse the situation AFAIC.

Anyway, the question begs, why is SM so 'slim' and FF isn't since they are in the same 'family'? :-k
Browsers that don't have a conventional horizontal Menu bar (where it's been for 25 years) are poorly designed. Period. Stop 'fixing' something that isn't broke!
lasardo
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Re: Seamonkey vs Firefox; whay is FF such a resource hog?

Post by lasardo »

You can force Firefox to use one (or at least fewer, depending on version) process if you like. In about:config , browser.tabs.remote.autostart and browser.tabs.remote.autostart set to false. On restart under about:support you should see Multiprocess say it is disabled.
videobruce
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Re: Seamonkey vs Firefox; whay is FF such a resource hog?

Post by videobruce »

That affects the number of instances running under Processes in Task Mgr.??
Doesn't limiting "Use recommended settings/Content process limit" under Options do the same thing?

This is running Win7 x64 if that matters.
Browsers that don't have a conventional horizontal Menu bar (where it's been for 25 years) are poorly designed. Period. Stop 'fixing' something that isn't broke!
lasardo
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Re: Seamonkey vs Firefox; whay is FF such a resource hog?

Post by lasardo »

With "content process limit" set to 1, I think you can still get 1 process for content, 1 for browser chrome, 1 for flash plugin, and in new betas 1 for activitystream for a potential max of 4. With the settings I mentioned, you should have a max of 2 with version 56, and if you disable the flash plugin you should only get 1.
videobruce
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Re: Seamonkey vs Firefox; whay is FF such a resource hog?

Post by videobruce »

What a weird setup. I never heard/saw of anything like that, but admittedly using Opera for as long as I did, being happy with it, I had no reason to look elsewhere.

I can only assume doing this will slow things down?
Browsers that don't have a conventional horizontal Menu bar (where it's been for 25 years) are poorly designed. Period. Stop 'fixing' something that isn't broke!
lasardo
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Re: Seamonkey vs Firefox; whay is FF such a resource hog?

Post by lasardo »

On a powerful computer with lots of ram, multiprocess Firefox is much more "responsive" but I can't say if it is faster or slower. On a netbook level computer with limited ram, I think turning off multiprocess makes Firefox much faster. Also, most sites don't need Flash anymore and disabling it can be a big win if you don't need it.
videobruce
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Re: Seamonkey vs Firefox; whay is FF such a resource hog?

Post by videobruce »

I should of added in my OP, the problem system specifically is a 9 year old (so-called) Atom 2 core Wintel processor that reminds me of one of their 286 or 386's. Both cores max out for 10+ seconds loading the browser, choking the system.

On my AMD FX-8350 I see a difference between SM & FF (FF using 4 processes), SM loads the browser faster and loads pages faster by a longshot. That doesn't seem to say much for FF v56. :roll:
Browsers that don't have a conventional horizontal Menu bar (where it's been for 25 years) are poorly designed. Period. Stop 'fixing' something that isn't broke!
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therube
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Re: Seamonkey vs Firefox; whay is FF such a resource hog?

Post by therube »

(I didn't realize you could force FF 56 into some kind of multiprocess mode.)
Fire 750, bring back 250.
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lasardo
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Re: Seamonkey vs Firefox; whay is FF such a resource hog?

Post by lasardo »

I think Firefox enabled multiprocess by default as early as Firefox 53, as long as you had no extensions installed. That was basic multiprocess though, multiple content processes came around Firefox 55. In 56, there was a whitelist of extensions that it would still turn on even if they were installed. As for the original question though, on netbooks or Atom processor computers - I wonder if Firefox 52 would be better than 56. And I still recall that blocking Flash was very helpful on computers like those.

If Seamonkey works better though do you have any reason not to use it on that computer?
Those netbooks worked pretty well with XP, but I heard they were too slow with Windows 7 or Windows 10. Any thoughts on that?
videobruce
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Re: Seamonkey vs Firefox; whay is FF such a resource hog?

Post by videobruce »

Using the Netbook that I listed, I timed the loading (using v52 ESR);
From start to when the processor usage settled down below 5% it took one minute & 15 seconds. .
The time both cores were maxed out (100%) was 20 seconds. That was with a blank page.

The same test with SeaMonkey v2.49, loading to a blank page: 45 seconds. 100% maxed processor usage 5 seconds
50-60% processor usage was 30 seconds.
Both versions were portable versions and XP was Pro sp3 (if any of that matters). The total load time surprisingly was the same, but FF chocked that Wintel so called processor and SM didn't. :wink:
Browsers that don't have a conventional horizontal Menu bar (where it's been for 25 years) are poorly designed. Period. Stop 'fixing' something that isn't broke!
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