FF and Viv on memory usage
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So I was trying out Firefox Beta portable, as I didn't want to install it, and saw that the speed and memory usage was very good, much better than any Chromium-based browser I'd ever tried. The memory usage on Firefox was very low, while Vivaldi's was pretty high, kind of like Opera 35 also is, and Chrome was probably the highest, and Edge was kind of high too. I think Firefox is also based on web technologies, but is very memory efficient. Memory usage was around 150MB on the main process and about 2.9MB on another, and about 135MB for the plugin container. Vivaldi's is around 150MB on the main process, with many other processes taking between 19-200MB per process, and there would be larger processes for YouTube. I just want to know, is this a Chromium thing that takes many resources because it's multi-process? The beta for FF is experimenting with multi-process. I know Vivaldi uses web technologies, which takes up more resources, but so is FF I believe, and it is more memory efficient. What is the likelihood of Vivaldi improving it's web technologies, or switching to new ones, and so on? And is it also a Chromium problem? I also find Chromium browsers so far to be very unstable, while FF hasn't crashed or froze once. Whenever something like Vivaldi becoming more memory efficient is asked, there is some pessimism on it never being able to be as memory efficient as other browsers. I'd like to believe that it'll at least be just as memory efficient as other browsers, and that it'll be as stable or stabler and that Vivaldi will actually work on the Chromium code to make it efficient, because each Chromium release seems to be adding on more and more really quickly without optimizing and perfecting very much. Sorry if this has been talked about so many times. Just thought I'd ask about it and the possibilities.
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No, Firefox UI is not built using web technologies. It is built using native elements.
No, Firefox multi-process is not yet at all like Chrome (though it is headed more that direction.) Currently its Beta experiment runs just two processes, one for the UI and one for web content of all of the tabs together. Running all tabs in a single process is more memory efficient, at least at first, though if you work in a lot of tabs for a long time, you can run into severe memory leaks and wind up not much better than Chrome.
Chrome runs a separate process for every tab and every extension and Vivaldi runs three UI processes on top of that. Yes, this is a Chromium thing which Vivaldi cannot avoid. Within these parameters, Vivaldi Team will optimize speed, stability and memory usage to the maximum degree possible. And efficient code is something these guys know about.
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Well, that does reassure me of the fact that I know these guys are going to try their best to maximize the code as much as possible. It is the first version of Vivaldi, so of course that does mean they're still laying the foundation for everything a browser does with all it's basic features. That raises another question: After version 1.0 comes out, will development of Vivaldi speed up once they get all their features like Mail and Sync out? I ask because it seems like the first version will be laying everything out and actually having a browser, which would take a long time, and then they can start perfecting everything and continually adding more and more.
And I'm sure these guys are going to work on the Chromium engine once they get enough guys after the release and tons of monetization. I just don't know when they will, but I guess it's not the priority right now.
I don't love Firefox, but I only like the fact that it feels stable unlike Opera, Vivaldi and Edge. I hate that I can't customize keyboard shortcuts, and make font rendering as nice as I want to. It makes me think that the Chromium base isn't as stable as Gecko if even Opera is freezing and crashing almost as much as Vivaldi is.
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It makes me think that the Chromium base isn't as stable as Gecko if even Opera is freezing and crashing almost as much as Vivaldi is.
Frankly I don't remember a single Opium crash in three years, and Vivaldi itself runs rock solid since months.
And even in the less mature snapshots, most of the crashes were limited to the UI process alone.
So I think your problems are HW related, possibly a faulty RAM that becomes evident with the higher memory usage of blink based browsers.
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Hmm, maybe so. I have a 2014 HP Pavilion 15 notebook, with 4th Gen Intel Core i5 and 6GB of DDR3 RAM. Maybe I should reinstall Vivaldi?
I'm on 64bit Windows 10, using 32bit Vivaldi. Are you using the same?
I notice lots of freezes depending on which site I go on, but I do have other stuff installed, like Mactype, which has crashed some pages like Gmail once in a while. My extensions are Web Boost, Font Rendering Enhancer and H264ify. I would love some extensions to be integrated, such as Web Boost, by the way.
But yeah, I do get some freezes, more so with all this stuff installed, and rarely crashes, but it can happen. Maybe FF didn't do that because I just installed it, and it's portable. Maybe I should do a fresh install of Vivaldi?
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Maybe I should reinstall Vivaldi?
No. Reinstalling is pointless, it happens on each week…
What you can really do is to rename/delete your user profile and test if it works better (I'm sure it will)
I'm on 64bit Windows 10, using 32bit Vivaldi. Are you using the same?
Yes. But I'm using it also on other OS
I notice lots of freezes depending on which site I go on, but I do have other stuff installed, like Mactype, which has crashed some pages like Gmail once in a while. My extensions are Web Boost, Font Rendering Enhancer and H264ify. I would love some extensions to be integrated, such as Web Boost, by the way.
When the system is unstable the extensions should be installed one by one, waiting one day or so between each one. So if any compatibility problem appears you can spot easily the culprit. I never tested mactype, but is a kind of program that can potentially cause some headaches…
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Okay, I started a new profile and backed up the old one. I haven't installed any extensions yet. I'm going to start with the first one tomorrow. I think it may have started with the installation of Web Boost, but we'll see.
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Yeah, I still had some freezes. At this point, I'm thinking of reinstalling Windows 10, because this specific install I have of Windows 10 boots up slowly, and it didn't use to do that. Maybe there's something wrong and I need to reinstall Windows.
EDIT: Okay dude, so I didn't reinstall Windows, but I did uninstall and then did a fresh install of Vivaldi, and wow! I've been using it for probably half an hour so far and I think it fixed EVERYTHING! My Speed Dial thumbnails are back(they were lost for a few snapshots), and the Vivaldi icon on my taskbar is big, not small.
I didn't enable any about:flags like disabling Directwrite, which could have helped in messing it up. Which means I don't get any of the benefits of Mactype, which is really too bad. I think Vivaldi should put in their own font rendering, because Directwrite sucks.
I also haven't installed any extensions, but I probably will eventually. I'm in love again.
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I had Vivaldi running slow before and a full reinstall (after wiping all its config) fixed that and other bugs I had.
As for the freeze you mentioned that seems like a hard drive issue to me. I had Firefox randomly freezing for a few seconds in some Web pages for years. After upgrading to an SSD drive it never happen again. This could also explain why your Windows 10 loads slow because it should not. Its the fastest booting Windows so far. Check your drive for bad sectors. The reinstall probably installed Vivaldi in new sector and this also explains why your USB install runs that fast with Firefox. Maybe your drive is dying so it will not hurt to check that.
I also don't remember when was the last time I saw Opium crashing. There seems to be something strange with your machine. I would also advise not to run it with heavy extensions as the extensions think they are running on Chrome. It did notice problems with some extensions so until its more widely tested and used I would advise to keep extensions as minimal as possible.