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Re: Firefox alternatives?

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  Re: Firefox alternatives? Bret Busby <bret@busby.net> - 2024-12-11 21:40 +0100
    Re: Firefox alternatives? Henrik Ahlgren <pablo@seestieto.com> - 2024-12-11 22:10 +0100
      Re: Firefox alternatives? Geoff <unit735@bigpond.com> - 2024-12-12 00:30 +0100
      Re: Firefox alternatives? Nate Bargmann <n0nb@n0nb.us> - 2024-12-12 01:30 +0100
      Re: Firefox alternatives? Lee <ler762@gmail.com> - 2024-12-13 01:50 +0100
    Re: Firefox alternatives? Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2024-12-11 22:40 +0100
      Re: Firefox alternatives? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-12-12 00:00 +0100
    Re: Firefox alternatives? Bret Busby <bret@busby.net> - 2024-12-11 22:40 +0100
      Re: Firefox alternatives? Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2024-12-11 23:10 +0100
        Re: Firefox alternatives? Bret Busby <bret@busby.net> - 2024-12-12 00:00 +0100
      Re: Firefox alternatives? Bret Busby <bret@busby.net> - 2024-12-11 23:40 +0100
        Re: Firefox alternatives? "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <roy@rtellason.com> - 2024-12-12 19:20 +0100
          Re: Firefox alternatives? Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2024-12-12 20:00 +0100

#275521 — Re: Firefox alternatives?

On 12/12/24 04:08, Van Snyder wrote:
> After Firefox has been running for a few days my Debian 12.5 gets really 
> slow. The mouse jerks when it works at all. It takes a minute or two for 
> wndows to close or top. At the moment, Firefox has 19 processes running. 
> Memory is half full, and swap is about 10% used. When I kill Firefox and 
> restart, things go back to normal for a few hours.
> 
> What alternatives that aren't such pigs do you recommend?
> 
You conspicuously omit your hardware specifications; what CPU, how many 
RAMs and how big is your swap partition?

For alternatives to Firefox, you might want to try Vivaldi or Pale Moon 
or Waterfox, and, there is SeaMonkey. Also available, is Librewolf.

I have no experience of Waterfox or Librewolf, but, they are apparently 
regarded as some, as faster than firefox, and Librewolf is supposed to 
be superior, in terms of privacy protections.

I have and use SeaMonkey and Vivaldi, and, when I have problems with 
Firefox, I also run the browser named "Web', which, I believe, is the 
current version of Epiphany. When Firefox freezes, or, I am wanting to 
otherwise access things without the cookies in Firefox, depending on 
what I want to do, I run "Web"

It all depends on what you want to accomplish.

I am currently running about 139 windows of Firefox, each with multiple 
tabs.

..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

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#275525

On Thu, 2024-12-12 at 04:33 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> On 12/12/24 04:08, Van Snyder wrote:
> > What alternatives that aren't such pigs do you recommend?
> > 
> You conspicuously omit your hardware specifications; what CPU, how many 
> RAMs and how big is your swap partition?

Also, what kind of web pages are you browsing, Van, and are you using a
proper plugin such as uBO to filter ads and other junk that can use an
incredible amount of resources? Ad-blockers can really help with lower
end machines.

IMHO, the sad fact is that there are not many feasible options for
general purpose web browsers other than Firefox and Chromium, if you
need to safely browse the web and enjoy all the modern goodies. Mozilla
and Google spend millions to develop these things, and even they can't
make them secure or bug-free. What chance do you think some smaller
projects stand in this game of keeping up with the complex world of
modern web?

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#275540

Van Snyder wrote:

> 
> I didn't know of uBO. Is it the best ad blocker? How do I install it?
> 
> I keep gmail, twitter, and facebook tabs, one page from EIA, and one page from my own server open.
> 

uBlock Origin, can install it from within firefox, Add-Ons and Extensions.

Regards,
Geoff

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#275543

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

* On 2024 11 Dec 15:02 -0600, Henrik Ahlgren wrote:
> On Thu, 2024-12-12 at 04:33 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> > On 12/12/24 04:08, Van Snyder wrote:
> > > What alternatives that aren't such pigs do you recommend?
> > > 
> > You conspicuously omit your hardware specifications; what CPU, how many 
> > RAMs and how big is your swap partition?
> 
> Also, what kind of web pages are you browsing, Van, and are you using a
> proper plugin such as uBO to filter ads and other junk that can use an
> incredible amount of resources? Ad-blockers can really help with lower
> end machines.

Along with uBlock Origin on both Firefox and Chromium I also run the
Adblock service on my Openwrt router.  Adblock on the router helps keep
our phones clear of ads when they're connected to our LAN.

- Nate

-- 
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."
Web: https://www.n0nb.us
Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819

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#275614

On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 7:37 PM Van Snyder wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2024-12-11 at 23:01 +0200, Henrik Ahlgren wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2024-12-12 at 04:33 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
>
> On 12/12/24 04:08, Van Snyder wrote:
>
> What alternatives that aren't such pigs do you recommend?
>
> You conspicuously omit your hardware specifications; what CPU, how many
> RAMs and how big is your swap partition?
>
>
> Also, what kind of web pages are you browsing, Van, and are you using a
> proper plugin such as uBO to filter ads and other junk that can use an
> incredible amount of resources? Ad-blockers can really help with lower
> end machines.
>
>
> Yes, I was suspecting ads and other crud being run by firefox. Some web pages slow things down far more than others.
>
> I didn't know of uBO. Is it the best ad blocker?

It's the best one I've found.  Then again, I quit looking after using
uBlock Origin for a short time :)

> How do I install it?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

Regards
Lee

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#275529

Hi,

On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 01:25:35PM -0800, Van Snyder wrote:
> Four core Intel i3 at 2287 MHz.
> 4 GB RAM.

I don't think I would try to run a GUI desktop environment in 2024 with
4G of RAM. Well, unless we were talking fvwm or something.

> "free -m" says swap is 34 GB with 6.2 GB or 18% in use at the moment.
> The 'Swap" graph in GKrellM is at about 10%. Who is right?

I don't think it matters really as 34G of swap is unreasonable on this
system and using any significant amount of swap for interactive
applications will lead to the computer running like a dog.

Is this system at its max of memory? If not, then maxing it out will be
a very cheap upgrade that will be absolutely worth it. If you don't know
if it's maxed, tell us the motherboard, show us the output of "sudo
lshw" or something.

If it's not running off of flash storage already then doing that will
also be well worth it, but I wouldn't bother unless the memory can be
increased first.

If you're not going to be able to increase the memory then I would
either turn off swap (or dramatically reduce its amount *and* adjust
swappiness down) or I would launch firefox by a script that caps its
total virtual memory at 3G or something. It means firefox will crash
before it makes the computer unusable.

Thanks,
Andy

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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#275537

On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 14:15:10 -0800, Van Snyder wrote:
> But "top -o %MEM shows firefox at the top with 12.4 GB VIRT, 377 MB
> res, 90 MB shr.
> 
> Who is right?

You said your system has 4 GB of RAM.

This particular Firefox process may only have 377 MB loaded into resident
memory, but that's not a meaningful number on its own.  Would it *like*
to have more, except that you've run out of RAM, and it had to be partly
swapped out to disk?  You can't tell just from top's output.

In any case, you're clearly exceeding the amount of RAM you have, and
your alternatives would be to have fewer tabs/windows open at once, or
to avoid web sites that consume ridiculous amounts of memory, or to
get a new computer.

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#275530

On 12/12/24 05:25, Van Snyder wrote:
> On Thu, 2024-12-12 at 04:33 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
>>> After Firefox has been running for a few days my Debian 12.5 gets really
>>> slow. The mouse jerks when it works at all. It takes a minute or two for
>>> wndows to close or top. At the moment, Firefox has 19 processes running.
>>> Memory is half full, and swap is about 10% used. When I kill Firefox and
>>> restart, things go back to normal for a few hours.
>>>
>>> What alternatives that aren't such pigs do you recommend?
>>>
>> You conspicuously omit your hardware specifications; what CPU, how many
>> RAMs and how big is your swap partition?
> 
> Four core Intel i3 at 2287 MHz.
> 4 GB RAM.
> "free -m" says swap is 34 GB with 6.2 GB or 18% in use at the moment. 
> The 'Swap" graph in GKrellM is at about 10%. Who is right?
> 
> "free -m" says 3542 MB RAM out of 3783, or 93.6% in use. The "Mem" graph 
> in GKrellM is at 50%.Who is right?
> 
> Top memory users are firefox-esr at 220 MB + 100 MB shared, Evolution at 
> 170 MB with 39 MB shared, KDE plasma shell at 79 MB with 26 MB shared, 
> Xorg at 20 MB with 25 MB shared. The rest are in the weeds. At less than 
> 700 MB, these don't come even close to adding up to 3542 MB. Is the rest 
> filled with disk cache buffers?
> 
> The symptom remains that if I kill firefox and restart it, things run a 
> lot faster for a few hours, and then bog down again.
> 
I believe that 4GB of RAM is now not enough for web browsing, especially 
with web browsing involving javascript.

Whether you continue to use Firefox, if you can, I suggest that you 
upgrade your RAM, to as much as your motherboard will take. Whilst I do 
not know what the pricing of RAM is like, now, it was, a while ago, 
quite inexpensive, and, a desktop computer that I bought, with an i3 
CPU, was upgraded to 32GB of RAM, as soon as I could, after buying it, 
and, it has run well with that.

I have a couple of computers with 16GB of RAM, but, I use them minimally 
with web browsing, and, I recommend at least 32GB RAM, for web browsing.

..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

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#275532

Hello,

On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 02:01:53PM -0800, Van Snyder wrote:
> MB has all the RAM it can take, so more RAM would require a new MB.

What is the motherboard out of interest?

Thanks,
Andy

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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#275536

On 12/12/24 06:37, Van Snyder wrote:
> On Wed, 2024-12-11 at 22:06 +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 02:01:53PM -0800, Van Snyder wrote:
>>> MB has all the RAM it can take, so more RAM would require a new MB.
>>
>> What is the motherboard out of interest?
> 
>  >From dmidecode:
> 
> Base Board Information
> Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
> Product Name: H55M-S2H
> 
Okay.

That motherboard, on the Gigabyte web site, supports 8GB RAM (whilst I 
believe that is still nowhere near enough RAM, and, I believe that it is 
a stupid limit on the RAM capacity, for a motherboard that supports an 
i7 CPU).

See
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-H55M-S2H-rev-10/sp#sp
"Memory

     2 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 8 GB of system memory 
(Note 1)
     Dual channel memory architecture
     Support for DDR3 2200+/1800/1600/1333/1066/800 MHz memory modules
     Support for non-ECC memory modules
     Support for Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) memory modules

* To reach DDR3 2200 MHz and above, you are required to use with Intel 
Core i7/Core i5 CPU without HD Graphics and install a discrete graphics 
card.
When using Intel Core i5/Core i3/ Pentium CPU with HD Graphics, the 
maximum memory speed supported is 1666 MHz
* Go to GIGABYTE's website for the latest memory support list."

..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

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#275534

On 12/12/24 06:01, Van Snyder wrote:
> On Thu, 2024-12-12 at 05:32 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
>>> The symptom remains that if I kill firefox and restart it, things run a
>>> lot faster for a few hours, and then bog down again.
>>>
>> I believe that 4GB of RAM is now not enough for web browsing, especially
>> with web browsing involving javascript.
>>
>> Whether you continue to use Firefox, if you can, I suggest that you
>> upgrade your RAM, to as much as your motherboard will take. Whilst I do
>> not know what the pricing of RAM is like, now, it was, a while ago,
>> quite inexpensive, and, a desktop computer that I bought, with an i3
>> CPU, was upgraded to 32GB of RAM, as soon as I could, after buying it,
>> and, it has run well with that.
> 
> MB has all the RAM it can take, so more RAM would require a new MB.
> 
> 
I do not know in which country, you are, or, what computer prices are 
like, where you are, but, I suggest looking for a new computer, with at 
least 32GB RAM.

I believe that cellphones nowadays start with about 4GB RAM.

A possibility, depending on computer pricing, where you are, and, the 
pricing of refurbished computers, is to consider buying a refurbished 
computer.

The computer that I am currently using (it is, I believe, my most robust 
computer, and so, it is the only computer, apart from a cheap tablet 
computer that I am using a couple of times a day, due to electricity 
supply problems (I have a big UPS, which is faulty, so, I am not 
confident to use my other computers) ), has a Xeon CPU and 128GB RAM. In 
Firefox, amongst the other add-ons, I have Bluhell Firewall, uBlock 
Origin (I recommend those two , together, as a minimum) , AdBlocker 
Ultimate, AdGuard AdBlocker, AdBlock Plus, and, I think that is all f 
the ab blocking and anti-tracking and general privacy add-ons that I 
have. They, together, can slow Firefox, but the combination of Firefox, 
and, javascript, are what slows down the use of Firefox. javascript, 
malignantly applied as client-side processing, rather than more 
properly, server-side processing, is like pouring sugar into the fuel 
tank of a petrol-fuelled car.

The cost of this computer, in Australia, a couple of years ago, 
refurbished, was about 1100AUD, about the price of a new i5 "laptop" 
with about 8GB of RAM.

So, it could be worth you investing in a refurbished computer with a 
powerful CPU and lots of RAM; preferably at least 64GB, to provide for 
the future (well, the next couple of years).

Another suggestion for you, is to switch to a less resource-demanding 
desktop environment.

I do not know what its status is now, but, from memory, KDE used to be 
the most resource-demanding desktop environment. I use the MATE desktop 
environment, with a deprecated MATE interface, and, I keep a copy of my 
interface, on my Ventoy drive, so that, if and when I install on a new 
computer, I can put the interface on it. Perhaps, you could consider one 
of the more economical desktop environments, like XFCE, or, and, I 
believe that it is still currently available, fvwm. fvwm was the first 
Linux desktop environment that I used, on Slackware, and, I think, Red 
Hat (about 4 or 5), about 25 years ago, before a kindly person showed me 
Debian (which was about 3.0, I think), and, the wonders of apt.

The web sites that you access, can also have a considerable effect on 
your computer's performance. One web site, that I now access only on the 
tablet PC, through an Android app for the web site, is the Weather 
Underground - wunderground.com, for weather status and forecasts 
monitoring. That web site would persistently crash whatever web browser 
I would be using to access it, and, because of the ominous effects, 
would take down whatever computer I would use to access the web site. It 
would cause the computer to freeze, so I would have to power off the 
computer, and, reboot it. But, the Android app seems to work, with me 
viewing the web page, then closing the folder front for the tablet PC, 
which is like putting a chook's head under one of its wings - it puts it 
to sleep.

..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

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#275597

On Wednesday 11 December 2024 05:35:20 pm Bret Busby wrote:
> On 12/12/24 06:01, Van Snyder wrote:
> > On Thu, 2024-12-12 at 05:32 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> >>> The symptom remains that if I kill firefox and restart it, things run a
> >>> lot faster for a few hours, and then bog down again.

Been reading this thread with some interest,  as I too have had some issues.

> >> I believe that 4GB of RAM is now not enough for web browsing, especially
> >> with web browsing involving javascript.

This machine has 8GB of RAM in it,  and I'm thinking at this point that something a bit newer with perhaps 32GB might be just the thing.
I had a fair number of tabs open,  and solved the problem partially by copying the URLs of a bunch of them into a text file and then closing them.  I've also been running the noscript plugin,  which gives me a bit of trouble sometimes,  but then I just tell it to allow javascript on the particular page I'm trying to access and go from there.

> >> Whether you continue to use Firefox, if you can, I suggest that you
> >> upgrade your RAM, to as much as your motherboard will take.

I could perhaps go a little higher in this box,  but then I'm also looking at some heavy CPU usage,  it often bogs down.  And my lady tells me that xmas is coming...

> >> Whilst I do not know what the pricing of RAM is like, now, it was, a while ago,
> >> quite inexpensive, and, a desktop computer that I bought, with an i3
> >> CPU, was upgraded to 32GB of RAM, as soon as I could, after buying it,
> >> and, it has run well with that.

Sounds good to me.

(...)
> I believe that cellphones nowadays start with about 4GB RAM.

Mine's got 6GB,  plus I have a memory card in there for "stuff",  adding 256GB of storage to it.  Something like 11% of that is currently used.
 
> A possibility, depending on computer pricing, where you are, and, the 
> pricing of refurbished computers, is to consider buying a refurbished 
> computer.

There''s a thought.  I'm not sure who's selling refurbished computers,  but then there's the question of how much of a warranty you get with it.  Or I could just buy a MB and build one.
 
> The computer that I am currently using (it is, I believe, my most robust 
> computer, and so, it is the only computer, apart from a cheap tablet 
> computer that I am using a couple of times a day, due to electricity 
> supply problems (I have a big UPS, which is faulty, so, I am not 
> confident to use my other computers) ), has a Xeon CPU and 128GB RAM. 

Oh my.

> In Firefox, amongst the other add-ons, I have Bluhell Firewall, uBlock 
> Origin (I recommend those two , together, as a minimum) , AdBlocker 
> Ultimate, AdGuard AdBlocker, AdBlock Plus, and, I think that is all f 
> the ab blocking and anti-tracking and general privacy add-ons that I 
> have. 

I have privacy badger, ublock origin,  adblock plus,  and noscript currently.

> They, together, can slow Firefox, but the combination of Firefox,  
> and, javascript, are what slows down the use of Firefox. javascript, 
> malignantly applied as client-side processing, rather than more 
> properly, server-side processing, is like pouring sugar into the fuel 
> tank of a petrol-fuelled car.

The noscript add-on made a lot of difference here.
 
(...)
> So, it could be worth you investing in a refurbished computer with a 
> powerful CPU and lots of RAM; preferably at least 64GB, to provide for 
> the future (well, the next couple of years).

That's crazy...
 
> Another suggestion for you, is to switch to a less resource-demanding 
> desktop environment.

It's xfce for me,  here.  And a very old version of KDE in a virtualbox VM,  which is where I do my email.
 
> I do not know what its status is now, but, from memory, KDE used to be 
> the most resource-demanding desktop environment. 

The last time I looked at it,  it was a real hog.

> I use the MATE desktop environment, with a deprecated MATE interface, 

I have some DVDs burned with downloaded copies of various versions,  some of which include that.  I plan to play around with it on some of the laptops I have around the place.

(...)
> fvwm was the first Linux desktop environment that I used, on Slackware, and, I think, Red 
> Hat (about 4 or 5), about 25 years ago, before a kindly person showed me 
> Debian (which was about 3.0, I think), and, the wonders of apt.

I started with Slackware back in 1999,  and run it on my server currently,  and on one of the laptops.
 
> The web sites that you access, can also have a considerable effect on 
> your computer's performance. One web site, that I now access only on the 
> tablet PC, through an Android app for the web site, is the Weather 
> Underground - wunderground.com, for weather status and forecasts 
> monitoring. 

I'm familiar with that,  and in fact have a weather station here that's tied into that network.

> That web site would persistently crash whatever web browser  
> I would be using to access it, and, because of the ominous effects, 
> would take down whatever computer I would use to access the web site. It 
> would cause the computer to freeze, so I would have to power off the 
> computer, and, reboot it.

Interesting,  it doesn't do that here.  My lady accesses it on her computer all the time.  I do so on my phone occasionally.  She's never had a problem with it.  She's running Mint on her machine,  I don't recall which desktop offhand.


-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin

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#275601

Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: 
> > In Firefox, amongst the other add-ons, I have Bluhell Firewall, uBlock 
> > Origin (I recommend those two , together, as a minimum) , AdBlocker 
> > Ultimate, AdGuard AdBlocker, AdBlock Plus, and, I think that is all f 
> > the ab blocking and anti-tracking and general privacy add-ons that I 
> > have. 
> 
> I have privacy badger, ublock origin,  adblock plus,  and noscript currently.


You all should find that ublock origin can do all the things
that you are currently doing with Bluhell, AdBlocker Ultimate,
AdGuard AdBlocker, AdBlock Plus, noscript and Privacy Badger.


noscript: click uBO's </> icon. Settings will be remembered per-site.

privacy badger: in uBO's settings, Filter Lists => Privacy,
                click on the tracking protection lists.

AdBlock Plus: entirely covered by default

AdGuard AdBlocker: in uBO's settings, Filter Lists, click on the
                   AdGuard lists.

AdBlocker Ultimate: entirely covered by default

BluHell: entirely covered by default

That will save you some memory and cycles.

-dsr-

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