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budyong
February 16th, 2005, 04:02 PM
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html#testresults

poofyhairguy
February 16th, 2005, 08:41 PM
Ok, ok. Firefox and Mozilla are clearly optimised for Linux, and Opera is clearly optimised for Windows. These optimisations are mostly obvious with the loading times, although there is also a little difference in the cache handling on the different operating systems. However, Opera seems to perform admirably well on most tasks, on any platform. When it comes to page rendering (tables, CSS or images), most of the major browsers perform very fast, with very little to distinguish between them. When it comes to scripts, Opera clearly holds its head above the others, nearly twice as fast as the others. The only one that comes close is Safari 2.0, but that is tied to the Tiger release of Mac OS (currently in preview).

Thats why when I only used Windows...I used Opera not Firefox.

In fact, Firefox is very slow in these tests. But I don't care, the features make up for it.

rwabel
February 17th, 2005, 05:36 PM
firefox is for me very slow under ubuntu. I'm very astonished how sluggish he behaves. Under my windows xp he's a real fox! Don't know if that's a problem on my machine. But I've 1gb of ram!

kassetra
February 17th, 2005, 05:41 PM
Here's something I know from experience:
Firefox without any themes or extensions is very snappy under Ubuntu...

With my current firefox setup however, (13 extensions and 21 themes, not to mention all of my plugins)... it is very slow to load...

In my case, it's only slow because I made it slow with all of my extensions & themes.

rwabel
February 17th, 2005, 05:57 PM
Here's something I know from experience:
Firefox without any themes or extensions is very snappy under Ubuntu...

With my current firefox setup however, (13 extensions and 21 themes, not to mention all of my plugins)... it is very slow to load...

In my case, it's only slow because I made it slow with all of my extensions & themes.

Interesting remark. I've 6 themes and 21 extensions. But the problem is not to load. When I've loaded it. Just switching from tab to tab etc.
But maybe I should try to start it up without plugins etc, if that's possible

kassetra
February 17th, 2005, 06:00 PM
If you have any tabs open that are using your plugins, it will take forever to switch...

For instance:
I commonly have tabs open with flash applications and java running in them... switching between tabs is equivalent to a ten minute coffee break, i.e. it takes so long for firefox to actually make the switch.

rwabel
February 17th, 2005, 06:03 PM
If you have any tabs open that are using your plugins, it will take forever to switch...

For instance:
I commonly have tabs open with flash applications and java running in them... switching between tabs is equivalent to a ten minute coffee break, i.e. it takes so long for firefox to actually make the switch.

but that's not the case under windows in my experience. Probabely I need to make a clean firefox once :-)

thanks for the info

kassetra
February 17th, 2005, 06:13 PM
Right - most plugins actually originate with the windows version and are "ported" to a linux version, which means that they can be less than stellar in memory usage.

Flash is a perfect example of this. Flash 6 was horrendous. They're better with 7 now under linux, but there are still some memory leak issues. (as in, don't leave a tab open with flash 7 running for more than an hour)

jdodson
February 17th, 2005, 07:16 PM
i did not know that about flash, good to know. i wonder if you have a source for that information i would not mind reading up on it.

i think when people compare browsers, speed is not the only thing you should keep in mind. there is a level to where something is "fast enough." if firefox takes 5 seconds to load and another "pay" to use browser takes 1 second, i will chose firefox. reason? firefox is like art that we all can share in freely. it is priceless, like the gnu/linux kernel. it is constantly being updated and given away for nothing. opera or i.e. might be ahead of it speedwise, but firefox can be used anywhere for any purpose regardless of a vendors platform choice. another thing to consider is standards adherance. firefox is great at that and i think standards adherance needs to be taken into account as well. also community support is critical. there are TONS of plugins for firefox that make it a very feature rich browser. the only plugins i can think of for i.e.(then again i have not used it in years) are the google toolbar. the other "features" are spyware bars and other such software.

if it was not for firefox or mozilla i would argue the state of the gnu/linux desktop would not be as pronounced. firefox is a critical component of the free desktop, like openoffice and the gnome project.

kassetra
February 17th, 2005, 07:32 PM
Oh yeah, let me see if I can find that information for you. I remember it because I had such huge frustrations with flash 6 -- that I went looking around for why there were so many problems, and then flash 7 came out and I eagerly upgraded, only to find out about the memory leak (which all in all, isn't a showstopping thing...it's more of an inconvenience)..

I'm sure I saved that info somewhere in my bookmarks...

rwabel
February 17th, 2005, 07:47 PM
i did not know that about flash, good to know. i wonder if you have a source for that information i would not mind reading up on it.

i think when people compare browsers, speed is not the only thing you should keep in mind. there is a level to where something is "fast enough." if firefox takes 5 seconds to load and another "pay" to use browser takes 1 second, i will chose firefox. reason? firefox is like art that we all can share in freely. it is priceless, like the gnu/linux kernel. it is constantly being updated and given away for nothing. opera or i.e. might be ahead of it speedwise, but firefox can be used anywhere for any purpose regardless of a vendors platform choice. another thing to consider is standards adherance. firefox is great at that and i think standards adherance needs to be taken into account as well. also community support is critical. there are TONS of plugins for firefox that make it a very feature rich browser. the only plugins i can think of for i.e.(then again i have not used it in years) are the google toolbar. the other "features" are spyware bars and other such software.

if it was not for firefox or mozilla i would argue the state of the gnu/linux desktop would not be as pronounced. firefox is a critical component of the free desktop, like openoffice and the gnome project.
I completely agree with your statement!

In the past I loved Opera, it was so terrible fast! Still the fastest browser. It was in the time I was only using Windows XP. Then I switched over to Firefox still under Windows and speed was great and its additional features made it to the default browser. Especially because Opera had and still has problems (sometimes even severe) with some sites.

But now after having switched over to Ubuntu Linux I noticed that Firefox is much slower than he was under Windows. I don't mind waiting a bit longer while starting up the browser etc. But the difference was significant, and I too used to have plugins and themes under the Windows version.

jdodson
February 17th, 2005, 08:24 PM
I completely agree with your statement!

In the past I loved Opera, it was so terrible fast! Still the fastest browser. It was in the time I was only using Windows XP. Then I switched over to Firefox still under Windows and speed was great and its additional features made it to the default browser. Especially because Opera had and still has problems (sometimes even severe) with some sites.

But now after having switched over to Ubuntu Linux I noticed that Firefox is much slower than he was under Windows. I don't mind waiting a bit longer while starting up the browser etc. But the difference was significant, and I too used to have plugins and themes under the Windows version.

i think the speed optimizations in gnu/linux will come eventually. i can understand that if 80% of firefox users are windows users that optimizations would be for windows users.

poofyhairguy
February 17th, 2005, 08:35 PM
But now after having switched over to Ubuntu Linux I noticed that Firefox is much slower than he was under Windows. I don't mind waiting a bit longer while starting up the browser etc. But the difference was significant, and I too used to have plugins and themes under the Windows version.

Prelinking fixes any startup slowness for firefox with me (in hoary with the nice Xorg it loads as soon as I click the icon- like a light switch).

I personally try to stay away from extensions though...as I am scared that the quality isn't as high as with regular firefox.

jdodson
February 17th, 2005, 08:39 PM
Prelinking fixes any startup slowness for firefox with me (in hoary with the nice Xorg it loads as soon as I click the icon- like a light switch).

I personally try to stay away from extensions though...as I am scared that the quality isn't as high as with regular firefox.

i can see your point. i don't really see a speed problem with my AMD 64 3000+ and a gig of ram. then again if it takes a second or two to load i don't really care much. i might prelink my system someday if i gets any slower.

i have had no problems with the few firefox extensions i use, gmail checker and adblock. sites load faster when i cut out the ads anyway.

thelocust
January 8th, 2007, 09:03 PM
8)

shanepardue
January 8th, 2007, 09:08 PM
This is the first paragraph from the website you linked.

"Please stop posting this article on sites like Slashdot, Digg, newspapers, etc. It is old news. This article is around 2 years old now (although it has been kept up to date), and has been retired - posting it simply shows how long it took you to find it. It has already been posted on Slashdot enough times, Digg more than enough times, similar sites more times than I can count, as well as newspaper sites all around the world, and far more blogs than I will ever be able to read."

It may be too old to refer to.

Hemmer
January 8th, 2007, 09:19 PM
opera wins most of the tests, but konquerer wins the startup test.

what would be interesting is firefox with fasterfox...

aysiu
January 8th, 2007, 09:32 PM
This is the first paragraph from the website you linked.

"Please stop posting this article on sites like Slashdot, Digg, newspapers, etc. It is old news. This article is around 2 years old now (although it has been kept up to date), and has been retired - posting it simply shows how long it took you to find it. It has already been posted on Slashdot enough times, Digg more than enough times, similar sites more times than I can count, as well as newspaper sites all around the world, and far more blogs than I will ever be able to read."

It may be too old to refer to.
Interestingly enough, as far as I could tell, the site has been talked about only once on these forums--and less than a year ago. I've merged the two threads.

I don't really find these sorts of studies that useful for deciding what browser to use (even though they are fascinating). With the advent of tabbed browsing and broadband internet, I don't need my web browser to be fast. The features and interface matter to me far more. In fact, the advantage for me of tabbed browsing is the ability to be reading an article on one tab while all the others are loading in the background. If they take a fraction of a second longer to load in the background, I don't really care.

People want a good balance and should decide based on features, not speed. If speed's all that matters, people should be using Dillo or Lynx, not Epiphany, Firefox, Opera, or Konqueror.

seijuro
January 8th, 2007, 10:22 PM
I use swiftfox in place of firefox in both Ubuntu and Kubuntu load times were about 1/2 standard firefox.