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Comment by Zardoz84 | Hacker News Reader

I'm using all day Firefox for front develop, an I have multiple tabs open. I don't have any issue of excessive RAM or CPU usage. Even I noticed that Chrome uses more RAM that FF . The actual instance that I have open to write it, with 16 tabs open, it's using around 300-400MiB and ~5% of CPU.

Also, FireFox for Android runs faster that Chrome (not because FireFox is faster that Chrome on Android, but because the ad-blocker does a nice work avoiding to load garbage), and the RAM usage it's keep at bay. I have like ten tabs on FF for Android and keeps working like if I had one open.

On any case, on Chrome and Firefox you can install a add-on called "Tab suspender". It allows to save ram, literally suspending tabs that has not been accesses on some time. Try it.

*edit : grammar

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> Even I noticed that Chrome uses more RAM that FF

Reflects my experience. I use Firefox at work, Chrome at home. Chrome RAM usage is much higher than FF. Not that I really mind - I have more than enough RAM to support it. But it often leaves me wondering if some tab/plugin/extension is misbehaving, which in turn forces me to close all my tabs only to find that the memory use stays high and the number of Chrome processes doesn't decrease as expected. I'm considering switching back to Firefox at home now.

EDIT: OK, tested with Firefox now. Number of process doesn't decrease as I close tabs either, but memory use is still considerably higher than Chrome.

In Firefox, entering about:performance in the URL bar will give you some statistics on how much memory or CPU each tab is using.

Entering about:about in the URL bar gives you a short list of interesting about:* links that you can play around.

I just saw that I'm using more RAM that I thought, but Tab suspender really works fine to keep ram usage at bay.

Firefox uses a process model that has a higher base memory usage than Chrome's but overall lower memory usage when used with a lot of tabs.

> I don't have any issue of excessive RAM or CPU usage.

I guess it depends per device and use-case. I use Firefox everywhere. Home (PC with Linux OS), work (laptop with Linux OS) and on my phone.

On my pc I have 0 RAM or CPU issues with Firefox. (intel i5, and nvidia GTS 250, ancient I know.)

On my laptop (intel i7 and nvidia NVS 5200M) I have had serious CPU issues though. With version 57 it used to stay above 90% CPU for hours. Since version 58 though it's been a lot better. Sometimes stays at about 40% for a while, then goes back down to like 10%. I suspect it might be due to some of the tabs I have open with zabbix graphs, but I don't know for certain.

I love using firefox on my phone because it's the only mobile browser that can use uBlock Origin. I don't care how fast or smooth chrome is on mobile, I'm not gonna use it if the price you have to pay is being eye-raped by ads.

the Brave browser is another alternative with ad blocking.

and its got smooth scrolling. (at least on android)

I'll try it out. Is the adblocker/s for it open-source?

i think so, but didn't audit it myself

* https://github.com/brave/browser-android-tabs

* https://github.com/brave/adblock-lists

* https://github.com/brave/ad-block

I'm also using Firefox on Android because of the Adblocker, but it is not faster than Chrome. The page load time is generally slower than Chrome, even with ads blocked. It sometimes freezes and crashes

I'm using a BQ Aquaris X with Android 7.1.1 . Zero issues with Firefox for Android.

I feel firefox on android in many ways far more better than chrome (especially the UX and addons), the only thing preventing me to make it my default browser is the built in page translation of chrome, for me its a must have since i live in a foreign country.

It makes me sad that there are a bunch of translation addons for Firefox but I have yet to find one that actually works on the Android version.

> I'm using all day Firefox for front develop

I want to do that but can't replace chrome's debugging features, specifically websocket network call analysis and hover variable to get its value. How have you replaced these feature in your workflow?

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