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Comment by bradstewart | Hacker News Reader

I've been using Firefox for the last two weeks or so. It's fine, but noticeably slower (on a 2018 MacBook Pro) when opening new tabs and especially dragging tabs into new windows. It also seems to get stuck resolving DNS sometimes, which is probably an artifact of the corporate network, but Chrome doesn't have that problem.

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I'm having the exact opposite experience with Chromium: Sometimes, two to three tabs (regular websites, no videos, no fancy stuff) already make it freeze. My Firefox, in contrast, runs smoothly even with dozens of tabs open.

Firefox is often faster than chrome for me on my 2015 MacBook air

The DNS thing is probably caused by Firefox's OS-agnostic DNS. You see, in Windows Chrome will use IE's networking stack (so changing your IE proxy settings changes them in Chrome) if you have the "enterprise version" installed. Also, if your company has installed "security software" that screws with web requests and/or DNS resolution in order to "keep you safe" it'll treat Firefox's outbound HTTP requests like they're coming from a script and treat them with heavy suspicion (which slows everything down and can even result in timeouts).

It's super annoying. This is the state of things at my workplace and it's ridiculous.

> It also seems to get stuck resolving DNS sometimes, which is probably an artifact of the corporate network, but Chrome doesn't have that problem.

OMG I thought I was the only one running into this exact same problem! This has been a deal killer for me.

Switch your DNS servers (I suggest 1.1.1.1). Chrome uses Google's DNS servers by default, they're probably just faster than whatever you're using.

That isn't an effective solution on a corporate network that depends on internal name resolution.

And FWIW I run into the same DNS-like issues with Firefox on my home network, which uses Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS. Perhaps it is something to do with the way my company provisions my machine, I don't know. All I know is that Chrome has no issues. I've made efforts to track down the issue but it's ultimately not worth my time.

Double check it's not using or trying to autodetect a proxy?

Me too actually... I haven't spent any time trying to actually track it down. Unsure if it's the internal DNS servers, the Squid proxies, or what exactly. It doesn't seem to happen at home, but I don't have much runtime on FF at home yet.

I know this is contentious, but I think the problem might be that you're using a razor-thin device with extreme thermal throttling problems. I experience no such slowdowns on a 2011 Acer econobook with an i5 and 4gb ram.

If their hardware was the issue, then the issue would be present with both browsers, but it isn't.

I would love for my laptop to be thicker, have fans, and run Linux. But I didn't buy this.

My personal machine is a Razer Blade.

Also, Chrome works fine.

Agree with the performance problem (initial rendering). Mid-2015 MBP 15'' ("the best laptop ever made").

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