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Optimized International Firefox Builds From MOOX

Posted by timothy on from the well-mookie-here dept.

Nigel Wellington writes "Many of us have tried and are using the optimized builds of Mozilla Firefox made by MOOX. For those not aware, these builds perform roughly 20% faster than the official builds from Mozilla, are generally more stable and have extra features patched in. Well, the good news is that MOOX appears to now be making optimized builds that are localized as well to specific languages! This page has several localized builds already (German, Czech, Finnish) and by the looks of it many more are coming. If you have been looking for a solid localized build I strongly suggest these. The German M3 version has been awesome for me for the past 24 hours!" (These builds are Windows-only.)

34 comments

  1. Might be a bit of a dumb question, but... by rkwright · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...why aren't these optimizations contributed back to the Mozilla source? I'm assuming there's a good reason... just curious.

    1. Re:Might be a bit of a dumb question, but... by mbourgon · · Score: 1

      Agreed, since he says that it's just "different optimization flags".

      --
      "Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
    2. Re:Might be a bit of a dumb question, but... by ribena · · Score: 5, Informative

      IIRC, each build is optimised for a certain architecture. So a dowload for a Athlon would have different optimisations to a P4 download and one would probably not work on the other architecture. Mozilla just realease one build that will work with all processor types (well x86 for example). It would be confusing to most users to have to chose a specific build and the speed increase is probably not worth it.

    3. Re:Might be a bit of a dumb question, but... by crowdozer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What if they distributed an installer that checks your processor architecture then downloads and installs the appropriate executables?

    4. Re:Might be a bit of a dumb question, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What if they distributed an installer that checks your processor architecture then downloads and installs the appropriate executables?

      That would be fine in the general case, but you have to allow for (for example) people having their old hard disk put into their new PC.

    5. Re:Might be a bit of a dumb question, but... by magefile · · Score: 1

      That's a niche case, and most folks who might do that are tech-savvy enough to reinstall stuff that would benefit from optimizations. Or have it scan the architecture on startup, or every X days, and suggest a reinstall if warranted?

    6. Re:Might be a bit of a dumb question, but... by Tyrell+Hawthorne · · Score: 1

      What if they distributed an installer that checks your processor architecture then downloads and installs the appropriate executables?

      It could work, but it would also cause a lot of trouble and bad feelings among users. Imagine that I download a copy of Firefox with my nice AMD Athlon. Then I want to share this awesome software with my friends (always share Firefox with your friends, people) so I give him my copy of the installation problem. However, it doesn't work on your computer! How odd. And what a turn off.

      Yes, it would work, and there are work-arounds (the installer says "Hey, you'll have to get another! Click here.") but I don't think it's worth it. The software should just work.

  2. Any advantage for Gentoo? by crow · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Is there any advantage to these builds over the ones I get in my Gentoo system? I've already set my CFLAGS to optimize for my processor, but 20% sounds like a lot more than what I would normally expect from those changes. Or do the default builds include debugging or things that would be turned off in other distribution builds, as well?

    1. Re:Any advantage for Gentoo? by LincolnQ · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No. These are Windows (binaries only, which makes me think they guy didn't hack the code at all). I guess they're just compiled differently.

  3. Testing criteria by scumbucket · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I noticed in the linked PDF file that his test CPU is an Athlon XP1700+ overclocked to 2.15GHz. A stock XP1700+ only runs at 1.4GHz, so that is a pretty hefty overclock. Seems to me it could be the overclock that is causing his 20% speed increase, not some special optimizations.

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    1. Re:Testing criteria by aWalrus · · Score: 2

      Seems to me it could be the overclock that is causing his 20% speed increase, not some special optimizations.

      Firefox standard build and alternate build are both run on the same hardware, so... No.

      --
      Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
  4. Optimisations are COMPILER flag optos by tod_miller · · Score: 4, Informative

    Which is why they are not put back into source.

    Mozilla release generic stuff, as you would, not good asking people to choose which CPU you have to use the intarweb.

    Grab a CPUID app, find out your flavour of CPU (or just remember what one you bought) and d/l an optimised version!

    I think quake 3 is some monster that runs certain branches of optimised code instructions based on processor... maybe...

    So no source changes, just compiler sex.

    800.469.9269 INDUCE ACT CALL IN DAY. Phone now, and state you are opposed to the INDUCE ACT

    --
    #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
    1. Re:Optimisations are COMPILER flag optos by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 2, Informative

      Mod parent down. He makes a somewhat helpful point, but so have other people... and 800 469 9269 is 800 4MY XBOX, Microsoft's XBOX support line.

      Dick.

      --

      There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
    2. Re:Optimisations are COMPILER flag optos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The optimizations are a combination of compiler
      options, linker options and source code changes.
      Some of the source code changes are going back
      into Mozilla but it's a slow process.

      Some of the code changes are processor specific
      and it would be difficult to put these back into
      the source tree unless there there are processor-
      specific variants put in place so that one could
      activate them with a -D flag.

      Some of the code changes are just fixes for MSVC++
      bad code generation. An example is the hash
      function that uses x >> 28 ^ x 4 (maybe the
      other way around) that's used all over the place.
      GCC generates a rotate instruction but MSVC++
      does it the hard way (shift left, shift right,
      xor).

      MSVC++ 2005 hadn't fixed this problem so GCC will
      continue to have an advantage here without
      changing the source code to replace the inefficient MSVC++ generated code.

    3. Re:Optimisations are COMPILER flag optos by mikji · · Score: 1

      >So no source changes, just compiler sex.

      Hot...

  5. Red Flag by noselasd · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Things like this always makes me raise a red flag.
    If these are chnages not in the original mozilla, might they
    not be unstable/experimental ? Or if they are much better than
    the original, why arn't they in mozilla.org ? Either way, not good imho ;). (good for end users if it delivers what promises though..)

    1. Re:Red Flag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Things like this always makes me raise a red flag.

      compiler flag, not red flag. compiler flags are not changes to the source code.

  6. Optimized windows build vs Linux builds? by spineboy · · Score: 1
    Has any looked at the speeds of the these builds vs the Linux installations, say on Suse, Fedora and Gentoo?

    On my own machines the Linux seems lil' faster, but that's anecdotal evidence.

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    ..........FULL STOP.
    1. Re:Optimized windows build vs Linux builds? by mystran · · Score: 1
      My Gentoo build (measured subjectively by using the browser normally) seems to run about as fast as the official Windows build on my girlfriends machine.

      What? Not a scientific benchmark? Well, my computer is 800 Duron and my GF's is 1.4 or 1.6 or something Duron or Athlon (can't remember), so I guess the Gentoo build at least here seems to beat Windows build.

      Except... well.. I think the bottle-neck is the network connection after all.. How many have network connections so fast that browser performance is an issue? And even then, might it be that the Flash-ads are what eat most of the CPU after all.

      --
      Software should be free as in speech, but if we also get some free beer, all the better.
    2. Re:Optimized windows build vs Linux builds? by magefile · · Score: 1

      It is an issue - not with "how long does it take to ..." but with perceived performance, rendering speed, etc.

  7. But I like the Windows installer by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If this MOOX dude would give us .msi files or an installer .exe, I'd be down. If I were on a unix machine, I'd be happy with a directory that I could throw in /usr/local/bin/ & add to the path, but on Windows I expect some infrastructure. Because I'm a spoiled brat.

    I tried expanding MOOX's zips over my existing installation, and only succeeded at breaking everything. OK, I admit that was dumb.

    Also, shouldn't it be possible to build a binary with SSE optimizations for all x86 processors?

    --

    There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
    1. Re:But I like the Windows installer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not if you want to run the executable on a processor without SSE.

    2. Re:But I like the Windows installer by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 1

      Why can't gcc build multiple code paths, one for SSE machines and one for non SSE machines? Isn't that what shrinkwrapped computationally intensive programs have to do?

      --

      There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
    3. Re:But I like the Windows installer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      I tried expanding MOOX's zips over my existing installation, and only succeeded at breaking everything. OK, I admit that was dumb.

      Mozilla has said with every official release that installing over older releases (even sec. updates like 0.9.x) is a Bad Idea (TM).

      Especially when the only settings in Firefox that aren't profile-centric (that I know of, at least) are the search engine settings. Just c&p those, or spend the two or three minutes at Mycroft it takes to restore your search settings. :p

      I can't wait to get home and test this out.

  8. To answer many of the questions here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    From the .pdf:

    Build Environment: The free Microsoft MSVC++ Toolkit

    Presumably, most people are using gcc to compile Firefox, so this means you can't just set some flags in your makefile and get the speed-up. You'd need to convert the build process to use Microsoft's tools.

    1. Re:To answer many of the questions here... by Leffe · · Score: 1

      > You'd need to convert the build process to use Microsoft's tools.

      It's already supported by default, just find some guide on how to set all the tools and paths up and you can compile away.

  9. corrected INDUCE number - fsck my file system by tod_miller · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    1-800-839-5276

    copy-pasted wrong 800 number, I feel like such a dork!

    --
    #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
    1. Re:corrected INDUCE number - fsck my file system by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 1

      Heh. Sorry I assumed the worst :)

      --

      There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
  10. TRUNK vs BRANCH by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For the coding uninclined, could someone enlighten us to the comparative advantages of using either the TRUNK or BRANCH compilations?

    1. Re:TRUNK vs BRANCH by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I just finished reading This Thread at Mozillazine which has a pretty good discussion regarding TRUNK vs BRANCH vs Aviary Branch, etc.

      --
      94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
  11. Other builders by Leffe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Moox isn't the only one providing custom builds (although I use them :) ), MozillaZine has a forum dedicated to custom builds (ThunderBird, SunBird, etc...). And if you can't find what you need there are several guides (and official ones) for configuring and building the source. I suppose the processor-specific optimizations are hidden somewhere too, bugzilla maybe?

    Hm, I suppose you could check out this forum too...

  12. Hey! Somebody stole my sig! by Hadlock · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    When do I get to use my "submarine copyright"?

    --
    moox. for a new generation.
  13. I am not the only one by sevencarbon · · Score: 1

    I am moox - the Firefox builder making the localized builds of Firefox. Sorry for the odd uer name of Sevencarbon, but moox was already taken. First off, I want to say thank you to the poster who made the original post here about my work. I do appreciate the recognition, but I am not the only 3rd party developer making custom versions of Firefox. There are several 3rd party developers making optimized and customized versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. The include people such as mmoy, JTw, BangBang23, BlueFrye, daihard, pigfoot, scragz, amano, djeter, matlhDam, and MMx. If you want to see the fruits of their efforts or learn about what they working on I strongly suggest you look at the mozillazine forums - http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=42 or at pryan's forums - http://pryan.org/mozilla/forums/viewforum.php?f=3 As a group, we all work tirelessly to make a good product better and I do not think it is fair for the focus to be on one of us since we have all made significant and valuabe contributions to the development of Firefox and Thunderbird.

  14. MOD the parent up you idiots, its from MOOX by xx_chris · · Score: 1

    nuf said