Firefox Is Going 64-Bit: What You Need To Know

An anonymous reader writes "Firefox product manager Asa Dotzler determined that figuring out the 64-bit confusion surrounding Firefox it will be 'near the top' of his to-do list this summer and fall. One could conclude that Mozilla has no idea at this point what people are expecting from a 64-bit version of Firefox, so Dotzler is asking for some feedback. More speed? More security? What about plug-in availability? All of the above, please."

Comments

If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[Cito]

Then why make a 64 bit version at all? If the company has no idea what people expect, then they don't need to be messing with it in first place.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. It's not as if I'm sitting here, wishing to God my browser was 64 bit because it's so SSSLLLOOOWWW. It works perfectly well as-is. If someone wants to take up this task as a project to complete their PhD, then fine. To think that there are people out there just waiting for this to happen is plain silly.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

(Easy) compatibility with 64-bit plugins and not having to drag along a whole bloody system's worth of 32-bit libraries just to install the browser seem like the most evident reasons...

What confuses me is why they would be framing an address-length change in terms of additional features. With the specific exception of applications where the implementation of certain features requires easy access to gigantic slabs of memory, there isn't a whole lot of connection between 64-bitness and the feature list.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[truthsearch]

I was thinking the same thing, so I looked into it a bit (no pun intended). Apparently "true" 64-bit processing uses a more modern instruction set on the CPU, so I suppose there are additional performance and security benefits to using it.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[Anonymous Coward]

"Then why make a 64 bit version at all?"

So that they can better meet their rapid release plan!

http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/06/21/1756243/Mozilla-Ships-Firefox-5-Meets-Rapid-Release-Plan

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[WrongSizeGlass]

Then why make a 64 bit version at all?

Maybe they need an excuse to change the version to 6.4?

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[Malc]

Compatibility with 32-bit plugins seems like a good idea. Then they can switch to 64-bit browser without causing users hassle. For instance, they already run Flash in a separate surrogate process, so with the right interface, it shouldn't matter whether the Flash plug-in is 32 or 64 bit. And yes, I've taken this approach on Windows via COM/DCOM to make unportable 32 bit DLLs available to 64 bit applications. Can XPCOM or whatever Mozilla uses handle this kind of thing?

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At least on the Linux side, I know they've had some sort of shim setup for running 64-bit FF with 32-bit Flash for a while now. I don't know the dirty details of how it works, and what, if any, unpleasant side effects it has.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[aix tom]

The truth is the probably have integrated the version number as an integer all over the place, and they are desperate to switch to 64 bit before the version number hits the 32 bit integer limit later in the year.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[Anaerin]

At the moment, 64-bit FireFox will only run 64-bit plugins (As I know, running Windows FireFox Nightly 7.0a1 x64 as my default desktop browser, And there are 64-bit plugins on Windows for Java and Flash). They're working on it, though.

And most of the memory leaks are being caused by poorly-written or resource intensive plugins (Like FireBug), and they're working on that, too. "about:memory" in nightly builds now lists a complete tree of what's using the allocated memory, and more reporters are being introduced all the time.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[TeknoHog]

I was thinking the same thing, so I looked into it a bit (no pun intended). Apparently "true" 64-bit processing uses a more modern instruction set on the CPU, so I suppose there are additional performance and security benefits to using it.

Alpha had 64-bit processing in 1992, and that's certainly a more modern instruction set than x86...

Wait, are we talking about x86-64? I thought I had already been running a native Firefox on my x86-64 boxes for years.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[reub2000]

Before 4.0 there weren't any amd64 binaries from mozilla. There was nothing stopping anyone from compiling 64-bit binaries.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[Wild Wizard]

I've got the same thing 64bit Firefox running for ages, I even have flash 64bit so what is this news story about again?

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[__aaqvdr516]

Palemoon has a 64 bit version and is based on Firefox. I use the same addons I've always used.

The only thing I don't get is the random 5 second hangups that my wife has since she's on an old XP32 box with FF.

I've come across a few coupon sites (that she uses) that don't work in a 64 bit environment. I really haven't seen any benefits to being 64 bit native.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[dougmc]

Apparently "true" 64-bit processing uses a more modern instruction set on the CPU, so I suppose there are additional performance and security benefits to using it.

x86_64 has more registers than x86 (i386, 32 bit) so that can give a significant performance increase in some situations. (Note that this is not directly related to being 64 bit vs 32 bit -- it's simply having more registers with the more modern instruction set, as you put it.) Being able to do operations 64 bits at once rather than 32 bits at once speeds things up as well if the program is written to use it (and of course, this IS all about 64 bit vs 32 bit.) On the down side, pointers are larger and so memory usage may be somewhat larger, requiring more memory and causing more memory cache misses, but in general I think the extra registers and 64 bit registers more than make up for it.

Exactly how big the difference is depends on many factors, but in general, compiled for 64 bit is faster than that compiled for 32 bit. Not always, but in general.

More on all of that here.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[X0563511]

Unless someone's doing some retarded* pointer arithmetic or -expecting- particular data sizes... the only change involved would be a compiler switch.

It shouldn't be any work if it was coded correctly to begin with :/

* - eg, not able to handle different "bitness" without exploding into fiery chunks

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[Tanktalus]

When you start worrying about registers, isn't that a compiler problem? Shouldn't the compiler already be doing that level of optimisation? Or is there a bunch of asm code in Firefox for some reason? Organising code such that it sits close to functions it calls regularly to avoid cache misses can be done by changing the linking order, and playing with the functions' layout and location in the source tree (oddly, sometimes creating an extra function can increase speed by being able to put the extra function near code it calls, and thus decrease cache misses - but this can all get blown out of the water by the user doing other things, having the entire app dropped from the cache in the middle of the tight loop, to go and run something else for a timeslice). So that's something FF devs can do - but I somehow doubt they do much for getting variables into registers. That's up to the compiler.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[dougmc]

When you start worrying about registers, isn't that a compiler problem?

Absolutely, but maybe you misunderstood my point.

These additional registers offer a performance benefit. Yes, it is absolutely the compiler's job to use them -- and it does, and this results in faster code. I was explaining why code compiled in x86_64 mode is generally faster than the same code compiled in i386 mode.

Some of the performance benefits do require that the code authors consider the 64 bit registers available and code accordingly to take advantage of them, but there are other performance benefits that will generally happen with no work at all on the part of the part of the developers -- the compiler will just make it happen.

Re:If Mozilla has no idea what to expect

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yeah. So now that firefox with 64bit support, the compiler can compile in better optimizations.

64-bit is a misfeature

[chrylis]

Perhaps if they instead focused on fixing the memory leaks, pushing out 64-bit builds wouldn't be so pressing an issue?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[MightyMartian]

After playing with FF4 for a couple of weeks, I finally grew tired of it and installed Chrome. Chrome still needs a few features, but all in all, it outperforms FireFox hands down.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

They are working on it.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[ustolemyname]

I've had chrome use 14gb of ram (only thing to make swapping an issue on my computer), measured by change in available RAM after killing it. I would say I find Chrome's runnaway resource problems a bigger issue, only slightly mitigated by the ability to individually kill tabs.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[TheRaven64]

64-bit is important because an increasing number of operating systems are no longer shipping 32-bit libraries by default, and on the ones that are, most apps are 64-bit so they may not be swapped in. On this machine, only four of the apps that I'm running are 32-bit - and two of those are just because I'm running really old versions and haven't bothered to upgrade (they're open source and 32-bit clean). With these running, I have a lot of libraries loaded twice, once for them and once for every other application. A couple of years ago, the balance was in the other direction - a few 64-bit apps and a lot of 32-bit ones. If FireFox is the only 32-bit app that you're running, then that's a huge amount of 32-bit shared library code that is loaded solely for FireFox's benefit.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[DickBreath]

No need to fix FF's memory leaks.

Having a 64 bit version will all FF to take advantage of more than 4 GB of memory.

Fixing leaks is a waste of effort on mozilla's part. If you had a boat with leaks would you waste time, effort and money to fix it? No. Just get a bigger hull.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

Which operating systems are you talking about? I've been using 64-bit Firefox for years. Almost any 64-bit Linux distribution that offers Firefox will offer it in 64-bit. The downloads available on mozilla.org are irrelevant.

If you are talking about Windows, I don't think they're throwing away 32-bit support any time soon. Maybe Mac OS will stop 32-bit support at some point as they seem to like throwing out backwards compatibility, but they're just as likely to switch to some other, completely different architecture.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that he was not referring to Firefox, but was criticizing Chrome's use of RAM in comparison to Firefox...?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Bithir]

I am sure he referred to Chrome.

I have had Chrome eat 8 GB of memory on my 6 GB machine - I love Chrome and use it over FF for almost a year now, but it is not without faults.

Chrome has been a bit better on turning out fixes, but giving that FF is trying to adopt a faster paced delivery. If it is successfully implemented then they might soon do it in the same speed as Chrome, or perhaps even faster, only time will tell. This is the advantage with competition.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[GooberToo]

After playing with FF4 for a couple of weeks, I finally grew tired of it and installed Chrome. Chrome still needs a few features, but all in all, it outperforms FireFox hands down.

After playing with Chrome for a couple of weeks, I finally grew tired of it and installed FF5. FF5 has all the features I need and many of those are implemented far better than Chrome, but all in all, it outperforms Chrome hands down.

Fixed that for you.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

They _are_ focused on fixing the memory leaks. See the MemShrink project:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

Or we could just look at the severity of the browser issues.

Firefox: millions of people reporting memory leaks with Firefox.
Chrome: dozens of people reporting memory leaks with Chromium.
Other: thousands of people reporting obscure Nvidia/ATI driver leaks ... by blaming the affected programs (usually video games).
Opera: 1/3rd of its userbase reporting crashes (1 report total)

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[PopeRatzo]

32-bit clean

What does it mean when you say something is "32-bit clean"?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

After playing with FF4 for a couple of weeks, I finally grew tired of it and installed Chrome. Chrome still needs a few features, but all in all, it outperforms FireFox hands down.

After playing with Chrome for a couple of weeks, I finally grew tired of it and installed FF5. FF5 has all the features I need and many of those are implemented far better than Chrome, but all in all, it outperforms Chrome hands down.

Fixed that for you.

Me too, me too!

After playing with FF5 for a couple weeks, I finally grew tired of it and installed lynx. Lynx has all the features I need and many of those are implemented far better than Chrome, but all in all, it outperforms FF5 hands down.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Lanteran]

What's this ".exe" extension you speak of?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[BitZtream]

Other than some random Linux distro, name an OS that has 'stopped shipping 32bit libraries' by default.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[obarel]

Why get a bigger hull? Just call it "Submarine 5.0" and you're done.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Osgeld]

agreed heck even now with just this 1 page open its sucking down durn near 60 megs, which is quite impressive considering this same page on my mac + linux ppc + a stripped down bare bones gecko browser is only taking 11 megs

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Chrome is a proprietary piece of shit coming from a company with terrible privacy track record.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Osgeld]

I cant speak for the op, but I have not heard that term in a while ... in a nutshell you can take your 16/18/24 bit app (depending on what it was running on) and shoehorn it into 32 bit space if you had a bitchy OS/System that could not deal with it

though the last time anyone had a real issue with it was in the early 90's as mac's have been 32 bit since the (very) late 80's and MS finally went (full)32 bit with windows 95

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[AftanGustur]

After playing with FF4 for a couple of weeks, I finally grew tired of it and installed Chrome. Chrome still needs a few features, but all in all, it outperforms FireFox hands down.

After playing with Chrome for a couple of weeks, I finally grew tired of it and installed FF5. FF5 has all the features I need and many of those are implemented far better than Chrome, but all in all, it outperforms Chrome hands down.

Fixed that for you.

The Browser wars have started (again) and MIcrosoft deosn't even have a gun.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[chammy]

They don't do things in the source code that would break when you compile under 64bit, like cast pointers to ints or something.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

They are working on it. They just got a 30% improvement in the past few weeks for javascript. Thats a good start.

The big thing moving to 64 bit should be the larger number of registers they can use (important with interpreted languages such as javascript). For example in MAME they got a 30% speed increase just because of that. Even though it uses about 10% more memory.

But to just not do it because of some 'list of vague oh fix this first reasons' is just silly. It is the same tool I use at work to kill projects that will really waste money but some prima dona got stuck in their head is a good idea.

Also 'fix this thing first but do not work on anything else' is also silly. The project will stagnate and die if they do that. There are HUNDREDS of things to improve in the program. But xyz thing should be fixed first before any work is done on anything else will kill it fast.

Also the 64 bit build issues has been sitting around for nearly 4 years now. When would it be a good time to work on it? 3 years from now maybe? How about 5?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

They're fixing it see
http://blog.mozilla.com/futurereleases/2011/07/07/firefoxaurora7/
and
http://www.extremetech.com/internet/88998-fixes-to-memory-footprint-land-in-firefox-7
where they claim to reduce memory usage by 30%. From my personal experience it seems to be really better.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[siride]

When was the last time you used an 18-bit application?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[JamesP]

Me too, me too!

After playing with FF5 for a couple weeks, I finally grew tired of it and installed lynx. Lynx has all the features I need and many of those are implemented far better than Chrome, but all in all, it outperforms FF5 hands down.

Yeah, but there's no Flash plugin for it.

Now, on a more serious note, it would be cool if Lynx supported JS. And redirects without asking. And didn't ask to accept cookies.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[JamesP]

Unless you want to update (for example run FF5.0 before the distribution releases), then you're S.O.L.

So, an upstream 64-bit version is important.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anaerin]

They ARE focused on solving memory issues: http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/05/23/a-better-aboutmemory-stage-1-75/

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 5 outperforming Chrome hands down? I nearly just lost my coffee through my nose.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anaerin]

And perhaps a better link would be http://areweslimyet.com/

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

After being "upgraded" to FF5 and discovering that, 1) most the add-ons I like don't work with it, 2) under Windows it can only update add-ons if run from an administrator account, 3) neither of those problems is being fixed, I moved to Chrome and then decided to go back to version 3.6.

I could care less about a 64-bit browser until the 32-bit version actually works well.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[JonySuede]

What memory leak are you talking about ? I have it open for days and it never consume more than 250 000Kbyte. What are the add-on you were using ?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

Not OP, but "A typo/thinko"? How hard was that?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

They are. Perhaps you should test the Aurora 7 builds before making false assumptions. That version will be officially released before the 64 bit builds.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[PopeRatzo]

Thanks.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

increasing number of operating systems are no longer shipping 32-bit libraries by default,

Name two that have more than 5000 users. What? Didn't think so...

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[unencode200x]

I've used all of them and IE9 performs the best on my computer.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[unencode200x]

This morning.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Osgeld]

that's kind of my point, I dunno 1998? and it was a decade old workstation then

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[petteyg359]

A text-mode browser with decent Javascript support would be amazing. Sometimes it is really annoying having to start up X just to get past the login page for campus network access...

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[JamesP]

You can use Firebug to trace the POST message and then emulate it using curl (or perl/python)

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ignorant.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[PwnzerDragoon]

There's no such thing as a 18-bit CPU, they only come in powers of 2. Or a 24-bit application. Are you maybe thinking of 24/32-bit color displays? Windows 95/98 wasn't fully 32-bit either, it still ran on top of 16-bit DOS.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[aztracker1]

I've never kept enough tabs open for long enough in either browser to have an issue... though having flash on one tab only kill that tab when it breaks is pretty nice... overall, I only wish there were a pre-request option for the plugin API so a plugin can filter tracking/js downloads before they happen.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[siride]

Some of the PDP's were 36-bit and I think 18-bit as a half-sized version wasn't uncommon either. This would be back in the 70s and before.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[snemarch]

Just how much memory do the 32bit libraries take up, compared to the memory allocated by firefox? 8? 16? 32 megs? How much larger are the allocated data structures going to be, with int and pointer sizes doubling?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[justsomebody]

damn you lazy kids and your novelty toys.

we real hardocre surfers browse like this
bash$ exec 5<>/dev/tcp/www.slashdot.org/80
bash$ echo -e "GET / HTTP/1.0\n" >&5
bash$ cat <&5 | od -h
page is then subconsciously translated into visual representation (including animations) from hexcodes

and yes, we real hardcores also don't use keyboard to type comments, this was typed by producing morse code on my mouse, dammit

by surfing this way, you're bound not to be without some decent news, although when you read news about war starting, that war is usually over by the time you decode it

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[snemarch]

DOS was *almost* exclusively used for bootstrapping Win9x, though, unless you installed 'unknown' drivers in config.sys. For normal systems, there would be no DOS or BIOS code used once Windows had booted. There were still thunks down to 16-bit protected mode code for parts that had been ported over from win3.x and hadn't been upgraded to full 32bit yet - but that's nowhere near DOS.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[snemarch]

He probably meant 64-bit clean :)

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[PopeRatzo]

OK, so now I'm assuming that "64-bit clean" means it has only 64-bit code with no 32 bit at all?

I'm sorry, this is not my area of expertise.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Osgeld]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18-bit

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

Or we could just pull stats out of our asses.

Firefox: even a few million of a half a billion users reporting memory leaks is insignificant
Chrome: memory leaks reported none the less; however, combine this with overwhelming reports of lack of advanced features
Other: nobody of significance uses anything else at this point
Opera: you already covered it, but see other above

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[jo42]

I'm still using FF3.6 you insensitive clod!

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[the_B0fh]

Then try links. That includes JS support.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[the_B0fh]

nonsense. win95 was full of 16 bit crap. even win98 had them. Hell, even nt4 had them.

win95 even had full international support with the APIs simply doing a "return".

but it looked far far better than windows 3.1

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Darinbob]

Don't most 64-bit OS and CPUs support 32-bit apps?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure you missed half the point regarding "other". You have no idea whether the memory leak is actually Chrome's problem and not some driver/platform issue. Firefox's reports are so persistent that it must be their problem; hell, even the FF devs admitted there was a major problem.

But if FF works for you then honestly, why should you care about memory leaks? I wouldn't. :)

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Nerdfest]

I find it seems to depend more on which pages you have open than which plugins you use. I also find Chrome starts eating rather a lot of memory when you have heavy javascript pages open for a long time. Perhaps the problem in both cases is poorly written javascript leaking objects?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how you would do it on the mac: Compile it for both.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[loosescrews]

I have had the same experience. The three features missing from Chrome that really kill it for me are recently closed tabs (Opera had this before Firefox), good proxy support (Under Windows, Chrome's proxy configuration is shared with IE), and good add-on support (as far as I know there still isn't an ad blocker that prevents ads from being downloaded).

Until they fix those three things, my interest in Chrome will go no further than testing to make sure my websites display and work correctly in Chrome.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this whole FF with memory leaks a joke? Really I don't get it. I've never had FF use more than 400mb of ram and that's after running the program for hours with 10+ tabs unless I have Netflix running, then I have seen over 400mb. Personally I don't know why Mozilla took so long before deciding to make a 64bit version. I believe we should at least have the choice.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[X0563511]

Flash, most likely.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps you should know what your talking about?

how did this get rated insightful?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Sardaukar86]

...I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette.. redhead..

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Bungie]

The bit length measurement of a CPU or application architecture can really be of any size, it is usually determined by the size of the address bus, registers or data bus. The most common archeitectures use lengths in powers of two but there are a few platforms which do use odd bit sizes (a lot of these were older systems like the PDP and the System/360). IIRC the 18-bit PDP system could perform direct manipulation of individual bits in it's registers, so having an odd bit length didn't matter. Newer archetictures often manipulate the entire length of the register so it makes it much easier and more efficient to keep sizes at a powers of 2.

Windowd 95 was also a fully 32-bit operating system, It booted into 16-bit MS-DOS initially but then entered full 32-bit protected mode when the kernel (krnl386.exe) was loaded. The 16-bit MS-DOS session is discarded and has no effect on the 32-bit part of the operating system when it boots into protected mode. They probably used MS-DOS to provide basic memory, hard disk and file system support for the purpose of locating and booting the kernel (similar to what NTLDR does on Windows NT), and also to provide full MS-DOS compatibilty by providing a way to boot into MS-DOS only.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[del_diablo]

Running DOSgames are we? 3

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[TheRaven64]

Yes, I meant 64-bit clean. It means that it has no code that depends on assumptions that are not valid in 64-bit mode. i.e. it can be compiled in 64-bit mode without any problems. 32-bit clean (what I typed, but didn't mean) means that it does not contain any assumptions that are invalid in 32-bit mode. Most code falls into this category, because it's developed on 32-bit machines, or 64-bit machines with 32-bit compatibility in mind in the developer tools. When I learned to program, most code was 16-bit, so being 32-bit clean was an issue.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[TheRaven64]

On OS X, the AppKit binary is 43MB. That's a three-architecture universal binary, so each architecture needs to load about 14MB of code, just for AppKit. If you're using half a dozen other frameworks, then it's very easy for this to reach 100MB.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[tbird81]

There's no such thing as a 18-bit CPU, they only come in powers of 2.

4.24264069 to the power of two?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[snemarch]

Assuming that's a correct estimate, that is a fair amount of code... but still isn't much compared to what FireFox ends up sucking up at the end of the day ;)

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixed that for you.

Are you suggesting that the GP was mistaken in claiming that he switched from Firefox to Chrome, and that the correct statement is that he switched from Chrome to Firefox?

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[JonySuede]

make sense, as I use flashblock and only whitelist the flash I want

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[DaVince21]

Unfortunately, while I really like Chrome, I've had the opposite experience. On my computer, Firefox is the fastest of the two. Opera is even faster, but it has some weird bugs with website interaction so I don't bother with it.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[AmiMoJo]

What OS? Windows Vista and especially 7 will aggressively cache data in RAM, because unused RAM is basically wasted. Obviously the OS is clever enough not to bother using the page file for stuff that is just cache, so other than the requirement to zero it before handing it to another program there is pretty much zero cost and lots of gain.

The server versions of Windows are even more aggressive. A default install of Server 2008 R2 on a machine with 2GB of RAM will say 80% of it is in use when first booted to a desktop. If you google it there are loads of people complaining about it, but that is how it is designed to work.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Jonner]

Perhaps if they instead focused on fixing the memory leaks, pushing out 64-bit builds wouldn't be so pressing an issue?

64-bit builds of Firefox are neither new nor a misfeature. It's perfectly natural to run 64-bit applications on 64-bit operating systems and I've been running x86_64 Firefox on GNU/Linux and OSX for years. The fact that the Mozilla-provided Windows builds will finally catch up is barely newsworthy.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[JMJimmy]

Ditto. I refuse to upgrade until they fix the UI. Once the security updates stop I may have to look at Opera of all things.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[djlowe]

There's no such thing as a 18-bit CPU, they only come in powers of 2. Or a 24-bit application.

Sorry, that's simply not true. Chuck Moore's company, GreenArrays, makes one today called the F18A: http://www.greenarrays.com/home/documents/index.html#architecture.

PDF: http://www.greenarrays.com/home/documents/greg/PB003-110412-F18A.pdf

Regards,

dj

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

No it is powers of two not 2 to the power of.

The question you are looking for is "2 to the power of 4.16992500144", at least it is according to my calculators which may have rounded off the resulting number so it displays as 18 when the reality is not exactly 18 but just very close.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's Safari.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[hobarrera]

Arch Linux (https://www.archlinux.org/)

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

No, what tbird81 meant was 4.24264069 ^2 = 18

2^ 4.24264069 is actually 18.83, or almost close to 19

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_memory_management#32-bit_clean

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you captain obvious, I know that.

Yes, that is what tbird81 meant, but it is wrong because PwnzerDragoon was saying the number of bits in a processor is a "power of 2", 2^4.24264069 is not a power of 2.

Re:64-bit is a misfeature

[Anonymous Coward]

Replying to self:

2^4.24264069 is not a power of 2.

Damn it, I should have previewed properly, that is of course a power of 2, it is "4.24264069 ^2" that isn't a power of 2.

Memory!

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Then why make a 64 bit version at all? If the company has no idea what people expect, then they don't need to be messing with it in first place.

Hurray! With 64 bits, Firefox might be able to address all the memory it uses...

Re:Memory!

[grub]

Hurray! With 64 bits, Firefox might be able to address all the memory it uses...

Firefox and the OS will still need ZFS' 128 bit filesystem for the swap space.

Re:Memory!

[Anonymous Coward]

super epic winner spotted ;)

Re:Memory!

[TheLink]

More like it'll be able to leak more than 4GB of memory.

Re:Memory!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so going to be modded down to hell, so I'll post as AC instead.

You know, I remember having 4MB installed in my 486sx. But now that memory usage has grown exponentially (I've got 4GB installed at work), so too have the programers incompetence at resource management. Ya ya, I know. All those programming abstract layers should shield us from individual responsibility bla bla bla. Maybe if everyone coded in ASM or C++, the world would be a better place.

 

Re:Memory!

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox is coded in C++. The problem is that their developers are incompetent at memory management.

Re:Memory!

[Doctor_Jest]

If everyone coded in C++, we'd be putting built-in time limits on how long anyone could use an application... due to all the memory leaks devs don't have the time to look for. :)

Incompetent C++ programmers are as bad as programmers who don't code efficiently. :) It's the nature of C++...

Re:Memory!

[snemarch]

A vanilla install of firefox doesn't seem that bad - but once you add a handful of addons, things do get leaky as hell.

Would that be Mozillas fault, or the addon writers?

Re:Memory!

[Anonymous Coward]

4GB space for leaked memory should enough for everyone!

Re:Memory!

[willy_me]

Would that be Mozillas fault, or the addon writers?

Mozilla, for allowing the addon writers to write such code. If Mozilla wanted to clean up it's reputation it would sandbox the things to ensure they never reflected badly upon their product. Same sort of strategy as Chrome and Safari.

Now doing so would be difficult and would likely break every extension that is out there. But if Mozilla invested in developing an API to allow addons to operate in a separate process while retaining the current flexibility they offer extensions - that would be cool. Sounds hard, wouldn't want to do it, but the end product would be great.

Of course, a middle of the road approach might also work. Allow for Chrome/Safari like extensions that operate in a sandbox and encourage developers to use this method if applicable. But traditional extensions could also be allowed for those that need it. This would minimize the ability for extension developers to mess up the reputation of Firefox.

Re:Memory!

[snemarch]

Putting plugins (stuff like flash, silverlight, pdf plugin etc.) in a separate process and sandboxing that isn't a bad idea - but putting every addon in a separate process? Ugh, that would bloat up memory usage and slow down stuff because of inter-process communication. Not a viable solution, and I believe not even Chrome is doing that.

And I'm not sure there's much you can do to prevent memory leaks from addons. If somebody is accidentally keeping references around that aren't needed, no matter how smart a garbage collector is, it can't reap the memory. That's why you still see memory leaks in Java and C# applications as well.

Re:Memory!

[akayani]

I've been using 64 bit Firefox for well over 6 months, just as I've had GPU support turned on. It's not a programming question but one about marketing.
http://nightly.mozilla.org/
You just need to look in the right place for the download.

Re:Memory!

[toonces33]

Exactly. Instead of crashing after having exhausted the address space that a 32-bit process is limited to, it could keep on going and bring the whole system down.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[MightyMartian]

This loony quack is getting quite annoying. For the record, chiropractors are fraudsters, voodoo witch doctors in suits who take in the gullible. This particular bird has that extra pathetic aspect in that he seems to actually believe the bullcrap he spins to others.

You're a fraud pal, a vile repugnant fraud.

Switch to a Webkit based browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox has served as the alternate web browser for years. Now, that the KHTML inspired, Webkit browser engine has matured, it is time to thank Firefox for its years of service, and switch to one of the many Webkit based browsers, such as Chrome, Safari, or Midori.

Re:Switch to a Webkit based browser?

[Randle_Revar]

Webkit is a fine engine. Too bad no one is interested in using it to make a good browser.

Re:Switch to a Webkit based browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you please define what a good browser is/should be?

Re:Switch to a Webkit based browser?

[jo_ham]

And you think Firefox is an example of a "good browser"?

If FF4 and beyond is your standard, well... I think you might need to reevaluate. I dropped FF for Chrome as my alternate browser and have not regretted it for a second.

Re:Switch to a Webkit based browser?

[Randle_Revar]

>And you think Firefox is an example of a "good browser"?
It's alright I guess. Mozilla is far better, especially as FF get more like chrome.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[PNutts]

For the record, chiropractors are fraudsters, voodoo witch doctors in suits who take in the gullible.

Sorry your experience was so negative. I've had good luck with them for two different issues.

Oh great.

[MaxBooger]

64-bit Firefox: Now with 192 gigabytes of memory leaks!

Re:Oh great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, what? Haven't I been doing 64 bit Firefox builds for years, when running "emerge -atv firefox" with CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" and "-march=athlon64"??
This is a serious question.
Why would Firefox even dishonor that request?
I thought the Windows builds were 64 bit too...

And with it taking about 900-1400 MB of RAM, it better be 64 bit!!

Re:Oh great.

[Anaerin]

Yup, Windows Nightly FireFox builds have been available in 64-bit for almost a year now.

Re:Oh great.

[Anonymous Coward]

A future support call: "Microsoft, you really have to increase the memory support for Windows 64 bit non-Enterprise versions. Our Firefox needs it for the home user."

Re:Oh great.

[Llian]

Funny.... my FF with no matter how many tabs never goes over 500 meg and usually stays around the 300 meg mark (usually have atleast 15 tabs open). I swear those who say memory leaks memory leak memory leaks must be using dodgy add-on and using a 30 year old PC with Bill Gate's recommended max memory.

Re:Oh great.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I mean, was there ever a Firefox that was NOT 64 bit?
I mean, even Phoenix and Mozilla (now Seamonkey) back then must have been 64 bit compilable, no?

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Anonymous Coward]

PNutts said:

Sorry your experience was so negative. I've had good luck with them for two different issues.

Let me guess... your penis and your nuts?

The most obvious feature

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be happy if it correctly renders the web pages I visit that are over 4 GB in size. Of course, they're mostly Flash.

Why ?

[advance-software]

Why does a browser need to be able to access more than 4GB ? Has anyone hit that limit yet ? Or even close ?

Re:Why ?

[ColdWetDog]

Why does a browser need to be able to access more than 4GB ? Has anyone hit that limit yet ? Or even close ?

I want the one with the bigger GB's.....

Re:Why ?

[TheRaven64]

I've not seen my browser use more than about 800MB of memory (and that seems quite ludicrous), but there are several reasons to want a 64-bit version:

• In 64-bit mode, you have more registers available. This makes makes compiling JavaScript easier.
• You can store a 63-bit integer or a 32-bit floating point value in a JavaScript pointer and only promote them to real objects wrapping 64-bit values when an operation would lose precision. This reduces memory required for JavaScript.
• 64-bit, on x86, implies the existence of SSE. This means you can generate efficient SSE code instead of slow x87 code.
• Most of your other apps are increasingly going to be 64-bit, so launching a 32-bit app will result in swapping in a huge number of 32-bit versions of shared libraries.
• 64 is bigger than 32, and customers want more of those bit thingies.

Re:Why ?

[DickBreath]

> Why does a browser need to be able to access more than 4GB ?

Because I may want Linux running on a PC emulator written in JavaScript. Or I may want the latest Flash based animated jumping blinking dancing flickering seizure inducing graphics which make the web so much more informative.

But seriously, the real reason of global importance is so that you can have a much larger Farmville.

Re:Why ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wasting your keyboard away. You'll never get them all and even if you do, they won't listen, understand, or care. Many, including myself, have been telling people for years that it's not just about the bigger address space. The all knowing Internet has decided we don't need a 64-bit address space and consequently all other features that come with a 64-bit processor are irrelevant.

Also, rest assured that even if Firefox became the most memory efficient browser in existence it would not matter. Once the Internet makes up its mind, you cannot change it by bringing up stupid things like facts.

Take your extra registers, SSE, shared libraries, processor tuning and shove it. The Internet has spoken.

Note to moderators: There is no +1 sarcastic, so you have no choice but to mod this insightful. No? Ok just mod parent up.

Re:Why ?

[wagnerrp]

It doesn't. Why does a browser need to stay in 32-bit compatibility mode? We've had 64-bit desktop processors for eight years now, and 64-bit desktop operating systems for just as long. The only reason Firefox has waited so long to distribute a 64-bit binary is because garbage like Adobe Flash only works in 32-bit. If you were writing a tiny little terminal application that only required a few KB of memory, would you only compile it in 16-bit mode?

Re:Why ?

[Excors]

You can store a 63-bit integer or a 32-bit floating point value in a JavaScript pointer and only promote them to real objects wrapping 64-bit values when an operation would lose precision. This reduces memory required for JavaScript.

SpiderMonkey uses 64-bit value types on all architectures (x86, x86-64, ARM, etc), storing either a 64-bit float or a 32-bit int or a pointer (31 bits on 32-bit, 47 bits on 64-bit), so it shouldn't make any difference to their memory usage. (The non-float values get packed into the range of unused NaN float representations, to avoid ambiguity). I think other modern JS engines do pretty much the same thing. JS semantics are that numbers are 64-bit floats, so implementations couldn't really use 63-bit ints (too precise) or 32-bit floats (too imprecise) anyway, though 32-bit ints are a safe optimisation.

Re:Why ?

[BZ]

Your second point doesn't make that much sense....

32-bit Firefox already uses 64-bit values (basically a union of a double and an unsigned long long) to store its JS values. Going to 64-bit actually makes this _harder_ because your pointers might not be distinguishable from a double. That's dealt with on x86-64 by exploiting the fact that it's really a 47-bit address space, but that causes some additional complexity and masking slowdown, so the JS folks have been considering moving to 128-bit values when running on x86-64. This would incidentally also work on 64-bit architectures with a 64-bit address space (e.g. sparc64).

Eh?

[jmorris42]

I thought I had been running a 64bit Firefox for years. So I wasn't? Or is this about finally doing a 64-bit Windows build? Probably since Moz Corp is entirely focused on Windows and treats Linux as a red headed stepchild.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

They have had 64-bit Windows builds for over a year, but now they are actually going into production.

And yeah, this is just referring to Windows.

Firefox on Linux is actually great, with -O3 support on GCC and 64-bit support.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

treats Linux as a red headed stepchild.

How do you figure? Linux got 64bit binaries before Windows. Sounds like 64-bit Windows is the stepchild to me.

Re:Eh?

[onefriedrice]

treats Linux as a red headed stepchild.

How do you figure? Linux got 64bit binaries before Windows. Sounds like 64-bit Windows is the stepchild to me.

OP is probably referring to how measurably slow Firefox is on Linux (and Mac OS X) compared to Windows, the assumption being that Mozilla cares less about Firefox on less popular platforms.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where on earth do you get a cheaper GNU/Linux system than Microsoft Windows? I see systems on par in terms of price. Not cheaper. Unless you are taking into account things like the price of Microsoft Office, Anti-Virus, etc. Then it is significantly cheaper. BUT people are using it because it is better or free. Cheapskates go with Microsoft Windows not GNU/Linux because they see too good to be true deals. They fail to realise the costs of Microsoft Windows once they walk out of the door exceeds that of GNU/Linux systems.

Re:Eh?

[UltraZelda64]

How do you figure? Linux got 64bit binaries before Windows. Sounds like 64-bit Windows is the stepchild to me.

Only because it is open source and can be compiled by the distribution developers. Whether it can actually be called "Firefox" or not without stepping on some asshole's foot at Mozilla Corporation for making "unauthorized" changes to the source... well, that's another story.

Mozilla has to produce the Windows Firefox binaries and set up the installer, so it's just pure laziness that they didn't already start producing 64-bit Windows binaries a long time ago. Maybe the Corporation needs to spend less money on legal issues regarding how you can and cannot use the code and more on development and support.

Re:Eh?

[Randle_Revar]

>I thought I had been running a 64bit Firefox for years.
I know I have. First third party SeaMonkey builds, then the SeaMonkey Nightlies got 64 bit options, and I went to that.

Re:Eh?

[Randle_Revar]

Yeah, despite being largely neglected, both Mozilla and FF are better on Linux than Windows.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"People don't go around picking up dog poop because its on the ground free either.."

But dog poop is free as in beer, not free as in freedom. What have you got against freedom? (And I'm not talking about the "American Gladiators"-McDonalds-bomb-the-monkeys-without-tails-kind of Freedom as sold by the economic elites and the US, but actual freedom.)

Re:Eh?

[MightyMartian]

It's free as long as you don't have value for your time.

Hey, that's just what your mom told your dad the night you were conceived.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because no one spends time maintaining Windows? Shit, time to start laying off the bulk of the IT industry which sits around all day doing nothing with their Windows boxes. Tolla la la la fa toll la la.

Re:Eh?

[kripkenstein]

I thought I had been running a 64bit Firefox for years. So I wasn't? Or is this about finally doing a 64-bit Windows build? Probably since Moz Corp is entirely focused on Windows and treats Linux as a red headed stepchild.

I am a Firefox dev and a Linux user. Mozilla is definitely not focused on Windows, in fact many of us devs use Linux (I am posting from Ubuntu right now), and many of the rest use OS X. Windows is in the minority.

There are 64-bit builds available from our build system, but we don't promote them. The reason is that we don't spend as much effort on QAing 64-bit builds, we have limited resources and are focused on the standard (32-bit) builds for the most part.

There are some good reasons for 64-bit browsers, for sure, but AFAIK none of the major browsers make that a priority. For example, there is a 64-bit IE9, however it ships with a hobbled JavaScript engine (without JITs), so clearly they don't intend it very seriously.

In any case, given that Firefox is open source, anyone can build a 64-bit version. I believe several Linux distros ship a 64-bit Firefox, for example. There used to be some problems with running 32-bit Flash in it, but I have heard that is workable now too.

Re:Eh?

[gilesjuk]

If I view the process in Activity Monitor on OSX it says Firefox is 64-bit anyway.

So I don't understand what they are announcing?

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I remember correctly, it was Red Hat that did that, not Mozilla. Mozilla has never cared about 64-bitness because for the longest time it was not relevant to Windows. Mozilla didn't do a damn thing but accept some patches. Yes, that's the way open source should and does work, but lets put credit where it belongs. If Mozilla had given a shit about it, Windows would have had a 64-bit version around the same time as Linux did.

Re:Eh?

[janisozaur]

Perhaps, if you had read TFA, you would see that it clearly states "Windows 64-bit" all over the place. I understand, that the submitter is partially to be blamed, but you evidently did not bother to check your information prior to whining publicly *without* a reason.

Re:Eh?

[jmorris42]

Fwoosh!

Duh, we have had 64bit Firefox on Linux for years, it was stable enough to ship standard in RHEL3's 64 bit editions, yea that long ago. Of course I don't think Moz Corp actually had a lot to do with that, and the nspluginwrapper that made it practical to actually use came from a random outside source. So no, I didn't need to click through before letting the snark and sarcasm flow freely. Bah, Windows is pathetically behind the 64 bit curve. Remember the several years of new PCs shipping with 3GB to avoid the tech support calls asking where the extra GB was hiding?

Re:Eh?

[Teun]

I'm presently running the 64bit flash 11.0.1beta in Firefox on Linux.

It has some issues but for the majority it works.

Can you point to such a Firefox 64bit build?

Re:Eh?

[Teun]

Ah, the Linux version IS 64bit, could have thought of that one myself...

Re:Eh?

[kripkenstein]

Can you point to such a Firefox 64bit build?

Sure, Mozilla's ftp server has them here (the ones with x86_64). Those are for FF8 (Nightly build).

Re:Eh?

[siride]

It's pretty snappy for me on Linux.

Re:Eh?

[beowulf01]

Yes, 64-bit Firefox has been available for ages. I've been running it since SLAMD64 11 and Slackware64 13.x. The beta 64-bit Adobe Flash has been around since then as well in one preview form or another. I am currently using Flash 10.3 beta x86_64 with Slackware64 13.37 - with no significant issues. The new Flash 11 is now beta with full GNU/Linux x86_64 support. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplatformruntimes/flashplayer11/

Re:Eh?

[dbIII]

Amy Pond was a red headed stepchild :)

Re:Eh?

[joel48]

Sure, the nightlies are - but notice at that same location the win64-x86_64 builds also? Mozilla have themselves provided nightly 64-bit builds of FF on Windows since at least before the 4.0 release. I was running the 64-bit Minefield nightlies leading up to the 4.0 release, figuring that they would then be official releases, but alas they appear to just be considered the ignored stepchild by Mozilla.

Re:Eh?

[BZ]

http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/5.0/linux-x86_64/ for the current Linux 64-bit release builds.

Re:Eh?

[BZ]

This is about 64-bit Windows builds.

There's nothing to say about the others, since there are release builds of 64-bit for Linux starting with Firefox 4 and since Mac defaults to 64-bit starting with Firefox 4 on Mac OS X 10.6 and later.

So Windows is the only one of the three that _doesn't_ have supported 64-bit builds yet.

Re:Eh?

[hobarrera]

So the issue is not that mozilla is windows-centric, it rather adobe-centric (or flash-centric).
Let flash die already, if adobe won't support it (and upgrade to 64 PROPERLY) why should mozilla care?

Re:Eh?

[kripkenstein]

I am not sure why you think Flash is a reason Mozilla doesn't officially support 64-bit builds.

I don't think Flash has much to do with that. The issue, as I said, is that it is already a lot of work for us to QA 32-bit builds. QAing 64-bit builds as well would be double the work. I realize it might not sound that way, but in practice you do need to run the entire set of automatic and manual tests on every build, even if the difference is just 32 vs 64 bit.

Mozilla has limited resources, and we have to make choices what to spend time on.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Surt]

He's actually either a troll or an anti-chiropractor himself. He could only be driving people away from chiropractic treatment with these posts.

What?

[hackertourist]

The OS X version is 64 bit already. At least, I can choose whether to launch it in 32- or 64-bit mode.

Re:What?

[IB4Student]

RTFA. Title says Windows.

Re:What?

[hackertourist]

Even then: there's a release already out that has the exact issues that TFA is asking feedback about.

Re:What?

[hedwards]

My prediction is that this is more about window dressing. There's a lot of people out there that assume that 64-bits are always better than 32-bits and that if I paid for a 64-bit processor I want to run everything possible in 64-bits.

Probably the only reason to ever create a 64-bit processor is for platforms that don't have the 32-bit libraries. But, you add a lot of overhead and for something like a web browser you don't really gain much if anything in terms of performance.

In the long run, I bet this will be abandoned due to it making them look bad when the browser soaks up a lot of extra RAM unnecessarily.

Re:What?

[wisnoskij]

What?

I do not normally like to contradict someone in a technical field such as this one unless I am a really big expert (but I have looked into 32 vs 64 bit quite a lot) in that field but I am pretty sure everything you have just said is complete crap.

64 bit has many many benefits above and beyond the obvious and very nice ability to use more RAM and execute bigger instructions.
But no I have seen no evidence nor heard anyone who seemed to know what they were saying say that it uses significantly more RAM.
If it is using more it making use of it and making the program run better, but it can use less as well and I have even heard that because it does not have to use the x86 emulation (I know it is not technically emulation) that it saves RAM usage.

And RAM is cheap, oh so very cheap, extra usage of RAM is not a drawback at all anymore.

And for your argument it would never use its benefits, what world do you live in?
my computer can barely run /. and more processing power would not hurt for that let along normal JavaScript; And whole 3D games are now being run in the browser so it is eminently important that we get x64 versions of these browsers out immediately as game developers have already stretched the browser far past its ability to handle it.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain to me why anyone would think differently?

Because they have partaken excessively of mind-altering substances?

Re:What?

[hedwards]

Not really, if you're pretty sure what I've said is crap then provide some sort of citation. It's common knowledge that 64-bit code uses more RAM than 32-bit code does. It's one of the inevitable consequences of using 64-bit words. Now, if you need to address more than about 3gb of RAM it might be worthwhile, but for things like web browsers it's a lousy bargain.

Even a cursory look at the wikipedia page for 64-bit covers what I've said and then some.

Re:What?

[BZ]

Not all of them. For example, it doesn't have the plug-in issues, because it's a fat binary with both 32-bit and 64-bit executables, and the plug-ins are loaded into a 32-bit process.

Re:What?

[wisnoskij]

The amount of overhead to run a x86 program on a 64bit windows machine is also not insignificant (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384219%28v=vs.85%29.aspx)

And I completely agree that a 64 bit OS uses more then a 32 bit OS, but unless i am mistaken the only relevant situation here is a a 64 bit OS running either a x86 program in emulation mode or a native 64 bit program.

And doing my own little test I fond that IE x86 used moderately more RAM then IE 64 bit.
So yes obviously it is possible for 64 bit programs to use less ram.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

A 64-bit version of FireFox is what I am expecting

[Anonymous Coward]

I am expecting a browser that runs in 64-bit mode under 64-bit versions of Windows. Sincerely, Captain Obvious.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[MightyMartian]

It ain't bordering on slander, it's reporting the reality that you're a fraudsters, along with all the other vile fraudsters in your "profession".

Wrong title...

[Anonymous Coward]

Should have been: Firefox is going 64-bit on WINDOWS

I've been using a 64 bit version of Firefox for 6 years now (on Linux). Even Flash works.

Re:Wrong title...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed- I was really confused at the title, and event went and did this just to see if I was going crazy:

$ file /usr/lib/firefox-5.0/firefox-bin /usr/lib/firefox-5.0/firefox-bin: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.15, stripped

64 bit works since forever

[KiloByte]

What's the problem with 64 bits? Firefox worked just fine with it for years. Unless you're using a doorstop machine or a doorstop OS, even having 32 bit libraries is a waste of disk space. Heck, even phones start having 2GB ram, suggesting ARM will need to transition soon. MIPS (Longsoon) is already there.

When project electrolysis finally lands on Firefox trunk, the only current benefit of 64 bits will be gone, but that's still not a reason to have a complete set of 32 bit libraries in memory (or even on disk).

Limits of 32 bits are annoying. For example, gcc-4.6 can partition flto compilation but it still needs to load everything into the memory. It'd be a huge waste of programming time to implement your own swapping if the OS is perfectly capable of doing that. If the address space is big enough, that is. You currently cannot compile Firefox with flto on a 32 bit machine at all, and it gives a huge (~20%) boost on typical C++ code.

Thus, your precious 32 bit systems are a doorstop architecture that would be nice to get rid of.

Re:64 bit works since forever

[hedwards]

The short answer is that there is no reason to move to 64-bits, and distros that drop the 32-bit libraries by default really shouldn't be doing so. This isn't like the move from 16-bit to 32 bit where most applications would benefit from the extras. In this case you end up using more memory whether or not you get any benefit from it and there's a ton of applications which just don't benefit from the extra bits.

Oddly enough, a browser really should be one of the things that stays at 32bits.

Re:64 bit works since forever

[KiloByte]

Why would I install two distinct architectures instead of just one?
Heck, I see a reason to have amd64 and armel co-installed so you can easily cross compile and test things, but amd64 and i386? What for?

Re:64 bit works since forever

[Viol8]

"Limits of 32 bits are annoying. For example, gcc-4.6 can partition flto compilation but it still needs to load everything into the memory"

Wtf are you compiling that you need more than 4GB of virtual memory? The whole of Windows 7?? Sounds like you're BSing to me.

Re:64 bit works since forever

[KiloByte]

Uhm, flto. This is a mode of compilation that operates on the whole source together. I haven't compiled Firefox myself, but for example Dungeon Crawl (380kloc) needs 1.5GB, so this seems about right.

Of course, a regular compile needs a small fraction of that.

Re:64 bit works since forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait for it. Somebody soon implements a scientific code with Javascript requiring over 16 GB of memory per node. Some day one may need to access texture buffers larger than 4GB with Javascript as well. Besides, the transition makes a great excuse for auditing at least part of the code and removing those unnecessary assumptions all around. That can only improve portability and stability of the product.

Re:64 bit works since forever

[Ant P.]

I've made the mistake of assuming a tmpfs big enough to build Chromium with its half-an-OS of bundled libs would also be big enough to compile Firefox 5 in. It isn't.

Re:64 bit works since forever

[BZ]

One major problem with moving to 64 bit is that NPAPI plug-ins (e.g. Flash) are just dynamically linked libraries. Which means they need to be compiled for the same architecture as the process they're loaded into. Which means that process needs to be a 32-bit process if you want to use the plug-ins that are out there now. That's changing, albeit slowly.

Firefox solves this on Mac by in fact shipping a fat binary with both the 32-bit and 64-bit builds in it and using the 32-bit one as the plugin container process. But Windows doesn't have native fat binary support like that, and doubling the size of the Windows install package has its own share of issues. It's all doable, of course, but there are definitely drawbacks to switching to 64-bit so far. The question is whether the costs outweigh them.

Re:64 bit works since forever

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand your reference to Longsoon here. That was developed in 2003 while the first 64 bit MIPS chip is from 1991.

Re:64 bit works since forever

[KiloByte]

You're right that there were 64 bit MIPS chips 12 years ago, but none of them are in wide use today nor can boast performance within an order of magnitude of recent ARM. Modern Longsoon can. And indeed, it builds upon the designs of those 64 bit mipsen of old.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[MightyYar]

I'm actually a little bit torn. I have a friend who is a chiropractor, and he honestly believes in his trade. And I think most of them do... I mean, why would you go through all that training and certification if you thought it was quackery?

And they do see results. Why? Because the placebo effect is real. Sure, a chiropractor probably isn't actually accomplishing anything, but if the patient thinks they are, they might see their pain symptoms go away.

So, yeah, they can't claim to be doing anything that has been proven science behind it, but on the other hand they are improving people's lives.

Now, pain is one thing... cancer is another. Anyone claiming that rubbing and cracking will cure cancer belongs in jail.

History repeats

[Wonko the Sane]

This sounds like like the, "Why should we rewrite our perfectly good 16 bit applications just because everybody else is jumping on the 32 bit bandwagon" conversations that we went through back in ancient times.

Re:History repeats

[msobkow]

Funny thing. I don't remember any arguments at all when the shift was 8-bit to 16-bit. :)

Re:History repeats

[Anonymous Coward]

I do. Bbbbbbut address space that big won't fit in a word.

Re:History repeats

[Hal_Porter]

It's not really the same. 16 bit applications had all sorts of issues on Windows. E.g. huge pointers (i.e. to objects bigger than 64K) were available but they required the compiler generate code to reload the segment base register. That was very slow in protected mode. The 16 bit API was very much cruftier than the 32 bit one due to near vs far pointer differences and the need to handle discarding code segments in software. By contrast a 32 bit application could use 32 bit pointers that could address any part of the address space with no issue. Plus everything was demand paged. 32 bit pointers were the same size as 16 bit far pointers so there was no speed penalty.

By contrast a 32 bit application has a 4GB flat address space. Every single one of the applications I use runs fine in that. A move to 64 bits gives you more registers but larger pointers. So it's not necessarily a net win in terms of performance. And there's no "API overhead" for 32 bit code compared to 64 bit code since both are flat and demand paged.

But it all comes down to diminishing returns. At the point people switched from Win16 to Win32 almost all programs had data segments much bigger than 64K. So the old selector:offset scheme had really started to bite. Now there are a few programs that need more than 4GB of data. But the vast majority don't and won't ever. So a lot of applications don't really need to be 64 bit.

Don't get me wrong - I've written some freeware applications and the recent ones build and run fine in both 32 and 64 bit mode. But I'm still only distributing the 32 bit builds. Maybe at some point in the future Windows will ditch support for 32 bit applications and then I'd probably distribute both.

Re:History repeats

[BitZtream]

Funny thing is, I doubt you've ever used an 8 bit general purpose PC. The x86 architecture was never 8 bit, it always had a 16 bit data bus. The 8088 only made 8 data lines externally available and thus needed multiplexing but it too was 16 bit, the 8086 just gave you all the lines externally rather than multiplexed.

8 bit consoles aren't really 8 bit, just 256 color. The Atari 2600 could access far more than 256 bytes of memory directly, so it wasn't really 8 bit either.

Basically, you don't remember it cause it didn't happen in the public's eye.

Re:History repeats

[Ironchew]

8 bit consoles aren't really 8 bit, just 256 color. The Atari 2600 could access far more than 256 bytes of memory directly, so it wasn't really 8 bit either.

You're confusing the address bus with the data bus. When people say "8-bit", "16-bit", etc., they're referring to the data bus. The address bus usually has more pins. The original 8086 had a 20-pin address bus, which is why it could access 1 MiB of memory. In the case of "256-color", that's referring to a video mode, which (usually) has nothing to do with the CPU.

Re:History repeats

[mswhippingboy]

You yunguns! Ever heard of 8080, z-80, 6800 or 6502?

Unless you're being pedantic (e.g. these were called microcomputers and not PCs) there was life before 16-bit.

Re:History repeats

[msobkow]

6502 and Z80 were both considered 8-bit processors, despite having 16-bit address spaces.

Re:History repeats

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really correct. The PentiumPro had a 64-bit data bus, but it most certainly was not a 64-bit CPU. The "bits" more commonly refer to the address bus, although even that can be slightly larger, as you mention with your 286 example. The PentiumPro had a 36-bit address bus, but things were still processed internally as 32-bit, as this was the size of its integer registers.

Data buses are the ones that usually have many more pins than the address bus. This is done to greatly increase the bandwidth of the data going to and from the CPU. With the PentiumPro's 64-bit data bus, it simply ends up with two 32-bit values per cycle, NOT one 64-bit value since it's a 32-bit CPU and can't hold a single value that large. Two values per cycle effectively doubles the bandwidth per cycle over a 32-bit data bus, but has nothing to do with address space or the register size of the CPU.

Someone with more extensive knowledge than myself will hopefully step in and explain things more thoroughly and correct any mistakes I've made here, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong when you say "8-bit", "16-bit", etc. refer to the data bus and that the address bus usually has more pins than the data bus. I don't think that's the norm.

Re:History repeats

[0123456]

At the point people switched from Win16 to Win32 almost all programs had data segments much bigger than 64K. So the old selector:offset scheme had really started to bite. Now there are a few programs that need more than 4GB of data. But the vast majority don't and won't ever.

Four gigabytes ought to be enough for anybody!

Re:History repeats

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily, it will be a long time until 128 bit. And it's very likely that there never ever will come something after that.

Re:History repeats

[Anonymous Coward]

I am waiting for the 128 bit debate :P

Re:History repeats

[DarkAvZ]

Maybe because there wasn't such a shift! (i8086 was already 16 bits)

Re:History repeats

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing. I don't remember any arguments at all when the shift was 8-bit to 16-bit. :)

I remember the same arguments in the shift from 6-bit to 8-bit words. Even though I was a child at that time, I feel a bit old.

Would've been nice if they would have done this...

[UltraZelda64]

...back when I actually gave a damn. More specifically, when I ran Windows, which was a hell of a long time ago now (in computing terms)... back before mid to late 2006. Now, I run Linux, so Firefox, or Iceweasel, or whatever spinoff is included in the distribution due to the Mozilla Corporation's bitching is often included as 64-bit by default--as long as it's a 64-bit distro.

To top it off, with all of the bullshit Mozilla has been pulling off for quite a while now (starting not long after the formation of the corporation and their increasing grasp and restrictions on the use of their products), I've been considering switching. There are a bunch of extensions that IMO are must-haves, and they make the switch more difficult, but every release, every news story of Mozilla/Firefox is making me consider jumping ship before this titanic sinks. They already seem to be so disillusioned from everything they already stood for, it's rare for them to impress me any more.

What the hell has become of the Mozilla of the Firefox 1.0 to 2.0 era? They've really jumped off the deep end. First they started wanting more control and placing more restrictions on the distribution and use of the software, then they started chasing Chrome in every way possible. And more recently, they switch to a clusterfuck of a release/versioning system, forcibly breaking extensions every couple months.

Ditching this Asa dipshit (never did like the guy) and scrapping the whole "Mozilla Corporation" idea would be a great first start. Oh, and listening to the users, instead of blatantly copying the competition's (specifically Google's) every last move... most of which of which are just bad ideas in the first place, at least in the context of Firefox. If I want Chrome, I'll use it; make Firefox actually be Firefox. Us Firefox users want Firefox, not some fucking Frankenchromeopera; if we did, we would have escaped from your increasingly controlling grasp long ago.

I forced myself into some of the changes in 3.x eventually, but with all the needless shitty changes in 4/5 and the new rapid major version releases, it looks like I've reaching the end of my use (and recommendation to others) of their products.

Just make it work properly, please.

[wickerprints]

Since version 4, Firefox just stops functioning at random, with no warning. The menu bar becomes unresponsive, keyboard shortcuts and commands are not recognized, and tab switching is lost. You can still browse within the page you're on, but that's it. I went back to version 3, and realized that it was incredibly, incredibly slow.

Frustrated with no fix, I tried Google Chrome. So far, I am not impressed. It got caught in a loop when it tried importing my saved passwords from Firefox.

I may go back to Safari. I can't believe how obscenely hard it is to find a decent browser. So many choices, none of them any good.

Re:Just make it work properly, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're using a minority OS. The ports will have less attention given to them, and even then the attention will be given to the newest and fastest hardware.

Owning a Mac is like owning a Jaguar. It's luxury hardware designed to be a secondary to the main workhorse or as a specialty piece for using in a career. You need to keep to specially designed parts, the generics just don't work as well. Even then you're going to have to spend plenty of time tuning it to get the best performance.

If you want it to just work I suggest you get a Toyota.

Re:Just make it work properly, please.

[Teun]

Have you considered that because so few people have similar problems it might be an issue with the way you installed it or the (combination of) plug ins you use?

I run both 5.0 and 8.0a1 and only the last one has the occasional crash but then makes up by being faster.

And I use them in both 32 and 64bit Linux.

64bit Firefox - what you need to know

[Rufty]

Firefox 64bit - now capable of completely glooping 2 exbibytes! At current rate of leaking, this means you now only need to restart one a day! (Warning, depending on speed of swap device, Firefox 64bit may take more than a day to restart.)

Re:Please provide native support of PDF for OS X.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone WANT to read a PDF inside a browser?

It's not a web format and shouldn't be treated like one by any browser.

Re:Please provide native support of PDF for OS X.

[ToadMan8]

OS X has the only tolerable PDF viewer already (Preview.app). If anything, the other platforms are worse off with PDF support.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Chucky_M]

Dam, so Jesus was a Chiropractor? someone should tell the pope.

Its About Compatibility (Re:64-bit is a ...)

[EXTomar]

Releasing a 64-bit install is about compatibility in the environment. But an implication by the parent is that Mozilla can't work on increasing compatibility and fix bugs at the same time. These two things aren't related at all where we should welcome things like this.

Or another way to think about it: We should applaud Mozilla for releasing the 64-bit installer and continue to complain about the bugs.

A 64 bit version number

[Anonymous Coward]

A 64 bit version number and support for IPV8

64-bits

[Anonymous Coward]

They need 64-bits because the version number won't fit into a 32-bit unsigned integer.

What?

[wisnoskij]

This entire article makes no sense.
We simply want a version of Firefox that takes advantage of the additional resources our 64-bit machines have.
Sure there are probably specific optimizations you can do, but really the most important thing is simply to compile it to a 64-bit program instead of the x86 they use currently.
Can someone explain to me why anyone would think differently?

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Cwix]

Didn't ya know that a carpenter is really a chiropractor? They just cure subluxations in trees!!

Funny note: Firefox says subluxations isn't spelled properly. So it must be made up.

Re:Please provide native support of PDF for OS X.

[Vladimus]

Please don't add native PDF support. Feeping creaturitis is never the answer.

Re:Please provide native support of PDF for OS X.

[Randle_Revar]

PDF in the browser is a sin.

break that 32 bit barrier!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, with 64 bits it'll be able to leak MORE than 2-4 gigabytes of RAM.

What do I expect? Nothing

[BitZtream]

Of course, I understand what 64 bit means, and if my browser is hitting the 32 bit memory limit, I'm dumping the fucking browser anyway.

I've been developing for years, have apps for windows that are 32 and 64 bit, and several fat OSX binaries that support 32 and 64bit, if the 64 bit version runs differently than the 32 bit version, you did it wrong.

I have nothing against making it a 64 bit binary in general, but there really is absolutely no advantage to doing so. If your browser is eating more than 3 gigs of memory, your browser is broken, you should fix that problem first, not make it so it can eat more memory.

Re:What do I expect? Nothing

[onefriedrice]

I have nothing against making it a 64 bit binary in general, but there really is absolutely no advantage to doing so. If your browser is eating more than 3 gigs of memory, your browser is broken, you should fix that problem first, not make it so it can eat more memory.

You're probably overlooking one of the major reasons why 64-bit binaries are beneficial (at least on the x86-64 architecture): more registers! More registers means less accessing main memory or cache just for local variables, which means faster code.

A 64-bit Firefox is also preferable if the rest of the system is already 64-bit because the need to load a whole bunch of 32-bit shared libraries which are only used by one program will be eliminated, meaning less wasted memory which may lead to better cache utilization. I'm not sure how congruous this last point is because I'm not familiar with how Firefox is built on the relevant platforms.

Re:What do I expect? Nothing

[BZ]

You get faster code if your code is under a lot of register pressure because you're doing computations with a bunch of reusable intermediate results, etc.

You get slower code if your code is memory-bound, especially if pointer-chasing is involved (because you blow out your caches more easily and end up having to actually talk to RAM more).

Which one matters more for a web browser is a tough question. For example, most operations on the DOM are of the pointer-chasing variety.

See also https://twitter.com/#!/bz_moz/status/73784940755566592

How about not breaking add-ons?

[WebManWalking]

Here's an idea. How about not breaking add-ons with every new version? That would be great!

I'm in the Firefox beta program, so they FORCE me to upgrade over and over and over again (really obnoxiously). And every single time, Firebug and Greasemonkey stop working. Problem is, I need Firebug, in particular, to do my job, so it's inconsiderate at the very least, a horrible way to treat your beta testers. And yet, much of my coding is in preparation for HTML5, so I need to use what's in the beta too.

So that's my suggestion for 64-bit. Use some of the extra address space to track add-ons better and not refuse to load them just because they haven't yet been certified to work in your tiny little frickin' point release.

Thanks a bunch!

Re:How about not breaking add-ons?

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nightly-tester-tools/

Re:How about not breaking add-ons?

[hedwards]

That's what Jetpack is about, apparently they just hit the 1.0 release a while back, but I don't know how an end user would gain access to that as the only downloads I see are for SDK. On the plus side it looks like they'll be adding electrolysis support to it as one of the next steps.

Re:How about not breaking add-ons?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd suggest not using beta software as your main development platform.

Re:How about not breaking add-ons?

[jesser]

every single time, Firebug and Greasemonkey stop working.

If you use a beta version of Firefox and want to use Firebug, the Firebug developers say you should use the beta version of Firebug. It would be nice if Firefox Beta automatically went out and fetched the beta version of Firebug instead of just saying the version you have is incompatible.

Greasemonkey is often more compatible than its authors let on. I'm using it with Firefox 8 Nightly and it's working fine, despite being marked as only compatible with Firefox 5. I bet it would work in your Firefox 6 Beta just fine.

There's also a competitor to Greasemonkey called Scriptish that is marked as compatible with Firefox 6 beta. I've heard good things about it but haven't tried switching yet.

track add-ons better and not refuse to load them just because they haven't yet been certified to work

That's the plan!

AMO-hosted extensions that use APIs that haven't changed are automatically assumed to work. So are extensions developed using the new SDK.

To do it safely for other extensions, we'll need to gather data from beta users (like you -- thanks!) to find out whether the extension still does its job, whether it causes crashes (crash-stats correlations), and whether it causes other widespread problems (telemetry correlations).

Future beta versions of Firefox will probably ask you whether you also want to beta-test extensions that might not be compatible. For now you have to set a hidden pref to do that.

About time...

[Anonymous Coward]

who uses 32-bit systems any more?

Re:About time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Netbooks and IE6 loving corporations.

Re:About time...

[ryanov]

Anyone with average computing requirements, more than half a brain, and 4GB or less of RAM.

Mozilla Need to Get Their Act Together

[Anonymous Coward]

At this time, Mozilla seems like a baby screaming for attention. They seem to be scrambling to match Chrome. I had been a Firefox user for ages. I didn't try Chrome because I don't like that Google runs background process to update Chrome. So I decided to go with Chromium (which does not have auto update feature but gets updated via Ubuntu repository). I found, once you go Chromium you never go back. Chromium is blazingly fast and stable. Even Firefox 5 is no match for it. Chromium uses way more memory than Firefox, but guess what? It doesn't have memory leaks. Firefox uses less memory but keeps leaking it. Fix memory leaks and stability issues in the current version (call it Firefox 100 for all I care). 64 bit version would be nice but not at the cost of basic problems that need fixing.

Re:Please provide native support of PDF for OS X.

[Mashiki]

And a security risk. But hey...who care's about security. We want feature creep!

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Streetlight]

My feeling is that the chiropractic business model is to provide some relief for awhile and when the problem returns, one will go back to get this relief, over and over again. Many years ago when I was living in Utah, chiropractors were claiming all kinds of cures for about anything, including cancer. If I remember correctly, the state removed their licenses and stopped issuing new ones. Chiropractic was basically shut down. I don't know if it as come back, but I assume if all the quacks were flushed out of the system, it may be back.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Mashiki]

Good for you, but chiropractors are "bullshit". Actually just go watch that episode and get back to me. Whoo! We're gonna adjust the spines of 5 year olds! Whooo!

Fuck off and die you creepy mother fucker!

Finally freed of nspluginwrapper?

[javanree]

Maybe this will FINALLY mean no more nspluginwrapper crap;
Every time I try to open more than one PDF (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS / 10.04 LTS) nspluginwrapper goes nuts, no more PDF rendering....

Re:Finally freed of nspluginwrapper?

[BZ]

The whole reason for nspluginwrapper is that you're using a 64-bit build but your plug-ins are 32-bit.

That is _exactly_ one of the reasons that Firefox is not shipping 64-bit on Windows yet (what the article is about).

So no, the only way to get rid of nspluginwrapper is to either use a 32-bit browser or not use 32-bit plug-ins. Well, or do something like Firefox on Mac, which involves shipping two copies of the code so the plugin-container process can be 32-bit...

Re:Finally freed of nspluginwrapper?

[makomk]

Well, or do something like Firefox on Mac, which involves shipping two copies of the code so the plugin-container process can be 32-bit...

Which is what the article's talking about doing.

Re:Finally freed of nspluginwrapper?

[BZ]

The article is talking about doing that on Windows.

On Linux, distros could do that right now if they wanted to. But they don't choose to...

Poor Summary

[seeker_1us]

Firefox has been available as 64 Bit for years. The article is about 64-bit WINDOWS.

With all of the Firefox updates

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised they didn't just decided to support 128 bit and deprecate 32 bit.

On a side note, my Firefox is using 1.2GBs of RAM while Debian in a VM is using 400MBs.

Re:Please provide native support of PDF for OS X.

[ejtttje]

Why would you want to launch a whole 'nother application, especially on a platform where PDF is built-in to the OS and can be displayed much faster than launching bloatware like Adobe Reader. Maybe you like Reader or want to disable PDF altogether for security, but I agree it would be nice to have an inline option, this a major reason I use Safari (browse research papers online, with *drumroll* the browser!)

Old news for linux users?

[LibRT]

Hasn't a linux 64 bit version been available for a few years now?

Re:Old news for linux users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, lots of people use 64-bit linux. If you needed to compile tons of stuff by hand then either (a) your distro sucks, (b) you were doing some unusual stuff, or (c) Flash was somehow involved.

Re:Old news for linux users?

[LibRT]

Huh?!? All you need to do is download it from here:

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/latest-5.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/

Then just unpack it (ie double-click on it) and redirect your current firefox launcher to the new "firefox" file (right click on the launcher, select "Properties", click the "Browse" button next to "Command" and point it at the file called "firefox" in the folder you unpacked). No coding required.

If you want flash, you can download the 64 bit linux version here:

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplatformruntimes/flashplayer11/flashplayer11_b1_install_lin_64_071311.tar.gz

No need to be a "code compiling madman linux guru" - just need to be able to operate a mouse at a beginners level.

Re:Old news for linux users?

[Teun]

To take advantage of some extra memory I do run 64bit Linux and there were very few applications missing, right now I'm only missing a 64bit version of Klibido.

I installed the 64bit Flash plugin a few days ago and 'it works' but the 32bit version is still better.

Re:Old news for linux users?

[Osgeld]

I do a bit more than browser + flash thanks

Re:Old news for linux users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed it has. I was running 64-bit Firefox on Ubuntu 8.04. I have no idea what's so hard about compiling for amd64 (excuse me, "x64") Windows as opposed to x86.

Re:Old news for linux users?

[dbIII]

Just about everything else works the same way it does in 32 bit versions. If it doesn't you use whatever update tool the distribution has to get whatever 32 bit stuff you need and run that on there as well. For difficult cases (eg. 10+ year old binaries) it doesn't get any worse than adding an environment variable or adding something to the path or in extreme cases hunting down the library that an error message specificly asks for.

Re:Old news for linux users?

[LibRT]

I've been using 64 bit Ubuntu since building this machine, which was perhaps 4 years ago now (actually I think 6.04 was the first version I installed, so that would make it April 2006 or so). The only time I've had to manually compile something is when there hasn't been a version of the particular progam available in the repos or otherwise, and generally that's been programs that haven't been available for 32 bit repos either. Also when I specifically want to include compile-time flags which aren't set by default (again, that applies equally to 32 bit versions). But I honestly can't recall the last time I had to compile something due to my computer running 64 bit - I'm not sure I've ever had to. I had to install the ia-32 libs way back before firefox released 64 bit for linux, but otherwise it's been smooth sailing. Of course, this machine is using an AMD chip, not Intel, and if I recall they handle 32 bit differently. YM has clearly V'd.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[RsG]

He's a troll. Probably not one with an agenda, beyond provoking nerd rage. Consider:

1. He posts alt-med stuff on slashdot, a "news for nerds" site. There are only a few things more likely to provoke a flamewar than peddling quackery to rationalists. Perhaps he felt creationism or microsoft trolls would be too obvious?

2. He only ever posts about the one issue. He'll shoehorn chiropractic crap into any discussion. Including a story about a new version of an old browser. This is not the behaviour of a regular poster; even the genuine alt-med believers and conspiracy theorists post about other topics.

3. He hasn't quit, despite negative karma. Every post he makes spawns flamewars. A genuine idiot would feel unwelcome, give up and leave. A troll on the other hand, revels in the flamewars.

So, he's a troll. One here purely to start trouble. He's probably laughing at every idiot who feeds him by screaming "QUACK!"

Re:Would've been nice if they would have done this

[petsounds]

I'm with you on all points, though I will say that FF4 introduced a really nice feature that saves time for me every day. That is, being able to type non-URL queries into the URL field to search FF's history database has really made my browsing more efficient. But that doesn't make up for the fact that FF4 & 5 are as leaky as the Titanic.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I take exception to your post. I know plenty of people in the medical profession. Most of them are good, honest people, who have never once mislead me on any count. They're not taking backhanders from Big Pharma.

My father is currently a practising psychiatrist, who is also doing a significant amount of research into his favourite psychiatric technique, which revolves around a one-on-one therapy to treat the roots of the problems (typically traumatic experiences). It involves little to no drugs, because it doesn't treat problems merely as a chemical imbalance.

I also take exception because I know people practising alternative medicine, and not one of them is as moronic as your post makes you sound.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Chucky_M]

Thanks Cwix (someone mark him informative), that explains it and displays my clear lack of knowledge on the subject, though I still think the pope should be told as they made this whole religion thing it might matter that they get some of the facts right.

Re:Please provide native support of PDF for OS X.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, it's sad that Windows fucking sucks for PDF support, and that Chrome's half-implemented plugin crushes every other Windows reader, both in interface and security; and partially in speed (it takes longer to load, but it navigates quicker than anything else). I don't even trust other 3rd-party readers not to root my Win7 gaming machine these days. Implementing security by ignoring specification features only goes so far before actual preventative measures are required. Even Apple understood that, and OS X is hardly ever targeted by malware.

Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

~ $ which firefox
/usr/bin/firefox: symbolic link to `/usr/lib64/firefox/firefox'
~ $ file /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox
/usr/lib64/firefox/firefox: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, stripped

It isn't already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I just kind of assumed it would have been 64bit several years ago seeing as how that has been the standard processor for a while now.

It's not exactly a new platform

they really needed that

[roman_mir]

they truly needed that, because soon enough they'll run out of 32 bit integers they use for version numbering.

Re:they really needed that

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, a technical justification for moving to 64 bit OS!

In conclusion, it is critical that the capitol review board approve this budget increase so that we can migrate to 64 bit OS. Sales has determined that without this migration, there will be no way to keep track of our future sales when they exceed the 32 bit integer boundary. Clearly this would be an embarrassing thing to disclose in a quarterly investors conference call.

I'm soaking in it right now!

[Bryan Bytehead]

/Madge

I'm running the 64-bit nightly right now. Everything seems to be working EXCEPT for the WMP integration. That's been the only downside I've been seeing.

Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

and justifiably so...Linux is still considered the cheapskate OS.

Development of FF for Linux takes resources. There are only 3,000 Linux Firefox users out there when, every year, FF Windows browser crashes affect over 40,000 people. They should drop Linux support and instead focus their development on the Windows version, a lot more people would be saved!

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully, the business of *actually making people better* isn't driven by anecdote and circle-jerking.

Install Chrome or Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all you need to know.

Re:Please provide native support of PDF for OS X.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite the opposite really, especially if you don't have plugins loading on demand. I doubt your fav reader on Linux is running under full chroot/AppArmor like the Chrome PDF process... and the Windows reader you use is almost certainly one API call away from nuking all of your documents.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[growse]

Chiropractic has done all of this and more. Don't just take my word for it, ask ANY Chiropractor and they will tell you the same thing. Look at Chiro videos on YouTube, they have lots of Thumbs Up from other Chiros.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a brand new research technique!! Forget about all that time-wasting and expensive business of double-blinded randomized trials, and the complex process of producing 'evidence', lets just put videos of untested treatments on Youtube and see how many thumbs up votes they get. We could combine this revolutionary technique with that other ideal indicator of treatment performance called 'Just asking people'. Why we've bothered with complex trials for all these years is a true mystery.

Brilliant!

Back to basics again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically take away every feature since Firefox 1.0, make Awesomebar, Orange menu, hidden status bar, sync, etc and put them into extensions. Then make a version of Gecko that is fully HTML5/CSS compliant, which is furiously fast and memory conservative even on the slowest of celerons and memory gimped systems such as your grandmas e-machine special she bought in 2001.

Then maybe Firefox should deserve some of the $50 million a year it gets instead of wasting its money on memory bloating features.

If firefox crashes, its you're system.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what the hell you guys do to make firefox unstable. Since 3ish ive been having month long up times with dozens of tabs open, closing only for browser upgrades and security patches(system reboot) The only thing that brings firefox down with any regularity are bad addons and buggy plugins. Fix your setup, in other words. It's you, no the browser.

Actually I notice most of the people that bitch about firefox are OSX. Sorry, OSX is a bastard child platform as far as firefox is concerned. Stick with safari.

Also, how can anyone call firefox bloated? It's download package is tiny! If it was a 200meg+ blob you could say bloated.

64-bit FF-based Pale Moon

[Tumbleweed]

Pale Moon is already available for people to check out. It's Windows-only, but I've been running it for a while as a secondary browser at work, and it works pretty well, albeit with a few minor quirks.

ELF 64-bit LSB shared object

[Anonymous Coward]

$ file /usr/lib/firefox-5.0/firefox-bin /usr/lib/firefox-5.0/firefox-bin: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.15, stripped

Say what?

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Spad]

Chiropractors are fine for dealing with back pain, shitty posture and associated issues, what's bullshit are those who claim to be able to fix all kinds of unrelated ailments via chiropracty or those who claim that everything you do every day causes harm to your body that can only be fixed by chiropracty, such as the GP.

Why Not

[fast turtle]

Fix the damn UI Hanging issues, get ASLR fully working along with DEP and full process isolation before adding stupid features and Don't forget multithread support working correctly.

I'd much rather they fix these issues while moving towards 64bits as these alone should improve the damn stability and security. Hell if a damn Add-On hangs or creates problems, I'd love to be able to kill the thread/process that's hung instead of shuting down the entire app.

Re:Why Not

[Anonymous Coward]

> get ASLR fully working along with DEP

Mandatory for 64 bit, so those are actually fixed by just providing a 64-bit build...

UNlike the 16 to 32 bit jump...

[Viol8]

32 to 64 bit makes virtually zero performance difference to 99.9999% of applications. People forget that CPUs have 2 main buses - the address bus and data bus. The data bus has essentially been 64 bit for years on "32" bit intel cpus. Upping the address bus to 64 bit and increasing standard ALU integer registers to 64 bit (the floating point registers have also been 64 bit for years) will only benefit applications that require huge amounts of memory and/or ones that required large integers. Eg DMBS. For most desktop apps it'll frankly make fsck all difference.

Re:UNlike the 16 to 32 bit jump...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also the minor point that 64-bit x86 adds a few extra registers, which could help some types of code.

Re:UNlike the 16 to 32 bit jump...

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot doubling the amount of registers and a sane ABI (register passing for arguments, also for float values) and a sane floating-point implementation due to SSE always being available.
Also, PC-relative addressing reducing the overhead for position-independent code.
Getting a few % extra performance is easy, more for special workloads or if the compiler is bad (and most compilers are quite bad) since 64-bit code generation is easier due to above. This might also mean improved speed for anything that uses JIT, both for the compilation and the generated code.
Also security improvements e.g. on Windows because 64-bit code is forced to be compatible to DEP and ASLR (and improved effectiveness for ASLR due to larger address space). Important for browsers, in particular since it means that plugins can't break security by loading code marked as not compatible with these.

Re:UNlike the 16 to 32 bit jump...

[dbIII]

It's about having to have two versions of a lot of shared libraries filling up memory. That's typically only a big deal if you have only one or two applications left that need the 32 bit libraries or if you are running things that use a heap of memory.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Joe Tie.]

Look at Chiro videos on YouTube, they have lots of Thumbs Up from other Chiros.
 
Ok, there's no way this can be anything other than a troll. I just can't tell who exactly he's trolling. Whoever it is, he's good.

Cool! I'll need a bigger stack!

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, my current firefox is running at 1.5GB, I can't wait until I can let it spill over 2GB!

32b FF Breaks Flash on 64b Win7?

[Doc Ruby]

I have a 64bit Pentium running 64bit Win 7 pro, but the FF install is the 32bit version. The Flash player crashes fairly often, on Flash content which didn't crash it before on an all 32bit machine. Is it the 32/64 bit difference? Will a 64 bit Firefox solve this problem?

Re:32b FF Breaks Flash on 64b Win7?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, flash will continue to suck.

Re:32b FF Breaks Flash on 64b Win7?

[Ash-Fox]

Maybe you should update your version of Firefox. Modern versions of Firefox have been using plugin-container.exe for a while now to run plugins. If anything, that process plugin-container.exe should crash without taking out the browser.

Re:32b FF Breaks Flash on 64b Win7?

[Doc Ruby]

It's the latest Firefox, v5.0.1, updated automatically. The Flash player crashes; it doesn't crash the browser.

Speed, security and plugin availability? what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only difference between the 32bit and the 64bit version should be that the first one is 32bit and the second one 64bit.

64-bit flash

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe recently released the flash 11 betas which include a 64-bit linux version, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Miseph]

All those posts, and only one person who gives any indication they know what they're talking about.

Kudos.

Irregular Suggestion from epSos.de

[Anonymous Coward]

I want Firefox 64bit to stop crashing on any error of any plug-in.

.

Asa Dotzler is a dick.

[Anonymous Coward]

Asa Dotzler is a dick.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[flappinbooger]

For the record, chiropractors are fraudsters, voodoo witch doctors in suits who take in the gullible.

Now wait a minute, I know what you're getting at but I have one question: If someone throws out their back or hip or shoulder or something and goes to a chiro, and the guy who is trained in bones and muscles and stuff can put it back in place so the person is NOT in excruciating pain any more, how is THAT fraud?

Chiropractic CAN and DOES get more credit than it is due, there are quacks and scams for sure, but chiros in general can and do help people in certain circumstances. It isn't all crap.

I have seen it both ways, it isn't fair to the legit ones to say they are all frauds and quacks.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Man how do you manage to troll with the same name and with the same somewhat subtle subject inclusion and STILL have people bite every single time.

Watching this man troll is the work of a master, folks. This isn't schooled territory, this is blown out of the sky at your thesis defense territory.

How about 'Undo' for accidentally closed tabs?

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's probably asking too much...

Re:How about 'Undo' for accidentally closed tabs?

[makomk]

Wait, what? They already have an undo close tab feature - right-click the tabs bar and find it in the menu or just hit Ctrl-Shift-T...

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[bhcompy]

I think a lot of chiropractors spout bullshit, but there are benefits from a few of them(outside of the placebo effect obviously). In particular, I've had success with therapy to sports injuries with a combination of massage and chiropractic treatment received from on-staff practitioners while playing high school and college sports. Cure anything? Nah. Alleviate the pain? Yes. Accelerate healing? Dunno, when you're young you heal pretty quick anyways.

I'd like it to allow me to access my bank online.

[Anonymous Coward]

Way too many web sites (especially banks) that require IE.

Re:Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

[StarKiller53861]

... There are only 3,000 Linux Firefox users out there ...

I find this hard to believe. Firefox is installed by default on many of the most popular Linux distributions (such as Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.). When you consider the millions of Linux users using these distros (yes, I can back that up with reliable sources - can you say the same?), it's not hard to imagine that the number of Firefox users on Linux extends well over a million (maybe millions).

Bear in mind that Firefox is usually installed via a package manager, so the number of Linux downloads (if any) from the Firefox website are not to be relied upon as a true indication of the amount of Linux users using Firefox. In addition, there are also many of us who prefer to compile from source, as we are then free to modify and tinker, or just study out of academic curiosity.

Besides, although I'm not familiar with the Firefox codebase, I'm pretty sure that there is no "Windows version", and it's just recompiled for each operating system. Development "of FF for Linux" is, I think, not an issue.

Just my 2c.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[roman_mir]

Do you have like a circle of friends, some of them being astrologists, some phrenologists, some diluting donkey piss to 1 part per billion, selling it as holistic medicine and most being religious freaks, scientologists maybe?

When you turn on a computer, do you think it's magic marshmallows that carry the signal across the interwebs?

Because if that's how you roll, I really am wondering how you are still around to tell us all about the wonders of chiropractice.

Re:Please provide native support of PDF for OS X.

[Randle_Revar]

Does Evince even support Javascript? Of course there could be attacks on the engine itself, but why target Cairo when you could target GDI or something. Plus that's just harder than attacking via JS.

Outside x86, 64-bit is slower

[Anonymous Coward]

On other CPU architectures with both 32 and 64 bit modes, the 64-bit code tends to be slower. This is because pointers in 64-bit code are twice as big, so there's more data to move around. Thus, the only advantage of running in 64-bit modes was a larger address space.

The difference in x86(-64) is that amd64 doubles the number of general purpose registers, so it actually is faster than ia32.

ARM already has a decent number of registers, and I doubt anybody's going to try running a huge RDBMS on their iPhone anytime soon. Perhaps somebody would want to mmap a blue-ray movie, but that doesn't seem very compelling.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at Chiro videos on YouTube, they have lots of Thumbs Up from other Chiros.

Ok, there's no way this can be anything other than a troll. I just can't tell who exactly he's trolling. Whoever it is, he's good.

Wishful thinking. Look at his facebook page. Lots of other chiro quacks. This is a real weapons-grade crazy chiro-cult quack who thinks that fiddling with peoples spines will cure them of AIDS and cancer (yes really, they believe this), meaning they will die for sure instead of getting the chance that real medicine could give them.

Scientologists are just giggleworthy, but chiropractors like homeopathists are nothing more than crooks and confidence tricksters.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[petermgreen]

If you don't reply you are letting their BS stand where innocent people might believe it and be harmed by it. If you do reply then you are giving them a reaction they want.

The way to deal with posters like this on a forum is to either delete them or lock them with an explanation from a mod that they are bullshit and if the poster is persistent attempt to apply a ban (though bans are generally difficult to enforce on the internet). However /. for whatever reason doesn't do that, posts can be modded up and down by users with mod points but that is a far cry from what mods on most forums can do.

Fix the current memory leaks instead!

[Anonymous Coward]

I run mostly 64-bit OSes and I'd rather have them fix the current memory leaks in Firefox.

Seriously!

Right now, on a machine that was rebooted 4 hours ago, Firefox 4 is using 750MB of RAM!

I don't care about 64-bit browsers and can't see any reason beside security-sucking-direct-driver-access to go 64-bit. Don't we all know that is a really bad idea already?

Seriously!

I don't have any plugins.
I block most JavaScript, don' t use flash, visit text-only web sites.
What could possibly be eating all that RAM?

Seriously!

FIX THE MEMORY LEAKS ALREADY!

Re:Fix the current memory leaks instead!

[Ash-Fox]

... Firefox 4 ...

Maybe it would help if you ran an up to date browser.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[TheRealGrogan]

Well, that's exactly how things should be dealt with on the Internet. People post rubbish, other people counter it.

I read Slashdot at -1 because I don't really want all the idiotic comments to be censored. I would rather make up my own mind, and see other people's opinions. I like the way Slashdot does this (a rating system that people can use on their own to filter with) instead of having a bunch of small minded nannying moderators going 'round deleting people's posts to protect us from nasty words that we don't agree with.

Develope a cross platform, touch screen, front end

[Latinhypercube]

Develope a cross platform, touch screen, front end
ie. a touch screen windows /osx/linux replacement browser / file manager
= win (before windows 8 comes out)

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[desdinova 216]

Excuse me, what does this have to do with a web browser being able to take advantage of newer OS and Processor capabilities?

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[desdinova 216]

I wish I had mod points

64-bit Firefox in Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I just thought I'd go ahead and mention...there are already 64 bit binary installers available for Firefox. For Windows. Like right now. And since 2008.

They're not official Mozilla builds, mind you, but they're community built (there's 3 or 4 different ones out there) and usually based on the current nightly of whatever the production version is at the time. I ran one for 3-4 months on XP x64 (which, I should mention, was a very, very halfassed 64-bit system itself) and noticed my memory consumption after a week was around 20% lower doing the same things. The lack of a 64 bit flash plugin for windows forced me back to 32 bit Firefox.

Now I dual boot. I'm running 32 bit Firefox in Windows 7 x64, and 64 bit Firefox in Linux Mint 11. Same, current version. Linux tends to rely much more on shared libs than windows, but my observation still puts memory usage about 20%-40% lower on the Linux 64-bit install.

So yes, there's a definitive benefit.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Anonymous Coward]

they made this whole religion thing it might matter that they get some of the facts right.

Religion has no place for silly little things like facts.

why does slashdot require subjects? dumb

[aahpandasrun]

Expecting: Launch faster, operate faster. I don't expect much difference in security from 32 to 64 bit. Also, I would hope that most plugins are compatible

How about less bloatware?

[Snaller]

And stop adding crap like pdf readers - you wanna display something you use external apps.

Still 16 bit "abandonware" sold and in use

[dbIII]

There's some braindead copy protection software using USB "security" dongles that unfortunately is required before you can run some very expensive applications that are used in some engineering and geophysical workplaces. One variety of that is 16 bit only and the idiots even wrote 16 bit MSDOS USB drivers to make it work instead of dragging it into the 1990s with 32 bit support. That keeps some stuff that could actually use a bit more memory firmly on WinXP 32bit unless it's a pirated version (and apparently the workaround is very trivial). In practice a lot of that "security" software only punishes the innocent.

Re:Please provide native support of PDF for OS X.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure, but Evince shares the Poppler library backend with Okular, which uses FreeType 2 internally, which was susceptible to the iOS JailbreakMe attack. Okular crashed to one of these hijacked PDFs, likely because the payload targeted iOS and not Linux. Beware the PDFs :).

Meh, not a big deal

[Olipro]

I roll my own Windows builds of Firefox and have been using Win64 versions since before FF4 actually came out; the difference is really minimal; I use 64-bit Flash (square) and Java, everything works and it's native. Currently there is a patch in the works to enable Firefox x64 to use 32bit plugins via the wrapper, which I get the feeling will probably encourage Adobe to not bother releasing a "proper" x64 Flash.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[lgarner]

For the record, chiropractors are fraudsters, voodoo witch doctors in suits who take in the gullible.

A. You're wrong. Period.

This loony quack is getting quite annoying.

B. He is a bit out there. Not the best representative for Chiropractors to be sure.

You're a fraud pal, a vile repugnant fraud.

C. Possible. Citation needed.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[lgarner]

This is a real weapons-grade crazy chiro-cult quack who thinks that fiddling with peoples spines will cure them of AIDS and cancer (yes really, they believe this), meaning they will die for sure instead of getting the chance that real medicine could give them.

All of them? Really? Every single one? You checked?

Seriously, whatever happened to "think before you post"....

64bit: NOT new, just Win getting parity w/linx+Mac

[lpq]

Cuz 32-bit version runs out of memory when you have it open for several days and 100's of windows/tabs?

Cuz, the 32-bit version doesn't work well on 64-bits because it isn't aligned right and suffers terrible performance penalties?

(during a bogdown today, where it had it's cpu 'peg'ed...(why the windows threading model doesn't support multiple cpu's is ... well, linux really lucked out in choosing their 1thread/proc model)
Here's the stack trace:

0) ntoskrnl.exe!memset+0x64b
1) ntoskrnl.exe!KeWaitForMultipleObjects+0xd52
2) ntoskrnl.exe!KeWaitForSingleObject+0x19f
3) ntoskrnl.exe!__misaligned_access+0xba4
4) ntoskrnl.exe!__misaligned_access+0x1821
5) ntoskrnl.exe!__misaligned_access+0x1a97
6) js3250.dll!JS_IsAboutToBeFinalized+0x38
7) xul.dll!??_7gfxPDFSurface@@6B@+0x34600
8) xul.dll!?sDPI@gfxPlatform@@1HA+0x1d0
9) xul.dll!NS_LogInit_P+0x388d
10) nspr4.dll!PR_AssertCurrentThreadOwnsLock+0x12
11) js3250.dll!JS_IsAboutToBeFinalized+0x38
12) js3250.dll!JS_DHashTableEnumerate+0x6c
13) xul.dll!?TimerCallback@?$nsExpirationTracker@\
        VgfxFont@@$02@@CAXPAVnsITimer@@PAX@Z+0x239f
14) xul.dll!?GetUnderlineOffset@gfxWindowsFontGroup@\
        @UAENXZ+0xcbfe
15) xul.dll!NS_LogInit_P+0x388d
16) js3250.dll!JS_SetPrototype+0x29c
17) xul.dll!?SetLineBreaks@gfxTextRun@@UAEHIIHHPANPA\
        VgfxContext@@@Z+0x1b6

(It never recovered from it's peg -- finally just crashed, but notice that out of the above 17 calls, 3 are for misaligned access's handed by exception handlers (x86 machines still get misaligned access exceptions when you access words that aren't hw aligned, they are just normally handled 'automatically' by all x86 OS's that then patch the pieces together -- at the expense of entering a system exception handler that has to glue things back together.

So Maybe it's because of issue's like the above, but compiling for 64-bit usually gives a ~15% performance boost over 32 bit code, and in the above trace 17% of the call stack nest is due to misaligned code/data.

Anyway, the baloney that they don't know what to expect is just that -- it's them spewing garbage for being way late in getting a Win64 version out -- as they've had a 64-bit linux version (coexisting with a 32-bit version for at least a few years -- and they also have had 64-bit on MacOS....so it wouldn't be "doing" something different, it would be bringing the windows platform up to parity with the linux and Mac platforms.

Programmers are amazingly lazy

[Sycraft-fu]

All the time I encounter things where programmers cling to past ways of doing things because they can't be bothered to learn something new, to rewrite their code and so on.

A big one I remember was with Windows 2000 (and then XP) and the WDM device model for soundcards. NT had some pretty bad soundcard support. I mean it played audio and everything, but was a problem both in terms of what it could present to apps and in terms of limits on drivers. Well WDM fixed that. Wonderful new system, fixed a ton of issues. However the pro soundcard I had refused to support it. They said it couldn't do what pro apps needed. Nonsense, that it could do those things was right in the docs. Then when they finally got one out it had massive problems, not the least of which being it only supported 2 of 8 channels, again they claimed that was a limit built in to WDM.

They finally got on board, after like a year and a half, but it took forever and probably many people like me bitching.

64-bit is even harder since Windows does 32-bit compatibility so flawlessly. Users can't even tell if apps are 32-bit or 64-bit without specifically looking for it, there isn't a speed penalty (that you can notice) or different interface or anything. Ring 3 32-bit apps work just like they always did (Ring 0 stuff has to all be 64-bit).

So devs are lazy. They release only 32-bit versions since you still need to support that, there are plenty of non 64-bit system, and since "There's no reason to have 64-bit.

Annoys me to no end since the reason is simply to run natively on the new system. No, you don't need a 64-bit browser but why not have one? Why shouldn't everything move to the new architecture?

It also annoys me because people find this shit bites them in the ass eventually. One way we saw this happen was 32-bit apps with 16-bit installers when 64-bit Windows came out. Companies kept using the old installer since "It worked," and "There's no reason to change." However then along comes 64-bit Windows, which cannot run 16-bit apps since you can't switch to Virtual 8086 Mode when running in Long Mode. So now their shit can't install, even though it would actually run in the new Windows.

Programmers really need to get less lazy about supporting new technologies. Part of working in a tech field is being willing to keep up to date on a quickly moving landscape. Things change all the time, you need to change with them. I see that from the IT end all the time. A great example is virtualization. Just 10 years ago it was a new term, emulation was really what I'd heard of, and something that was mostly a toy. I played with emulators for old game systems. I'd never consider virtualizing a PC to do work on, way too slow, much less a server. Now we have almost everything virtual, not just to save money, but to take advantage of new features it offers, like say snapshoting a computer. I can't very well say "We didn't do it this way in the past so we aren't going to change." When new technology comes out, we look at it, consider if it will help us do what we do better, is it worth the cost, and learn about it.

I get tired of programmers that have to be drug in to a new way of doing things kicking and screaming. 64-bit is here, now, and it is the future. It is not new, it has been around for quite some time. Support it. All apps should have a 64-bit version, yes even if you don't need the memory. It isn't hard, and things run more efficient natively in Long Mode than in Compatibility Mode. Get with the program.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[drinkypoo]

You have to go to a sports chiropractor, they treat the body like a machine. They fix the problem and send you on your way. Went to a local chiro in Lakeport, CA and told him what the problem was, he didn't even address it! Wasted my money and my time, what a fuckhead.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[beckett]

That's bordering on slander.

Chiropractic has saved countless millions of lives without drugs and surgery. On the contrary, it's the Big Pharma controlled Medical system that are the frauds.

- Has an MD ever cured a subluxation? No.

Why would they cure a subluxion? The General Chiropractic Council, the UK's chiropractic regulatory agency run by chiropractors, states that subluxions have nothing to do with disease:

"The chiropractic vertebral subluxation complex is an historical concept but it remains a theoretical model. It is not supported by any clinical research evidence that would allow claims to be made that it is the cause of disease."

By law, in the UK you cannot make any of the claims you have posted above.

Forget about slander, lets talk about libel, legal liability and false advertising.

Cool! Should Be about version 64 by then too.

[Maxo-Texas]

nt.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[X0563511]

Well, I had some pinched nerves. He had me hold my arms out and try to hold them level while he pushed on them. One arm was definitely weaker. To prove his point he handed me a weight and had me compare. Once brought to my attention, I could definitely feel a "lopsidedness" in my arm strength. You might think this was normal, but after tweaking my neck and upper shoulder area, the gap between greatly closed and it became easier to lift in both.

Similarly, pressure points on my ankles (that I could self apply) also made me realize I was much less pain sensitive in one leg. Adjustments in my lumbar area and suddenly I could feel the pressure point (again, more in both, but also much closer to being equal). My skin was also a bit more sensitive overall on my legs/feet and I "felt" stronger (eg walking about I felt lighter, so my muscles must have been responding better?)

I'm sure some spout a lot of garbage... but you can't argue with something like that.

Stop and think as well. Your CNS is distributed from your spine. Nerve signal propagation -is- impaired when pressure or other disturbances are inflicted upon them. It makes perfect sense that such disturbances on the branches coming out from between vertebrae could have negative effects. Now, how 'strongly' such effects could be without some sort of obvious problem or trauma (bone spur, crushed disk etc) I couldn't say - but I could see some 'systemic' symptoms to occur or other conditions exaggerate because of this.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[X0563511]

It's late, I'm tired, and you're already downmodded so why not feed the troll?

1. MD is pretty broad. I'm sure it's happened. I'm also pretty sure that any kind of spinal trauma resulting in pinching/damage to the nerves could be considered a subluxation. That said this is the domain of a chiro, so of course this is something they do that others tend not to! Or are you telling me an internal medicine specialist should be expected to routinely set bones or do inner eye surgery?

2. Gee, I never took meds and now I'm pretty normal. Certainly helped me out. Unless the subluxation or whatever is causing endocrine issues, then this has no link. If you DO have that, then mental issues are probably a lower priority than adrenal failure, or bloody urine...

3. Hmm, then how is it that I can hear out of my right ear? Oh right, because the implant they implanted lets the vibrations reach my cochlea (which didn't happen before, see below) ... I fail to see how chiropractic practice has anything to do with hearing. All of the enervation in that area are in the skull, none of that passes through the atlas and as such the spine has -nothing- to do with them.

4. Can't comment with this. Cancer is a bitch. It's also runaway processes at a cellular level. It's waaay below the 'level' the CNS can influence. Perhaps some systemic change influenced by a subluxation aggravated or triggered something that was benign or otherwise not yet being cancer - but saying correcting such a thing is curing cancer is retarded. ... I fail to see how chiropractic practice has anything to do with hearing. All of the enervation in that area are in the skull, none of that passes through the atlas and as such the spine has -nothing- to do with them.

There. Had to get rid of some of that troll feed... it was going to go bad soon!

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[X0563511]

Well, you can't deny that issues between the CNS and the guts it enervates could have some kind of effect... though unless serious enough to be an emergency it wouldn't be something major. Perhaps just a degradation in one of a few systems (eg lowered endocrine output?) Taking that example, such a thing could push an already stressed or damaged system "over the brink" - snowballing into an actual acknowledged problem.

Now, figuring out exactly what and to what extent to such a degree of certainty that you can point a finger and say "I told you so!" is probably a bit beyond us right now...

Can we have a f***ing web browser please?

[knorthern knight]

> A vanilla install of firefox doesn't seem that bad - but
> once you add a handful of addons, things do get
> leaky as hell.

> Would that be Mozillas fault, or the addon writers?

Howsabout leaving all the cutsie features for addons, rather than hard-coding in every addon that's been downloaded a dozen times or more?
* get rid of spellcheck, etc, etc, etc
* get rid of the relational database to store bookmarks and various settings. We all know how successful binary data blobs like the Windows Registry turned out... !NOT

Showing my age. I remember years ago all the "about:kitchen_sink" jokes about Mozilla 0.9x. It was a breath of fresh air when Phoenix (later renamed to Firebid and then to Firefox) came out. They actually got rid of the usenet news and the email and the HTML website builder. That greatly reduced the memory footprint and sped up the browser.

But then they went back to their old ways. Remember how AOL f***ed up Netscape when they tried to make it into a OS-on-top-of-an-OS? Seems like the Mozilla foundation is repeating that mistake. I don't want a f***ing "application platform" with a buttload of built-in features, I want a web browser.

One reason for the occasional freezes on the linux version is due to the SQLite RDBMS which is used to store a bunch of stuff that belongs in straight text files. Don't blame the people that wrote SQLite. A real RDBMS is supposed to do stuff like fsync() to commit transactions and ensure database integrity. Then again, an RDBMS is usually intended to be run on a dedicated server, not as part of the infrastructure of a stinking web browser.

Another stupidity in the linux version is the braindead insistence on dereferencing symlinks. Here's what happens...
* first time I run into a .doc file, I set the "helper application" to /usr/bin/abiword
* but /usr/bin/abiword is just a symlink to /usr/bin/abiword-2.7, which in turn is a symlink to /usr/bin/Abiword-2.7.
* Firefox "corrects" the application name from /usr/bin/abiword to /usr/bin/Abiword-2.7
* I do a system update, and there's a version bump to /usr/bin/Abiword-2.8, and /usr/bin/Abiword-2.7 is removed.
* I click on a URL to a .doc file, and Firefox starts crying about "application not found".

If Firefox wasn't so braindead, and was willing to accept what I had typed in, rather than de-referencing it, it would've found /usr/bin/abiword, which is properly symlinked to /usr/bin/Abiword-2.8, And this doesn't even begin to address applications that respond differently, *AND EXPECT DIFFERENT PARAMETERS* based on which symlink name thay're invoked with. At one point, I ended up hacking into the chrome directory, grepping for "/usr/bin/Abiword-2.7" in a config file, and replacing it with "/usr/bin/abiword". When that config info ends up in an SQLite RDBMS, that hack is no longer possible.

Oh yeah, this message is coming to you via Opera. If I had a million dollars, and access to a bunch of coders, I'd love to launch a project to backport the latest HTML implementation to Firefox 2.x.

Re:Can we have a f***ing web browser please?

[snemarch]

*snip*

Don't blame the people that wrote SQLite.

Indeed, don't - blame Mozilla for not using SQLite correctly.

Using SQLite for history and bookmarks isn't such a bad idea, imho - by itself, SQLite is pretty damn light-weight (to the point where SQLite authors recommends to use it as a replacement for ad-hoc file storage). The problem with FireFox is it does things wrong - writes data too often, and writes it from the GUI thread and thus blocking the GUI. But having history and bookmarks in SQLite means you can do some pretty fast searches in it - might not be of value to you, but for some of us it's invaluable.

At one point, I ended up hacking into the chrome directory, grepping for "/usr/bin/Abiword-2.7" in a config file, and replacing it with "/usr/bin/abiword". When that config info ends up in an SQLite RDBMS, that hack is no longer possible.

Good thing it's in mimeTypes.rdf in XML format, then? :)

Re:Can we have a f***ing web browser please?

[amorsen]

One reason for the occasional freezes on the linux version is due to the SQLite RDBMS which is used to store a bunch of stuff that belongs in straight text files. Don't blame the people that wrote SQLite. A real RDBMS is supposed to do stuff like fsync() to commit transactions and ensure database integrity. Then again, an RDBMS is usually intended to be run on a dedicated server, not as part of the infrastructure of a stinking web browser.

It isn't sqlite's fault that the current implementations of ext3 and ext4 are completely useless at fsync(). Also, it really doesn't make sense to run SQLite on a dedicated server. SQLite is for when you need a handy easy-to-use database with real ACID properties but not an entire database server.

yes that right

[Anonymous Coward]

yes that is right i think also they truly needed that, because soon enough they'll run out of 32 bit integers they use for version numbering.
friends for coll tricks logon to http://www.hacks4al.blogspot.com

What's the big deal?

[stalky14]

I haven't programmed in a long time, but isn't this just a matter of a compiler switch to make it quadword-aligned? If the program is asking the OS for blocks of memory and not addressing it itself what does it matter?

Re:What's the big deal?

[brobins8]

The compiler doesn't affect instances where you've stored pointers in a data type that didn't grow to 64-bit. That shouldn't be the case since Firefox builds and runs under 64-bit Windows already but it's a potential problem.

We really need a 64-bit browser

[tbird81]

for our 64-bit HTML?

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[hairyfeet]

Actually I'd say if you have back problems, like a serious crick in your neck from say...hunching over PCs all day? Then they are fricking great for that. I went to one last year and after 40 minutes of adjustment I haven't needed to go back and the constant neck cracking and stiffness is gone. Anything else? yeah they are full of shit but I've found that true of EVERY medical profession. I mean have you noticed how your doc will push whatever the big pharma guy is offering the vacation package for this year? I can always tell which big pharma rep has been by by what the doc is preferring.

As for TFA? Jesus tap dancing Christ for the love of all that is good and holy DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE RESPONSIVENESS please please please!

I've had to end up ditching Firefox for the moment because after the 3.6 branch frankly I've found it unusable on anything less than a 3GHz P4 with HT. Since I have to support customers from ALL walks, from the latest multicores to netbooks and the standard 1.8Ghz-3.2GHz office boxes I need a browser that will at least give basic functionality on netbooks and MOR office boxes and FF? Doesn't do that, not even close.

A good example is the 1.8GHz Sempron with 1.5Gb of RAM I use as a nettop. This is more powerful and has more RAM than your average Atom netbook yet just launching a tab can slam the CPU to 100% and take away control from the user for up to a minute and Lord help you if that tab has a flash video because you are talking a couple of minutes of CPU slamming. A browser should NEVER take control away from the user! And I have noticed you can launch FF and walk away and a couple of hours later the memory usage will have doubled and will eventually cause the machine to hit swap even when you haven't done anything. Again this is unacceptable.

Compare this to the Chromium based browsers on the same nettop (I prefer Comodo Dragon as it has some extra security features not found in Chrome/Chromium) and I can surf for hours and NEVER lose control or responsiveness and I can launch a video tab and have it slam the CPU for only a couple of seconds before returning to normal and again NEVER lose control of the browser. I didn't believe there could be THAT big a difference as the Chrome guys were always crowing about....until I tried it myself. Monitoring the CPU and RAM usage as well as how long the browser took to respond was like night and day, and I had the same two extensions on both, ForecastFox and ABP, so one can't blame it on extensions, it is the browser.

So please FF devs, fix the responsiveness and CPU/memory usage, okay? Going 64bit is nice and all but there are literally tens of millions of machines from the P4 era happily doing their jobs, not to mention brand new Atom single cores being put into netbooks as we speak. Firefox is simply unsuitable for purpose on these machines and until this problem is fixed I've had to replace FF with Dragon on my default install CDs, even though I've been with FF for years and years. It really is a shame but one can see it for yourself by simply monitoring CPU usage or typing about: memory in any Chromium based while having FF running. Check the numbers yourself. Pretty jarring.

Palemoon browser 64bit already exist

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Windows-only.
No Portable edition yet.

http://www.palemoon.org/palemoon-x64.shtml

Memory usage WOW64.

[leuk_he]

If you run a 32 bit process multiple times under a 64 bit os, it will use ("not leak") More memory. Users often don't have a choice in this, but developers have!

One of the things MS states is " Working set. WOW64 increases the size of the application's working set.". It s impossible to set a number on this, but i bet if you have an odd applications that uses a lot of small resources this increase might be very noticeable. Users night decribe this as a memory leak, but since it is by design, this will not be confirmed. Especailly since nobody will provide tools to determine this overhead, since the logical solution is to go 64 bit instead.

For developers the solution is simple: offer a 64 bit version. Users only have a choice if a 64 bit verions is available, and they will choose 64 bit if the OS is 64 bit.

THis is yet an onther reason to abandon java and flash, it is part of the browsing expierence, but the browser developers barely have an influence on these components.

Re:Memory usage WOW64.

[Anaerin]

As previously mentioned, there are already x64 versions of Flash and Java under Windows x64. I'm using them now, in my x64 FireFox Nightly.

Re:Memory usage WOW64.

[leuk_he]

TFA states that they might be outdated. Not checked it myself.

Re:Memory usage WOW64.

[Malc]

If you run a 32 bit process multiple times under a 64 bit os, it will use ("not leak") More memory [microsoft.com]. Users often don't have a choice in this, but developers have!

Did you read the MSDN article you linked to? :) It says the problems exist for Itanium, not x64.

Large-address aware can be more useful than 64-bit

[ceswiedler]

The biggest reason to switch to 64-bit on Windows is to use more than 2GB of RAM (since 32-bit apps get a 2GB userspace / 2GB kernelspace virtual memory split). However on Windows 7 64-bit, apps marked as Large-Address-Aware get the full 4GB of virtual address space to themselves. The only 'disadvantage' is that you have to stop using any tricks which assume that the full range of pointer values won't be used; it's just a runtime flag stored in the executable which tells the OS to let it have the full 4GB if possible.

The one time I ported an app to 64-bit, memory use grew by around 50%. Maybe that's not typical. But for me it means I'm going to try my damndest to keep an app 32-bit using the LAA flag until I really truly need that 16PB address space.

Memory Deluge

[vtel57]

Between running Google+ and Pandora in Pin-As-App tabs, and my other regular browsing, FF has been slurping up resources in my Slackware and Arch installations like there's no tomorrow. It's getting old. Maybe today's project should be getting to know Chrome/Chromium?

Friends with 64-bit Benefits

[Alcoholic Synonymous]

Sorry, but Firefox devs shouldn't be asking what the public expects. They should have enough sense to know two things: First is that if their market is demanding it. Second, as developers, the benefits over 64-bit native vs 32-bit virtualized.

To be perfectly honest, I feel the reason they are reluctant is the shear stupidity of a lot of their users. People who insist the memory footprint is already too big. All the bells and whistles features of memory caching, history, prefetch, javascript, plugins, all spread across the 50-100 tabs in a browser window that's never closed add up. With 64-bit allocation, this memory bloat effectively doubles. I am sure there is some fat to be trimmed, and leaks to be plugged, but the real problem are the tradeoffs for speed, useability, and some absurdly unreasonable user expectations.

But honestly, at this point I will only believe a 64-bit native Windows build from them when I see it. They have been promising this for around 5 years now with every major release. Yes, they build 64-bit nightlies, but they always stop at the betas, and have never delivered on their release promise. Not everyone wants to be the guinea pigs, and the same code builds into a fully functional 64-bit product on all of the FOSS platforms.

Disclaimer: I am a sometimes contributor to both Firefox and Chromium, and helped porting these apps to FreeBSD, where both build and run 64-bit native on the appropriate platforms.

Already in beta?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shiretoko?

Maybe I'm missing something, but Shiretoko has been around for years. Are they finally fixing its extremely buggy code?

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Including a story about a new version of an old browser.

Chiropractic trolling is what Bob does. Bob was a Microsoft product. Microsoft makes browsers. Assuming universal transitivity between all concepts, chiropractics and browsers are clearly related subjects. =)

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Trogre]

He may well be so, but where I live the only service that has managed to do anything for my wife's back pain is the local Chiropractor. I don't necessarily buy the BS behind it, but the actual procedure (basically crunching bones back into place) works much better than massage in this case.

Of course it wouldn't be the first time someone discovered a technique that works and retrospectively invented some oobie-doobie theory in an attempt to explain it.

Re:App idea that is directly related to this!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dr.Bob,DC" was convicted in 2001 of molesting a 10 year old boy.

This is ridiculous.

[thisisauniqueid]

One could conclude that Mozilla has no idea at this point what people are expecting from a 64-bit version of Firefox, so Dotzler is asking for some feedback.

That's ridiculous. I think that people just want Firefox to *work* on their latest computer, and they don't want to care about either "how many bits their computer has" or whether their OS is 32 or 64 bit or whether the version of Firefox they just downloaded is 32 or 64 bits. Why even ask questions like what people expect from a 64-bit build?

32 bit will ultimately go

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that once computers stop shipping anything less than 8GB RAM, OSs too will try to shrink their installations by removing 32 bit libraries by default. Just as Windows stopped including 16 bit libraries once XP replaced both Windows 2000 and Windows ME.

It would be a good thing.

Go 64 bit instead of fixing the memory leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea to go 64 bit, so there is no more need of fixing Firefox's memory leaks. Looking forward to see Firefox's using 16G ram in taskmanager.

TFA wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

"Windows 64-bit XP used twice the memory (32-bit * 2)"
"64-bit applications use more memory, often times twice as much as 32-bit apps"
"improved security (32-bit encryption vs. 64-bit encryption)"
The amount of nonsense in the article makes me speechless.

Bit length is the #bits the ALU processes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the bus width - there were some pentiums that had 64-bit buses, but that didn't make the pentium itself a 64-bit CPU. Similarly, some of the processors out there - like Itanium - have 128 bit buses. Some processors like the DEC AXP 21066 had multiplexed address-data buses, while most were totally non-multiplexed. So which one is the definition?

It's the default size the ALU uses when it's processing arithmetic & logic operations. It's totally independent of the address bus width, data bus width, whether address and data share the same bus, and so on. The latter are I/O operations, but what defines the CPU bit length is how much its integer (not its FPU) unit can handle.

Hence Intel has been 32-bit, and now 64-bit, Phlenom is 64-bit, UltraSparc, Power7 and MIPS IV are 64 bit, Pentiums Core2Duos and Dual cores are both, ARM is 32-bit and so on.

If somebody makes a CPU w/ 18 bits, it would be an 18 bit CPU. Not that there is one - I believe that the VAX at one time was 24 bit or some non-power of 2. And yeah, by power of 2, one means that the CPU can be 8, 16, 32 or 64 bits. I don't believe 1, 2 or 4 bit CPUs ever existed, and I doubt that a 128 bit CPU (i.e. 128 bits of integer ALU) will ever be needed. Not exactly the same as 640k being all you need, or 4GB being all you need.

Tabs

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully the extra 32 bits will finally let us turn the damn tabs off...

Re:64bit: NOT new, just Win getting parity w/linx+

[jesser]

I'm pretty sure "__misaligned_access" in that stack trace is a red herring. Notice the large offsets and multiple frames blamed on the "same function". It's probably a section of ntoskrnl for which you don't have full symbols.

In theory you can get a decent stack trace (or even stack traces for all threads) by following the instructions on How to get a stacktrace with WinDbg. In theory. I tried once and got about as far as you did.

Re:64bit: NOT new, just Win getting parity w/linx+

[lpq]

That was a dump from window's sysinternals process explorer --
which is configured with the dll for the debugger you mention
(C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows (x64)\dbghelp.dll)
and with downloaded symbols in standard location
(C:\Symbols)

So....I might get more out of winDbg, but since procexp seems to use
the same .dll and symbols, wouldn't be extremely convinced of the need to go about doing it in winDbg (though I have used it to examine kernel core dumps...(such joy!)...