Is Firefox 57 Faster Than Chrome? (mashable.com)

An anonymous reader quotes TechNewsWorld: Firefox is not only fast on startup -- it remains zippy even when taxed by multitudes of tabs. "We have a better balance of memory to performance than all the other browsers," said Firefox Vice President for Product Nick Nguyen. "We use 30 percent less memory, and the reason for that is we can allocate the number of processes Firefox uses on your computer based on the hardware that you have," he told TechNewsWorld. The performance improvements in Quantum could be a drink from the fountain of youth for many Firefox users' systems. "A significant number of our users are on machines that are two cores or less, and less than 4 gigabytes of RAM," Nguyen explained.
Mashable ran JetStream 1.1 tests on the ability to run advanced web applications, and concluded that "Firefox comes out on top, but not by much. This means it's, according to JetStream, slightly better suited for 'advanced workloads and programming techniques.'" Firefox also performed better on "real-world speed tests" on Amazon.com and the New York Times' site, while Chrome performed better on National Geographic, CNN, and Mashable. Unfortunately for Mozilla, Chrome looks like it's keeping the top spot, at least for now. The only test that favors Quantum is JetStream, and that's by a hair. And in Ares-6 [which measures how quickly a browser can run new Javascript functions, including mathematical functions], Quantum gets eviscerated... Speedometer simulates user actions on web applications (specifically, adding items to a to-do list) and measures the time they take... When it comes to user interactions in web applications, Chrome takes the day...

In reality, however, Quantum is no slug. It's a capable, fast, and gorgeous browser with innovative bookmark functionality and a library full of creative add-ons. As Mozilla's developers fine-tune Quantum in the coming months, it's possible it could catch up to Chrome. In the meantime, the differences in page-load time are slight at best; you probably won't notice the difference.

Comments

Browser speed is not the issue

[argontechnologies]

It doesn't matter how fast either browser is, if they don't fix the memory leaks that they BOTH have. They both just slow to a crawl as they consume all the system memory. I switched from Firefox to Chrome because of this, then Chrome slowly got just as bad. Memory leaks are so 1975.

Re: Browser speed is not the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Both Chrome and Edge have a fatal flaw - they are controlled by megacorpororation who have an agenda that will collide with user interests.
If we allow them to dominate VB the Internet we will suffer in the long run.

FF is a healthy antidote to that. As long as it runs good enough FF comes out on top for that alone. And it runs better than good enough.

People are short-sighted. And have bad memory. When we allowed MS to get almost 100% of the browser market with IE it ended up as an unsupported, unsafe mess.

Re:Browser speed is not the issue

[Scaba]

Maybe you want to retire that 500 MB drive?

Re:Notepad is faster.

[Njorthbiatr]

I thought it was faster than Chrome.

But honestly the huge amount of features FF has that Chrome doesn't makes the choice clear.

Pointless question

[Anonymous Coward]

Without ad/tracking/script blockers installed by default the question is almost pointless.
NO browser is fast on the modern internet when you're not decrapifying everything first.

(Also, FF and Chromium don't send all your data and browsing history directly to google. Just throwing that out there).

Read Firefox's privacy policy. It mentions Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

(Also, FF and Chromium don't send all your data and browsing history directly to google. Just throwing that out there).

It's really disturbing to see this nonsensical "Firefox doesn't send information to Google" myth being propagated again and again, especially here at Slashdot of all places.

READ FIREFOX'S PRIVACY POLICY!

The September 28, 2017 version of it states (with emphasis added):

Webpage and technical data to Google’s SafeBrowsing service: To help protect you from malicious downloads, Firefox sends basic information about unrecognized downloads to Google's SafeBrowsing Service, including the filename and the URL it was downloaded from.

Location data to Google's geolocation service: Firefox always asks before determining and sharing your location with a requesting website (for example, if a map website needs your location to provide directions). To determine location, Firefox may use your operating system’s geolocation features, Wi-fi networks, cell phone towers, or IP address, and may send this data to Google's geolocation service, which has its own privacy policy.

On iOS and Android: Firefox by default sends mobile campaign data to Adjust, our analytics vendor, which has its own privacy policy. Mobile campaign data includes a Google advertising ID, IP address, timestamp, country, language/locale, operating system, and app version.

It should be pretty clear to you now that Firefox very well can send information to Google, or otherwise uses Google nonsense like Google advertising IDs.

So don't give us this bullshit about Firefox somehow respecting our privacy. In my opinion it doesn't. In fact, I think it's worse than Chrome, in that it has tricked fools like you into thinking that Firefox doesn't violate your privacy by sending information to Google when, as Firefox's very own privacy policy clearly states, Firefox can send information to Google.

Re:Read Firefox's privacy policy. It mentions Goog

[Teun]

There's that little difference between can send and will send...

Who cares if it's faster?

[quonset]

The people who whine about slowness and memory leaks are the same ones who would leave their car running day in and day out then complain it's using too much fuel.

As to the "new" Firefox, it looks like something from Soviet Russia. Ugly squared edges, no logic as to why useful items are hidden and have to be sought out, doodads which serve no apparent purpose other than they can be done, and of course the in-your-face, blaring advertisements when you open a new, blank tab, though they can be turned off once you figure out how to do so.

57 is a case study in shiny for shiny's sake.

They still don't get it

[hyades1]

I'm so tempted to use profanity to describe the jackasses at Mozilla for what they've done to Firefox. Very few of the millions of people who now call themselves "former Firefox users" will come back. That includes me. I'm certainly not a spokesman for this group, but I bet my situation is very much like theirs.

'Way back at the beginning, I did not choose Firefox because it was the fastest browser out there. I chose it because it gave reasonable performance, used tabs, and offered all kinds of interesting add-ons that put me unambiguously in charge of my on-line experience. Before long, I had my browser configured exactly the way I wanted it. Life was good.

So did I stop visiting the Firefox add-ons site? Hell no! It was both fun and interesting to see what some clever person had come up with that I might want to try...often things I'd never have thought of on my own. Test driving was incredibly fast and easy, and if I didn't like an app or got tired of it, I could get rid of it in seconds.

This was what I loved: I had a core browser that was reliable and fast enough for my purposes, and that I used when I actually needed to be productive. And I had an endlessly-fascinating toy that let me try out interesting, fun things whenever I wanted. When Chrome came out, I gave it a try...why wouldn't I? It was fast, alright. And utterly soulless. I uninstalled it after only a week.

So then the a-holes at Firefox decided they wanted to be Chrome. Even worse, they started screwing around with my GUI, apparently for sport. Classic Theme Restorer could only do so much. But that was only the symptom, not the disease. The disease was the Chrome obsession. And look at them now. "Add-ons" is now a dirty word. But oh my, they're the fastest (maybe).

So here we are today. The people who ruined Firefox are proudly trumpeting that they've turned it into an even faster Chrome. Good luck with that. I didn't want Chrome in the first place. I don't want it now. And I especially don't want a Chrome wannabe that reminds me every time I launch it what I have lost.

So thanks, Firefox, but I think I'll stay with Pale Moon as my regular browser, and Epic as my main backup. If you ever manage to buy back your soul, give me a call.

Re:Has chrome fixed its sandbox-running-as-root ye

[Anonymous Coward]

No package should autoupdate its systemwide binaries. Especially if You have five user accounts on a machine, or on a production or development machine. Besides, why would anybody want applications to autoupdate in the first place?
The obvious answer to Your dilemma is this: application should run with user privileges, and only an admin can install an update to a binary provided with the system.

 

It's really only a problem

[rsilvergun]

if you insist on never closing your browser. Yeah, some folks get really upset when you suggest they do that, but most don't even notice that they periodically close their browser.

Resources are limited. What's a better use of time, tracking down a few kilos worth of memory leaks that annoy the less than 1% of your user base who never close their browser down and keep 100+ tabs open or making your JavaScript engine 10% faster?

Don't have to worry about the answer...

[jbn-o]

...if you get people asking the wrong questions.

"Is Firefox 57 Faster Than Chrome?" doesn't matter. Firefox is free software (software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify) and the basis for more free software browsers that do a better job respecting one's privacy than Firefox does by default. Google's Chrome, on the other hand, is nonfree (proprietary, user-subjugating) software published by a known spy agency and partner of the NSA (three cheers for Snowden for freeing the documents about what the American government and corporations are doing!). Using that program means literally handing Google as much control over your computer (including your browsing) as your computer account allows.

I don't care which browser is faster. It so happens that any recent revision of Firefox is fast enough to do the jobs I do. What's more important to me is software freedom; I care about retaining control over the computers I own and I think all other computer users deserve full control over their computers. So I recommend software freedom for its own sake even if that means an inconvenience on something as relatively unimportant as browser speed. Leave it to the corporate tech media, the corporate sycophants (readily found on /.), and people too naive about social issues to cultivate bad priorities like browser speed over software freedom.