the cache is force released when there is memory pressure aka when you're running out of ram for other things. For 20megs, its hard to say, but that's far from 1.3GB So it sounds like it might be an extension. I'm not intimate with FF's exact cache management but "per tab" is a quick approximation, in reality most likely keep cache per page (except there's only one page per tab so its a bit like "per tab")
I've seen they started to to be more careful about extensions and list the "bad extensions" for startup time, i guess they will analyse for memory as well. Many of the most used extensions are actually in that list;-)
Personally the main reason I use firefox, beside that it works fine for me is that: http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto of course if it was worse than the rest by a fair margin i wouldn't use it - but - for most things it's actually still better than the rest imo, including memory actually (despite the fact that it wont release memory without pressure or if there's a leak. in chrome you can't see it since by closing the tab the process is killed. It will end up like that in FF too anyhow, while it uses more memory, it just makes things more simple)
Well have you tested those other extensions? I would disable everything but adblock & noscript (in fact, you might want to disable noscript too - yes its useful, but the code isn't exactly nice). I run FF4 on various platforms and for many customers, and have no such memory issue.
Mozilla is actually working on educating the coders of the most used extensions. One big "issue" is that if you want a 100% customizable browser, then extensions should be able to do anything. If you want extensions to be "safe" then they're restricted a lot.
Mozilla made JetPack for this, restartless, "safer" extensions, which are like the ones in Chrome I believe, not that flexible but you can still do a lot. And keeps the "complete extensions" which can really change Firefox in any way they like - extremely flexible.
The garbage collection which frees up memory does not free up the cache, so memory decrease slightly when you close tabs etc, but not drastically, if there is memory available. What's important is that it doesn't go up on it's own - that would be a real leak for sure.
The other way around, which is, memory not really being free'ed up cannot be seen through the task manager, so there might or might not be issues. That said, due to the architecture of firefox and the garbage collection the leaks are not very likely, or not likely to be big.
Now then again 1.3G seems way too much, but I see you have more than adblock and noscript installed. Maybe you could disable everything but that and enable one by one. To see which extension would be going wrong (as it's the most likely case)
I'll be the first to admit that it would be nice if the extension system could allow managing the extensions more closely on that regard - but it would probably restrict their flexibility.
the status bar is actually there - like chrome - and its fine that way imo. if you want the loading progress, it was never accurate and cannot be accurate, so that one was useless.
What would be really neat, even if I bet its not high priority, is revamping the extension system (even more than with jetpack). Musts would be:
- no-restart-required for any extension (ala jetpack) - some way of monitoring the extensions (what they can do? bad stuff? How much memory do they take?) I know this one is prolly borderline impossible with XUL as it is, but hey - function-as-extension. Why isnt mozilla using it's own extension system? We could disable what we don't like, like, for example, I really couldn't care less for the awesome bar and tab magic thing (I even forgot the name). There's prolly another 5 or 6 big features i'd just turn off. Don't be like Chrome. - more focus on the extensions: they shouldnt be for power users, but for everyone. the website should be simple and accessible - not encourage people to install 50-100 extensions that will degrade their experience of firefox. For example there could be official addons and user supported add ons in separate categories.
I sure would like that they revise the extension system to be lean and clean,a nd they could add each feature they like as an extension. It could be bundled and on by default, if they wish, but we could disable the feature that way by disabling the extension. Clean and completely disabled ftw.
actually, they do, Chrome is the browser using the most memory of them all. It doesnt mean it has leaks. Just uses more memory. Mostly due to heavily sandboxing and per process model. http://www.dotnetperls.com/chrome-memory (yes, its a bit over a year old, but still)
This troll is going to get +5 every single time there's a post on Firefox.. Firefox has actually a pretty low memory footprint. Firefox caches a lot, as long as it can, but you don't see that in Windows Task manager. You can see it in Linux/Mac OSX...
If you _really_ want to find a memory leak, open firefox, do your stuff, open the task manager, leave it open, stop browing and wait. You'll see memory go slowly down. This is the garbage collector clearing out the cache. If it goes up by itself more than a few megs (it can always go up due to background tasks such as fetching RSS etc, but not by much), then its a leak. In that case I'd recommend checking your add-ons. But most likely, you have actually no leak.
One difference with FF4 vs FF3 is that the cache is per tab instead of being for the whole browser, so FF4 uses slightly more memory (still way less than Chrome which has a process per tab). This is also more secure as one page (tab) cannot easily access the memory of another page (tab).
I actually like that feature. With today's technologies, keeping anonymity means multiple accounts. One for "work", one for "friends", one for "sex friends", or whatever you like. I think many are using Chrome+FF (+IE?) just because it ensures your identities are separated. So this feature actually makes some sense.
It also allow testing stuff quick & easy, for example being logged as admin AND user on your website.
so yeah if every other browser use this version naming scheme and period , "lets ditch firefox! releases not often enough!" if firefox uses the same version naming scheme and periods "lets ditch firefox! releases too often!"
Except unlike you, FSF is actually making sense - of course, the apps will not get open source, but it will sensibilize the people a little more, each time they do such "PR" announce.
Eventually enough people would realize that open source is good - that's FSF's goal - and some of these apps could be built open source instead.
Now if you like open source or not is another story, of course. I'll just mention that RedHat is doing extremely well. Proprietary companies are going down every single day. Some open source companies too. Some other succeed. Some being open source, some being proprietary, some a bit of both. Film at 11.
notice how the LED goes dim when you're idling? That's a power saving strategy. It's actually just flashing it on occasionally to see if it's moved, then going back to sleep. Cordless productivity mice do this very aggressively, and you *will* miss that golden headshot opportunity if your mouse is idled down,
campers who are able to get their mouse to idle due to excessive camping are horrible, horrible gamers to play with anyway.
I have that comic taped to my door. Any programmer who walks by, reads it, and doesn't laugh is someone I watch VERY carefully when they write any code that touches a database.
or someone who saw this joke linked a thousand times - can't laugh every time after that!
Humanity always produces as much as it needs. If not, people die and the equilibrium is re-established. It comes to producing as much as we want, and that, as given in one example, is pretty much limitless. Scarcity of resources in that respect is inevitable and the distribution of those resources is fairly well addressed by capitalism. I doubt there will be a better way to distribute them until our super-AI comes online to figure it all out for us. Until then, humans are provably terrible at guessing where resources should go by any means other than rational self-interest.
Well, if you did not know, people do die of hunger every day, and many of them. So no, we don't produce as much as we need;-) I'm pretty sure you're however aware that money and power are more important than proper resource distribution especially in the capitalist scheme - therefore it can't be our best effort as humans by a long shot. (be it food, electronics, energy, or what-not)
It is more dangerous when self-signed. Because it gives you a false sense of security otherwise. On plain http you _know_ you are not secure. On self-signed you _think_ you are secure so you'll put your credit card number and what not more easily, while in fact, maybe you're not secure.
Note: self-signed is not necessary unsecure, you just need to make sure you know what you trust when you click "ok and save" the first time.. or get the cert separately and make the same checks.
can hardly agree more. but i also fear that open source success is going toward this kind of crap: make it hard to get the source / changes properly, inserting as many BSD-licensed-and-don't-give-anything-back code etc etc. Not counting all the lets-use-GPL-closed-source-its-unlikely-we-get sued (RedHat of course will never do that, but SO many small companies do)
Sarcasm aside EE is electronic engineer, most slashdot readers are supposedly noob teena^H^H^H^H^H software engineers, most don't have a very detailed experience with electronics
it's a business. at least you get some bugs fixed that way. they'd keep it for other people if other people paid more (and some do!) so yeah, it's just business. most businesses aren't very moral for that matter.
Slashdot Mirror
New kid on the block effect - works even for oldies getting younger again. Sad, but true!
Yes but he's talking about GNOME 3.
I'm satisfied with GNOME 2 as well - and I tried to use KDE4 a lot - it's just not polished enough.
GNOME3 on the other hand.. doesn't look quite right to me, at least in "default mode"
the cache is force released when there is memory pressure aka when you're running out of ram for other things. For 20megs, its hard to say, but that's far from 1.3GB
So it sounds like it might be an extension. I'm not intimate with FF's exact cache management but "per tab" is a quick approximation, in reality most likely keep cache per page (except there's only one page per tab so its a bit like "per tab")
I've seen they started to to be more careful about extensions and list the "bad extensions" for startup time, i guess they will analyse for memory as well. ;-)
Many of the most used extensions are actually in that list
Personally the main reason I use firefox, beside that it works fine for me is that: http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto of course if it was worse than the rest by a fair margin i wouldn't use it - but - for most things it's actually still better than the rest imo, including memory actually (despite the fact that it wont release memory without pressure or if there's a leak. in chrome you can't see it since by closing the tab the process is killed. It will end up like that in FF too anyhow, while it uses more memory, it just makes things more simple)
Well have you tested those other extensions? I would disable everything but adblock & noscript (in fact, you might want to disable noscript too - yes its useful, but the code isn't exactly nice). I run FF4 on various platforms and for many customers, and have no such memory issue.
Mozilla is actually working on educating the coders of the most used extensions. One big "issue" is that if you want a 100% customizable browser, then extensions should be able to do anything.
If you want extensions to be "safe" then they're restricted a lot.
Mozilla made JetPack for this, restartless, "safer" extensions, which are like the ones in Chrome I believe, not that flexible but you can still do a lot. And keeps the "complete extensions" which can really change Firefox in any way they like - extremely flexible.
The garbage collection which frees up memory does not free up the cache, so memory decrease slightly when you close tabs etc, but not drastically, if there is memory available. What's important is that it doesn't go up on it's own - that would be a real leak for sure.
The other way around, which is, memory not really being free'ed up cannot be seen through the task manager, so there might or might not be issues. That said, due to the architecture of firefox and the garbage collection the leaks are not very likely, or not likely to be big.
Now then again 1.3G seems way too much, but I see you have more than adblock and noscript installed. Maybe you could disable everything but that and enable one by one. To see which extension would be going wrong (as it's the most likely case)
I'll be the first to admit that it would be nice if the extension system could allow managing the extensions more closely on that regard - but it would probably restrict their flexibility.
the status bar is actually there - like chrome - and its fine that way imo.
if you want the loading progress, it was never accurate and cannot be accurate, so that one was useless.
What would be really neat, even if I bet its not high priority, is revamping the extension system (even more than with jetpack).
Musts would be:
- no-restart-required for any extension (ala jetpack)
- some way of monitoring the extensions (what they can do? bad stuff? How much memory do they take?) I know this one is prolly borderline impossible with XUL as it is, but hey
- function-as-extension. Why isnt mozilla using it's own extension system? We could disable what we don't like, like, for example, I really couldn't care less for the awesome bar and tab magic thing (I even forgot the name). There's prolly another 5 or 6 big features i'd just turn off. Don't be like Chrome.
- more focus on the extensions: they shouldnt be for power users, but for everyone. the website should be simple and accessible - not encourage people to install 50-100 extensions that will degrade their experience of firefox. For example there could be official addons and user supported add ons in separate categories.
I sure would like that they revise the extension system to be lean and clean,a nd they could add each feature they like as an extension.
It could be bundled and on by default, if they wish, but we could disable the feature that way by disabling the extension. Clean and completely disabled ftw.
actually, they do, Chrome is the browser using the most memory of them all. It doesnt mean it has leaks. Just uses more memory. Mostly due to heavily sandboxing and per process model.
http://www.dotnetperls.com/chrome-memory (yes, its a bit over a year old, but still)
This troll is going to get +5 every single time there's a post on Firefox.. ...
Firefox has actually a pretty low memory footprint.
Firefox caches a lot, as long as it can, but you don't see that in Windows Task manager. You can see it in Linux/Mac OSX
If you _really_ want to find a memory leak, open firefox, do your stuff, open the task manager, leave it open, stop browing and wait. You'll see memory go slowly down.
This is the garbage collector clearing out the cache. If it goes up by itself more than a few megs (it can always go up due to background tasks such as fetching RSS etc, but not by much), then its a leak. In that case I'd recommend checking your add-ons. But most likely, you have actually no leak.
One difference with FF4 vs FF3 is that the cache is per tab instead of being for the whole browser, so FF4 uses slightly more memory (still way less than Chrome which has a process per tab). This is also more secure as one page (tab) cannot easily access the memory of another page (tab).
I actually like that feature. With today's technologies, keeping anonymity means multiple accounts. One for "work", one for "friends", one for "sex friends", or whatever you like.
I think many are using Chrome+FF (+IE?) just because it ensures your identities are separated. So this feature actually makes some sense.
It also allow testing stuff quick & easy, for example being logged as admin AND user on your website.
so yeah if every other browser use this version naming scheme and period , "lets ditch firefox! releases not often enough!"
if firefox uses the same version naming scheme and periods "lets ditch firefox! releases too often!"
Seriously.
I stopped laughing on april 1st a bit over 10 years ago. I think that's when I've got internet.
Except unlike you, FSF is actually making sense - of course, the apps will not get open source, but it will sensibilize the people a little more, each time they do such "PR" announce.
Eventually enough people would realize that open source is good - that's FSF's goal - and some of these apps could be built open source instead.
Now if you like open source or not is another story, of course. I'll just mention that RedHat is doing extremely well. Proprietary companies are going down every single day. Some open source companies too. Some other succeed. Some being open source, some being proprietary, some a bit of both. Film at 11.
i use FF because of that: http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto
but it's also one of the best performing browser overall, and has excellent add-ons, so it's all good.
True and insightful :P
Or man up and use ed.
But emacs? Come on. Gedit! (or how to get -1 flamebait.)
notice how the LED goes dim when you're idling? That's a power saving strategy. It's actually just flashing it on occasionally to see if it's moved, then going back to sleep. Cordless productivity mice do this very aggressively, and you *will* miss that golden headshot opportunity if your mouse is idled down,
campers who are able to get their mouse to idle due to excessive camping are horrible, horrible gamers to play with anyway.
sorry, had to ;-)
I have that comic taped to my door. Any programmer who walks by, reads it, and doesn't laugh is someone I watch VERY carefully when they write any code that touches a database.
or someone who saw this joke linked a thousand times - can't laugh every time after that!
Humanity always produces as much as it needs. If not, people die and the equilibrium is re-established. It comes to producing as much as we want, and that, as given in one example, is pretty much limitless. Scarcity of resources in that respect is inevitable and the distribution of those resources is fairly well addressed by capitalism. I doubt there will be a better way to distribute them until our super-AI comes online to figure it all out for us. Until then, humans are provably terrible at guessing where resources should go by any means other than rational self-interest.
Well, if you did not know, people do die of hunger every day, and many of them. So no, we don't produce as much as we need ;-)
I'm pretty sure you're however aware that money and power are more important than proper resource distribution especially in the capitalist scheme - therefore it can't be our best effort as humans by a long shot. (be it food, electronics, energy, or what-not)
It is more dangerous when self-signed. Because it gives you a false sense of security otherwise. On plain http you _know_ you are not secure.
On self-signed you _think_ you are secure so you'll put your credit card number and what not more easily, while in fact, maybe you're not secure.
Note: self-signed is not necessary unsecure, you just need to make sure you know what you trust when you click "ok and save" the first time.. or get the cert separately and make the same checks.
can hardly agree more.
but i also fear that open source success is going toward this kind of crap: make it hard to get the source / changes properly, inserting as many BSD-licensed-and-don't-give-anything-back code etc etc. Not counting all the lets-use-GPL-closed-source-its-unlikely-we-get sued (RedHat of course will never do that, but SO many small companies do)
Oh well, human nature & stuff.
That shows where slashdot is going!
Oh wait.
Sarcasm aside EE is electronic engineer, most slashdot readers are supposedly noob teena^H^H^H^H^H software engineers, most don't have a very detailed experience with electronics
The new slashdot meme:
IANAEE.
it's a business. at least you get some bugs fixed that way. they'd keep it for other people if other people paid more (and some do!)
so yeah, it's just business. most businesses aren't very moral for that matter.
One point is that it's not consistent with the rest of the OS UIs. On the other hand, I do like tabs on top ;-)