Which version of Opera do you experience this with? Having been a long-time Opera user, I cannot say that I have ever seen that sort of consumption from Opera, even with 20 or more tabs open at a time. The upper bound is typically 75 MB, starting off at 23 MB or so on start up. That is with a 50 MB cache, mind you. So it is understandable that the consumption reaches up to 75 MB, when 50 MB of that is cache.
I would hardly call that a "feature". It is not possible at this time to easily limit the amount of increased memory consumption caused by opening and using a new tab.
It as also been pointed out by many that Opera offers a very similar feature, without the excessive memory consumption of Firefox.
Finally, it is oft reported that users who leave Firefox running for any significant period of time, even with only one tab open, often encounter memory consumption above 400 MB. That would seem to indicate that there's a problem. If it's within the normal operations of the per-tab cache, then it's still a waste of memory (which other applications could better be using, for instance). Otherwise, such memory usage would appear to be caused by traditional memory leaks.
Feature-wise, you are correct. The Opera engine and Gecko both do a very good job of supporting the existing W3C standards, plus various proprietary extensions.
It has been suggested, however, that Opera's engine is better implemented than Gecko. Even without seeing Opera's source code, it is still a very plausible statement. Opera does not leak memory as much as Firefox does, for instance. That alone is an important differentiating factor between the two. Many report that Opera renders faster than Gecko, as well. Thus it would appear that while the functionality offered by both is comparable, the implementation of Gecko is inferior to that of Opera's rendering engine.
It would be interesting to see if Apple, or even a group of volunteers, would be willing to port WebCore to the Sony PSP. That would likely be the only way to achieve a comparable product, as it would seem that Firefox's memory requirements are prohibitive in such an environment.
Of course, Sony's recent actions may inhibit the support they would get for such a product from the open source development community. That is why they'd likely have to partner with another business (like Apple), or do it all themselves.
This truly shows the versatility of Opera.
on
Opera on the Nintendo DS
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· Score: 5, Informative
Doing something like this truly shows the versatility of Opera. They sure have come up with a fantastic products. Not only does it work perfectly on desktop systems, rivalling Firefox, Internet Explorer, Konqueror and Safari, but it is also a gem on far less powerful systems.
With all the talk about the flexibility of Firefox, I just can't imagine seeing it run on similar hardware. Enough people complain about Firefox leaking memory that it seems almost impossible for it to remotely support such devices.
But the problem with Wine is one of quality. That's not to suggest that the Wine team hasn't done a great job. They sure have, considering what they have to work with (the Win16 and Win32 APIs). But the past ports of software to Linux via Wine have been terrible. Kylix is one example, and the port of WordPerfect by Corel another. They were slow, buggy, and not very impressive.
Borland used Wine to port their Delphi IDE to Linux a while back. It didn't work out well, and that's part of the reason why Kylix is not longer being developed.
Typically when one says their software support Linux, it means that their program can be compiled (or at least easily ported to) the major non-x86 platforms, including PPC and SPARC.
Wine, however, is only for x86-compatible systems. Will this software from Google only run on x86 Linux systems, and not on PPC Linux and SPARC Linux, amongst other Linux ports?
For those who remember Kylix, this sounds like an awful idea. Borland basically did the same thing with their Delphi IDE when they ported it to Linux, and it turned out very poorly.
It was slow, crash-prone, and just plain messy to install. While WINE has likely improved since then, I'm still not convinced that it is suitable for use in production applications.
I did some work with a firm a while back regarding the productivity of GNOME and KDE. They had a mix of Linux and OpenBSD systems, using various versions of GNOME and some using KDE.
A quick survey found that those who used the systems running KDE found themselves to be more productive. Overall, they reported that they were happier with KDE, and found it easier to get work done. Keep in mind that these were fairly regular people, not exactly techies. They were secretaries, accountants, and some such.
The main gripe most of the people had with GNOME was that it was slow. I forget the exact percentage, but it was something in the ballpark of 85% of the workers saying they found GNOME slow, while only about 45% described KDE as such.
While it may have been a problem with how GNOME was compiled that lead to it being considered so slow, I doubt that was the case. Some of the systems used the bundled, pre-built versions of GNOME. Others I had built, with -O3 and system-specific -march flags where appropriate. It appears from our survey that many users just find GNOME to be slow.
The secretaries were split between using LaTeX, KWord, and OpenOffice. Many of those running KDE and OpenOffice reported it to feel fast, while those running GNOME and OpenOffice described it as feeling slower. They only used one version of OpenOffice there (one of the 1.x releases) for compatibility reasons, so it was speculated that the overall slowness of GNOME may have lead GNOME users to find OpenOffice slow, as well.
That's only the tip of the iceberg. In general, those users who were using GNOME felt that their computers were more of a hassle than a benefit. The KDE users, on the other hand, more often than not said outright that they liked their systems, and found them helpful.
We recently transitioned the GNOME users to KDE 3.5, and the reports I'm getting back are that many of the users are quite happy to have switched from GNOME. They report their system is faster, even when it's the same OS and same physical computer, and they've been able to get more work done in a shorter amount of time.
There's a very good chance that by the time you do manage to navigate the Firefox source code, debug the issue, apply a fix, and then rebuild and redeploy Firefox, you would have spent more time (and recall, time is money) than if you had just gone with a wholly functioning installation of Opera or Konqueror in the first place.
What I was saying is that while you can in theory extend Firefox all you want, it's just not a practical proposition.
... and then start invading other countries to expand US territory...
Whoa, boy! Where have you been since October of 2001? Ever hear of places such as Afghanistan and Iraq? Apparently not!
... while putting races of people he doesn't like into concentration camps to be exterminated.
Whoa, again! I suppose you haven't heard of Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and the other detention centres (camps, if you will) where inmates were systematically tortured and killed.
It strikes me as odd that you'll go on and on about Christians not thinking rationally, while you yourself seem to suffer from that very condition! At least you do somewhat admit that you are irrational, but you do seen unable to tell when you actually are being so (such as now).
They may be a minority, but they are a loud minority. And they are a loud minority which can incite the many in the larger majority of Christians to some extent.
When it comes down to boycotts or elections, that small minority can become awfully powerful if they have even a slight influence on the less-extreme majority.
hkmwbz is correct. You can verify that he is correct by reading over the applicable W3C standards. It is quite clear after doing so that Opera is performing correctly, while Firefox is not.
Some of the most vocal opponents of the current American regime are those who actually fought in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and other conflicts. They know the true horrors of war, and many of them know the actual smell of fascism. You can call them idiots of you want. However, I'll listen to them when they start putting out warnings.
You speak of discussing events one did not witness. Just like that man and his children may not have witnessed macroevolution, I take it you did not witness World War II. While I was young at the time, I did. I remember leaving London during the Blitz. It is hypocritical and ignorant for you to suggest that those who experienced it firsthand are incorrect when they correctly point out history repeating itself.
I would tend to agree. But we see administrators and network designers who do not understand such a basic concept, and have Windows systems directly facing the Internet. Of course, they're the ones who end up running into trouble. For an example of that you can read the story below this one, which is about a hospital's network going down because of spyware.
Nevertheless, there is no reason why Microsoft can't draw from the OpenBSD development model. It shouldn't conflict with their desire to remain compatible with existing applications, while vastly increasing the stability and security of their platform. There have been claims that Microsoft has been parkating in serious code audits, so they might be on the right track. It's still a matter of making sure that new code doesn't contain serious flaws. That may be the weak point in their development system.
I just wanted to thank you for writing that article. I know you have taken a lot of flack because of it, but I enjoyed it. It brought up serious issues that we need to consider these days.
The front page story before this one focuses on how a hospital suffered a network failure because of spyware. That just goes to show that we do need to take your points about security and the Internet very seriously.
But as that story shows, apparently those who are designing mission-critical networks aren't using software that promotes security. Why they're resorting to knowingly insecure software for such applications is questionable, especially when alternatives like Linux, OpenBSD, Solaris and Mac OS X are so prevalent (if not free).
I'm glad you're already aware of what I pointed out. You likely read one of my other posts in which I've pointed out such facts, and thus were already in the know.
Good for you! I'm happy that you might have a clue as to how to write solid, secure software. Indeed, it is true that we can all use OpenBSD as a development model to emulate. Doing so will help us write secure, quality code. And if we run it on OpenBSD, all the better!
Now if only Microsoft were to wake up to the benefits offered by a development process such as that used by OpenBSD. They are getting far better, we have to admit, but there's still a long way to go before they rival OpenBSD's level of security.
Are you truthfully denying that OpenBSD is more secure that Microsoft Windows? I would seriously hope not.
It's important to take a look at their two development models. OpenBSD puts a massive focus on security. It's paramount to them. Their coding practices are one of the main benefits, which helps to ensure that insecure code often isn't written, and that it does't enter their source tree if it is written. Not only that, but their audits help to ensure the high quality of their code. It also helps that they audit external software that is widely used, such as Apache. Overall, proper design and a good implementation process lead to secure software.
Anyone designing a networkable operating system needs to adopt a similar development process, else risk the creation of an insecure operating system.
UNIX was first implemented seriously on the PDP-11/20, which is best classed as a minicomputer. And while the system did indeed use terminals of a sort, they were dumb terminals. It's really not any different than how the keyboard, mouse and monitor are connected to your PC now.
What's being proposed in this article is a different scheme, or so I would gather. It's not so much about applications executing on a separate machine, rather than the operating system software being obtained on the fly. Of course, such ideas are hardly new, and people have been booting over networks for decades now.
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Which version of Opera do you experience this with? Having been a long-time Opera user, I cannot say that I have ever seen that sort of consumption from Opera, even with 20 or more tabs open at a time. The upper bound is typically 75 MB, starting off at 23 MB or so on start up. That is with a 50 MB cache, mind you. So it is understandable that the consumption reaches up to 75 MB, when 50 MB of that is cache.
I would hardly call that a "feature". It is not possible at this time to easily limit the amount of increased memory consumption caused by opening and using a new tab.
It as also been pointed out by many that Opera offers a very similar feature, without the excessive memory consumption of Firefox.
Finally, it is oft reported that users who leave Firefox running for any significant period of time, even with only one tab open, often encounter memory consumption above 400 MB. That would seem to indicate that there's a problem. If it's within the normal operations of the per-tab cache, then it's still a waste of memory (which other applications could better be using, for instance). Otherwise, such memory usage would appear to be caused by traditional memory leaks.
Feature-wise, you are correct. The Opera engine and Gecko both do a very good job of supporting the existing W3C standards, plus various proprietary extensions.
It has been suggested, however, that Opera's engine is better implemented than Gecko. Even without seeing Opera's source code, it is still a very plausible statement. Opera does not leak memory as much as Firefox does, for instance. That alone is an important differentiating factor between the two. Many report that Opera renders faster than Gecko, as well. Thus it would appear that while the functionality offered by both is comparable, the implementation of Gecko is inferior to that of Opera's rendering engine.
It would be interesting to see if Apple, or even a group of volunteers, would be willing to port WebCore to the Sony PSP. That would likely be the only way to achieve a comparable product, as it would seem that Firefox's memory requirements are prohibitive in such an environment.
Of course, Sony's recent actions may inhibit the support they would get for such a product from the open source development community. That is why they'd likely have to partner with another business (like Apple), or do it all themselves.
Doing something like this truly shows the versatility of Opera. They sure have come up with a fantastic products. Not only does it work perfectly on desktop systems, rivalling Firefox, Internet Explorer, Konqueror and Safari, but it is also a gem on far less powerful systems.
With all the talk about the flexibility of Firefox, I just can't imagine seeing it run on similar hardware. Enough people complain about Firefox leaking memory that it seems almost impossible for it to remotely support such devices.
Massive hand strength from playing with his cock, no doubt.
I never said that the binaries it created needed Wine. I clearly stated that it was the Delphi IDE port that used it.
But the problem with Wine is one of quality. That's not to suggest that the Wine team hasn't done a great job. They sure have, considering what they have to work with (the Win16 and Win32 APIs). But the past ports of software to Linux via Wine have been terrible. Kylix is one example, and the port of WordPerfect by Corel another. They were slow, buggy, and not very impressive.
Borland used Wine to port their Delphi IDE to Linux a while back. It didn't work out well, and that's part of the reason why Kylix is not longer being developed.
Typically when one says their software support Linux, it means that their program can be compiled (or at least easily ported to) the major non-x86 platforms, including PPC and SPARC.
Wine, however, is only for x86-compatible systems. Will this software from Google only run on x86 Linux systems, and not on PPC Linux and SPARC Linux, amongst other Linux ports?
For those who remember Kylix, this sounds like an awful idea. Borland basically did the same thing with their Delphi IDE when they ported it to Linux, and it turned out very poorly.
It was slow, crash-prone, and just plain messy to install. While WINE has likely improved since then, I'm still not convinced that it is suitable for use in production applications.
I did some work with a firm a while back regarding the productivity of GNOME and KDE. They had a mix of Linux and OpenBSD systems, using various versions of GNOME and some using KDE.
A quick survey found that those who used the systems running KDE found themselves to be more productive. Overall, they reported that they were happier with KDE, and found it easier to get work done. Keep in mind that these were fairly regular people, not exactly techies. They were secretaries, accountants, and some such.
The main gripe most of the people had with GNOME was that it was slow. I forget the exact percentage, but it was something in the ballpark of 85% of the workers saying they found GNOME slow, while only about 45% described KDE as such.
While it may have been a problem with how GNOME was compiled that lead to it being considered so slow, I doubt that was the case. Some of the systems used the bundled, pre-built versions of GNOME. Others I had built, with -O3 and system-specific -march flags where appropriate. It appears from our survey that many users just find GNOME to be slow.
The secretaries were split between using LaTeX, KWord, and OpenOffice. Many of those running KDE and OpenOffice reported it to feel fast, while those running GNOME and OpenOffice described it as feeling slower. They only used one version of OpenOffice there (one of the 1.x releases) for compatibility reasons, so it was speculated that the overall slowness of GNOME may have lead GNOME users to find OpenOffice slow, as well.
That's only the tip of the iceberg. In general, those users who were using GNOME felt that their computers were more of a hassle than a benefit. The KDE users, on the other hand, more often than not said outright that they liked their systems, and found them helpful.
We recently transitioned the GNOME users to KDE 3.5, and the reports I'm getting back are that many of the users are quite happy to have switched from GNOME. They report their system is faster, even when it's the same OS and same physical computer, and they've been able to get more work done in a shorter amount of time.
Can a man live inside of a fish for three days? Was Eve fashioned out of Adam's rib?
Those sound like the kinds of questions that Adam and Jamie, the Mythbusters, need to be called in to answer!
Are you laughing at my impotent penis? Well, I do have to admit that it is a funny sight! It makes me chuckle at times, too.
There's a very good chance that by the time you do manage to navigate the Firefox source code, debug the issue, apply a fix, and then rebuild and redeploy Firefox, you would have spent more time (and recall, time is money) than if you had just gone with a wholly functioning installation of Opera or Konqueror in the first place.
What I was saying is that while you can in theory extend Firefox all you want, it's just not a practical proposition.
... and then start invading other countries to expand US territory ...
... while putting races of people he doesn't like into concentration camps to be exterminated.
Whoa, boy! Where have you been since October of 2001? Ever hear of places such as Afghanistan and Iraq? Apparently not!
Whoa, again! I suppose you haven't heard of Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and the other detention centres (camps, if you will) where inmates were systematically tortured and killed.
It strikes me as odd that you'll go on and on about Christians not thinking rationally, while you yourself seem to suffer from that very condition! At least you do somewhat admit that you are irrational, but you do seen unable to tell when you actually are being so (such as now).
They may be a minority, but they are a loud minority. And they are a loud minority which can incite the many in the larger majority of Christians to some extent.
When it comes down to boycotts or elections, that small minority can become awfully powerful if they have even a slight influence on the less-extreme majority.
hkmwbz is correct. You can verify that he is correct by reading over the applicable W3C standards. It is quite clear after doing so that Opera is performing correctly, while Firefox is not.
It's pointless to reason with fundies. Laugh at them instead. Nothing infuriates them more than not being taken seriously.
Some of the most vocal opponents of the current American regime are those who actually fought in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and other conflicts. They know the true horrors of war, and many of them know the actual smell of fascism. You can call them idiots of you want. However, I'll listen to them when they start putting out warnings.
You speak of discussing events one did not witness. Just like that man and his children may not have witnessed macroevolution, I take it you did not witness World War II. While I was young at the time, I did. I remember leaving London during the Blitz. It is hypocritical and ignorant for you to suggest that those who experienced it firsthand are incorrect when they correctly point out history repeating itself.
I would tend to agree. But we see administrators and network designers who do not understand such a basic concept, and have Windows systems directly facing the Internet. Of course, they're the ones who end up running into trouble. For an example of that you can read the story below this one, which is about a hospital's network going down because of spyware.
Nevertheless, there is no reason why Microsoft can't draw from the OpenBSD development model. It shouldn't conflict with their desire to remain compatible with existing applications, while vastly increasing the stability and security of their platform. There have been claims that Microsoft has been parkating in serious code audits, so they might be on the right track. It's still a matter of making sure that new code doesn't contain serious flaws. That may be the weak point in their development system.
I just wanted to thank you for writing that article. I know you have taken a lot of flack because of it, but I enjoyed it. It brought up serious issues that we need to consider these days.
The front page story before this one focuses on how a hospital suffered a network failure because of spyware. That just goes to show that we do need to take your points about security and the Internet very seriously.
But as that story shows, apparently those who are designing mission-critical networks aren't using software that promotes security. Why they're resorting to knowingly insecure software for such applications is questionable, especially when alternatives like Linux, OpenBSD, Solaris and Mac OS X are so prevalent (if not free).
I'm glad you're already aware of what I pointed out. You likely read one of my other posts in which I've pointed out such facts, and thus were already in the know.
Good for you! I'm happy that you might have a clue as to how to write solid, secure software. Indeed, it is true that we can all use OpenBSD as a development model to emulate. Doing so will help us write secure, quality code. And if we run it on OpenBSD, all the better!
Now if only Microsoft were to wake up to the benefits offered by a development process such as that used by OpenBSD. They are getting far better, we have to admit, but there's still a long way to go before they rival OpenBSD's level of security.
Are you truthfully denying that OpenBSD is more secure that Microsoft Windows? I would seriously hope not.
It's important to take a look at their two development models. OpenBSD puts a massive focus on security. It's paramount to them. Their coding practices are one of the main benefits, which helps to ensure that insecure code often isn't written, and that it does't enter their source tree if it is written. Not only that, but their audits help to ensure the high quality of their code. It also helps that they audit external software that is widely used, such as Apache. Overall, proper design and a good implementation process lead to secure software.
Anyone designing a networkable operating system needs to adopt a similar development process, else risk the creation of an insecure operating system.
UNIX was first implemented seriously on the PDP-11/20, which is best classed as a minicomputer. And while the system did indeed use terminals of a sort, they were dumb terminals. It's really not any different than how the keyboard, mouse and monitor are connected to your PC now.
What's being proposed in this article is a different scheme, or so I would gather. It's not so much about applications executing on a separate machine, rather than the operating system software being obtained on the fly. Of course, such ideas are hardly new, and people have been booting over networks for decades now.