Mastodawn

#Firefox just keeps getting worse.

I don't know exactly which version this started with, but for the last few months Firefox has been a #CPU hog for me. Even when not interacting with any browser windows, the CPU usage of various processes - the main firefox #process, the content-sandboxing #processes, the WebExtension processes - will be taking significant CPU in bursts. There's frequently an Isolate... process using ~100%, and the main process will sit at 90% for a while before jumping to 160%.

It's significant enough that it makes actually using the #browser #annoying. Pauses for one or two seconds while typing or scrolling as it does ... whatever it's doing while chewing CPU, and these happen every few seconds. Like 3 or 4 times for each line I'm typing in this window right now.

There's nothing obvious to account for this workload. There are no videos playing, or animations, or sound. There are no continuously-updating pages or web apps running. I have uBlock Origin (adblocker) and Privacy Badger running, which significantly reduces the amount of work the browser does because there's no ad scripts to screw around in the background. The only thing I'm actively doing in Firefox at the moment is typing this toot. And yet still it pauses constantly.

1/2

#CPUHog #hog #slow #jerky #pause #Mozilla #NobodyWants

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C.22h ago

Firefox has long been the most resource-efficient browser I've seen. I can have a ton of tabs open in multiple windows (on Linux) and it used to only get the main process to a few gigabytes of address space and a gig or less resident in memory. When not actively using it, CPU usage was moderate, with the main process using between nothing and 20 or 30%. It was fast and responsive.

And now, it's jerky as hell.

The main process has allocated 16 GB and the resident size is varying between 2 and 3 GB. It'll go down, and then suddenly another 300-500 MB of memory is resident, while the browser is doing basically nothing. CPU varies from 25 to 150+%.

Killing off some of the sandbox processes, the ones that are taking 100+% CPU, helps a little, for a bit, but it keeps getting worse.

We all knew they were dropping their focus on the important stuff by focusing on "AI" bullshit, and this is the result. It'll end up driving me to Vivaldi [1] if it doesn't improve.

[1] Or servo, if it becomes a usable daily driver.

2/2

#AI #LLM #GenAI #bullshit #LostThePlot #MBA #ChaseTheRainbow #LineGoesUp #CSuite

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solo 21h ago

@cazabon vivaldi is chromium based, which is worse

I find chromium caches background tabs so aggressively so it ends up using up so much more memory

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@solonovamax

I'm aware. But at this point, all mainstream browsers other than Firefox are Chromium/Blink/WebKit-based. If you have to pick the best of a bad lot, Vivaldi ticks a lot of the boxes.

I've used it for years as my backup "This stupid site doesn't work in Firefox" browser.