this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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It's interesting how we all are focusing on tiny non-noticeable performance gains when privacy is what matters in browsers.
Almost as if Google wants us to focus on performance where they can compete.
Performance absolutely matters. I've dropped firefox like 5 times in the past 10 years because either it's stability with extensions was bad, or it handled tabs so poorly it felt like memory leaks dragging my entire PC down. At the end of the day you have to actually be able to use the browser.
Performance absolutely matters.
And I am trying firefox again and have experienced two crashes. i'm still giving it a chance but I need to stress that the most important thing is that it fulfills it's main purpose, browsing . If my #1 concern was privacy I wouldn't bother with the browsers altogether.
edit: It is worth mentioning I don't think performance has anything to do with privacy, and firefox could absolutely have both. It just hasn't in my experience.
Imagine giving away a nice browser for a 10% performance increase but now your new browser forces you to watch their ads or it won't load the pages you need to visit.
all the time you saved using "performant Browser" in the past couple of years, the mere minutes or hours, will be overshadowed by a single year of forcefully watching ads on every single website there is.
It's not 10%. If you actually read the things I said you should realize it's not 10%. I'm dealing with crashes and that's still not making me immediately switch back.
The first time I switched (this was years ago) was because firefox was taking closer to 50-80% of memory and making my other software unusable. This was many years back when 32-bit applications were still a thing, but that's more meant to be an example of the kind of instability that i've dealt with in the past. Looking back I think it was a memory leak regarding extensions. It's since been fixed i'm almost certain.
I don't stop using firefox when it makes me drop 2 FPS. I drop it when it makes it impossible to actually do the things I need the browser to do, or it prevents me from doing everything else. And i'm screaming for them to care about performance because I want them to make it better, not just so I have no reason to move, but so that any others who have switched for similar reasons either don't go or come back to firefox.
There is absolutely no reason to make people feel complacent and say that the people are the problem. Firefox can and should improve, and shouldn't have to survive purely on it's principles. Please. Care more about performance.
it's very frustrating to act like what you've dealt with is something far less significant than what actually happened....
edit: just to make sure I wasn't crazy, I did check the windows logs and found there was an application hang from firefox for me around 1 week ago.