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196 Comments
- MagicHobo, on 02/13/2009, -9/+170Is Wine THAT well coded?
- megamod, on 02/13/2009, -9/+157You're doing it wrong...
Is Firefox for linux THAT poorly coded? - AngelBunny, on 02/13/2009, -3/+69both firefox and vlc have always been noticeably better on windows in both performance and bugs.
- sirhomer, on 02/13/2009, -3/+64This might explain why this is so (this was pointed in the comments of a previous test):
http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2008/02/firefox-3-ultim ...
Starting today, Firefox nightly Windows builds have the benefit of profile guided optimization (PGO). With PGO, after Firefox is compiled (written code is made ready for the computer as binary code), the just generated binary is ran while another application monitors how it behaves and creates a profile of what parts of Firefox are more used and in what order. Then the code is compiled again but this time guided by the produced profile generating a new optimized build.
The comment also pointed out that Firefox 3.1 / Linux build may be getting this optimization. - inactive, on 02/14/2009, -2/+50I never thought alcohol would make the internet go faster.
- trogdoor, on 02/14/2009, -1/+48How does that make sense when most of the javascript tests weren't graphical and firefox running in wine did better than the native linux binary?
- SpookyET, on 02/14/2009, -4/+47I buried it as inaccurate. I've built abnormally fast versions of Firefox for Arch Linux. Before I abandoned the distribution, the package was called firefox-spookyet. It was the most popular unofficial version of Firefox for that distribution.
The reason why the Windows version is so fast is because it has Profile Guided Optimisations enabled. I have asked the Ubuntu packagers to enable it and told them how to do it ( https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Building_with_Pro ... ) almost a year ago. I was turned down.
No sane person would use the Mozilla-compiled version of Firefox for Linux because it comes without the font anti-aliasing (ClearType) patches and text rendering looks like crap even if it had PGO enabled. They can't include the patched library (cairo) because of patents, and since it's statically built, it ignores system cairo. On Ubuntu, the cairo library is patched to render fonts properly on LCDs. But, on Ubuntu, Firefox is even slower. They use pango instead of cairo. At least they did when I last looked at it.
So, in short, there isn't anything wrong with Firefox that makes it slow on Linux. It's just not built properly, and packagers do not seem to care for one reason or another. There should be optimised packages for all distributions in third-party repositories. - bean48009, on 02/13/2009, -4/+44I am actually surprised about that. I would figure the fedora core would be way faster with a Linux app over a compiled Windows app...
- directedition, on 02/14/2009, -0/+27That makes no sense. It's not like WINE uses a Windows video driver. They both have to work with the same linux driver.
- deviantsteve, on 02/14/2009, -4/+30WINE Is Not an Emulator.
- sirmasterboy, on 02/14/2009, -4/+27WINE is native... That's the point of it.
- yocouchdigga, on 02/13/2009, -5/+27... really, IE?
XD - U83RMENSCH, on 02/14/2009, -2/+24sadly I have noticed that firefox in linux is significantly slower.. not in download speed but mostly in scrolling speed..
- Onestone, on 02/14/2009, -1/+23F-spot uses Mono, so that's expected.
- inactive, on 02/13/2009, -5/+27Pretty embarrassing but then you also have to take into account how Google Picasa for Linux (which uses Wine) is so much faster than F-spot.
- inactive, on 02/14/2009, -4/+25troll
- KloroFormd, on 02/14/2009, -0/+20Flash 10?
I haven't had any problems with crashing and Flash 10. - Renton, on 02/14/2009, -1/+19Flash in Linux sucks, especially for us 64 bit users. I don't have that much hope for Silverlight either since it's owned by Microsoft :(
- GawtMilk, on 02/14/2009, -0/+18Well than what does that second WINE stand for, deviantsteve? Or the third? Or the fou--BUFFER OVERFLOW
- Onestone, on 02/14/2009, -5/+23GCC is an awesome compiler, but it still generates slower code than MSVC and (especially) Intel Compiler in some cases.
- DyceFreak, on 02/14/2009, -3/+21no I think its the windows firefox vs the linux firefox coding... obviously... wine just runs it close to what it should run at on windows.
- RX8SaxMan, on 02/14/2009, -0/+18You just explained why it might run faster in Wine vs. Windows Native, but not Wine vs. Linux Native, which is what the article is about.
- rolosworld, on 02/14/2009, -2/+19I suppose they ran wine on windows then?
- Onestone, on 02/14/2009, -1/+17Like Arora, Midori, Epiphany-Webkit, or the latest Konqueror?
- netneutrality, on 02/14/2009, -3/+19This isn't blinking rocket science guys. It's exactly the same thing that makes SETI@home faster on Windows. Firefox builds on Windows are compiled with Microsoft Visual C++. Linux Firefox builds are compiled with GCC.
As irritating as this fact is, Microsoft's compiler is greatly superior and produces better quality machine code. That's all it is. (Intel's compiler still trumps them both, though.) - stoanhart, on 02/14/2009, -0/+16The whole interface is written in XUL, which is executed by... Javascript!
- Onestone, on 02/13/2009, -0/+15This might be true. Firefox 3.1 beta feels much faster for me than 3.0 under Linux. Not just the JavaScript TraceMonkey JIT, but the whole interface.
- AirRaven, on 02/14/2009, -2/+16Konqueror!
The original Webkit browser! - Exiler86, on 02/14/2009, -0/+13Comparing a language pre-compiled to bytecode (with compile-time optimizations as well) to languages that are interpreted / JIT compiled is a bit ridiculous.
- KibibyteBrain, on 02/14/2009, -0/+12It might also have something to do with how they are linking to and how optimized the toolkits used are, namely those used for things like the GUI or the rendering engine. If they are using hacks and optimizations on Windows but less for Linux, that would explain it too.
- JigoroKano, on 02/14/2009, -1/+12If you get kernel panics with flash, then you must have either a bad kernel or perhaps a horrible kernel module for your video card.
Flash shouldn't have the capability to cause kernel panics. I won't say that you are lying though. - FyberOptic, on 02/14/2009, -4/+15Why do you people digg down truthful comments like this fellow's? It's really doesn't say much about the open-source movement when they're unwilling to accept criticism and then fix problems, and instead try to sweep them under the rug and keep telling everyone Linux is still fastest and best.
- KibibyteBrain, on 02/14/2009, -0/+10GTK+ is no more "native" to Linux than any other OS it works on. In fact, this is one of the advantages of developing for qt/GTK/wx. However, it is true that the packages may be better optimized for different platforms.
- KibibyteBrain, on 02/14/2009, -3/+12Or poorly compiled. What build are they using, a distro supplied one? Poor choice of compiler options can destroy even good code, and tends to make shady code worse than ever. I remember reading a new story a few years back that some game was made to run 3 times faster when the source code was leaked and some geeks took the time to compile it with optimal settings.
- sirhomer, on 02/14/2009, -0/+9When I want a lot of people to read a specific thing I post (usually when I am trying to correct what I think is a common misconception about something), I often don't use reply intentionally because I find that people tend to ignore nested comments.
- cannonball, on 02/14/2009, -1/+10i'm a little skeptical about these tests because i think opera is MUCH faster than firefox when handling javascript.
what exactly is that bar graph showing? what is the y-axis exactly? - qwisp, on 02/13/2009, -3/+12addons.
- basotl, on 02/14/2009, -1/+9The page doesn't effect my browser at all either.
Firefox 3 & Ubuntu 8.10
I'm not sure if any of my settings may be helping in this area. - Onestone, on 02/14/2009, -0/+8Yeah, but TraceMonkey by default is enabled only for the content, not chrome (XUL). And still it feels faster than 3.0.
- trollick, on 02/13/2009, -5/+13Oh, the irony.
- feistybird, on 02/14/2009, -0/+8Recommended Firefox Deratives with PGO build:
- Swiftweasel : http://swiftweasel.tuxfamily.org/
- Swiftfox: http://getswiftfox.com/
Both of them are very popular optimized firefox builds, but I prefer to use Swiftweasel than Swiftfox. - sirhomer, on 02/14/2009, -4/+12@FyberOptic
I don't know where you are getting your info from but it's certainly not from this article. Interestingly enough, Wine also runs on top of X and it still magically runs faster.
I think MIT's X architecture is the most well thought out windowing system ever created. The network transparency means I can run applications remotely as if they were running on my own system. There is really some amazing things you can do this, like full thin clients or partial thin clients with rich applications being served in from a remote application server. You can even do this via SSH with encryption very easily. Citrix can do something similar, but not as well as Xorg can at this point (and far more expensive). - KloroFormd, on 02/14/2009, -0/+8Flash 10 x64 works fine for me.
- moofree, on 02/14/2009, -0/+7Probably something to do with lubricating Ted Stevens and his dream of a tubular internet.
- basotl, on 02/14/2009, -1/+8On my media server Hulu works fine
Machine specs:
AMD Semperon 2GHZ
512 of RAM
Ubuntu 8.04
Firefox w/ Flash 10 - FairDinkumMate, on 02/14/2009, -1/+8I am a Linux user & am curious to say the least about these results because Linux generally performs significantly faster for me than my current(& previous) Windows installs.
But in regard to your comment - This may or may not be true. Do you have ANY references or evidence? - jellygraph, on 02/14/2009, -3/+10apples and oranges, much?
- inactive, on 02/14/2009, -2/+9I'm a bit worried about Firefox in general.
It started as a lean browser, and over time and popularity it is growing into this massive, slow browser. And on Mac OS X, Firefox 3 crashes all the time from various javascript bugs. Or worse, I'll be browsing and then javascript starts acting up and certain sites stop functioning correctly. - inactive, on 02/14/2009, -0/+7Firefox is not a GTK app last i checked. The default Firefox theme is pretty much a hack that grabs icons and colors and such from your theme.
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