From Newsgroup: comp.misc
On 2026-01-13, Computer Nerd Kev <
not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
I start Firefox, and before any web pages are opened it's already using
almost 700 Mb of memory. That's nearly three times the size of my first
hard disk.
I get around 300MB on Linux with Firefox 140ESR opened to my
default blank tab, but I've turned off lots of features I don't
want. It's still stupid when Dillo and Links start to a blank
page using just 4MB.
In about:performance everything there adds up to 261MB which is
34MB less than used RAM reported by "free" after subtracting RAM
still shown used after Firefox is closed (the computer isn't doing
much else). That computer has 2GB RAM total and it works for my
usage (I don't watch videos in Firefox, that's what video player
programs are for).
There's a comparison of memory use and other performance metrics
between versions here (text in the SVG graphs doesn't display in
Dillo unfortunately):
https://www.phoronix.com/review/firefox-benchmarks-120-141
What on Earth is it doing?
Maybe caching history data in RAM from the SQLite databases in your
profile? It also makes connections to Mozilla servers at start-up,
some with undisclosed purpose.
How did we get here?
I wish we didn't, and whenever I have half a chance to avoid it, I
don't. I use Dillo instead.
In my machine Otter browser uses about ~300MB on start *but*
it uses far less resources than Firefox. It's an n270 CPU based
netbook with 1GB of RAM (~1.5 with ZRAM). And I use dillo too
from a GIT build and the speed it's like a light photon.
On videos, I just use mpv+streamlink or mpv+yt-dlp, from 480p
tp 720p@30FPS. No slowdowns, ever.
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