From Newsgroup: comp.unix.programmer

Hello!

Sorry for the off-topic, but I have to let others
know...

I have been running Firefox as my browser, always.
Today I finally got tired of it being painfully
slow on some sites that I regularly visit.

I tried Chromium and it is so much faster!

Here are the versions that I used

~ $ rpm -qi firefox
Name : firefox
Version : 149.0
Release : 4.fc43
Architecture: x86_64

Name : chromium
Version : 146.0.7680.177
Release : 1.fc43
Architecture: x86_64

br,
KK
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From Newsgroup: comp.unix.programmer

On Tue, 4/14/2026 3:55 PM, Kalevi Kolttonen wrote:

Hello!

Sorry for the off-topic, but I have to let others
know...

I have been running Firefox as my browser, always.
Today I finally got tired of it being painfully
slow on some sites that I regularly visit.

I tried Chromium and it is so much faster!

Here are the versions that I used

~ $ rpm -qi firefox
Name : firefox
Version : 149.0
Release : 4.fc43
Architecture: x86_64

Name : chromium
Version : 146.0.7680.177
Release : 1.fc43
Architecture: x86_64

br,
KK

https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/work-life/i-speed-tested-11-browsers-and-the-fastest-might-surprise-you/

"Start times [lower is better]

Chromium: 1.95 seconds \
Firefox: 1.93 seconds \___ Tests like this need a *lot* of attention to details
Chrome: 0.70 seconds / Clean OS, reboot before test run, and so on.

Speedometer 3.0 results [higher is better]

Firefox: 25.0
Chromium: 30.7
Chrome: 31.5
"

"The margins between the winners and losers here are fairly small. <===
The only reason you might switch to the fastest all-around browser (Chrome)
is if you regularly visit websites that demand speed in ways that require
switching browsers. Or maybe you're a power user who simply wants to ensure
you're using the absolute fastest browser on the market. In that case,
the choice is easyrCa Chrome. "

And that tells you, there is likely some configuration problem which could
be improved upon. Just an auto-proxy versus no-proxy setting could
do it. Go through the Preferences and make sure they're set the best
way possible. Then the difference between them will be smaller.

The cache on browsers, can be set to disk or set to memory. See
if both browsers are configured the same way. I like memory caching,
just to reduce wear on the SSD. If your cache2 has never been cleaned
and you set the cache size too large inadvertently, that can cause
a big problem. My brother phoned me once about browser speed, and
we decided the root cause was the humongous cache setting he was using.
There might have been something like 300,000 files in the cache at the time, cached to a hard drive.

Paul
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From Newsgroup: comp.unix.programmer

On Tue, 14 Apr 2026 20:10:56 -0400, Paul wrote:

My brother phoned me once about browser speed, and we decided the
root cause was the humongous cache setting he was using. There might
have been something like 300,000 files in the cache at the time,
cached to a hard drive.

Caches are supposed to speed things up, not slow them down.
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From Newsgroup: comp.unix.programmer

On 2026-04-15, Paul wrote:

On Tue, 4/14/2026 3:55 PM, Kalevi Kolttonen wrote:

Hello!

Sorry for the off-topic, but I have to let others
know...

I have been running Firefox as my browser, always.
Today I finally got tired of it being painfully
slow on some sites that I regularly visit.

I tried Chromium and it is so much faster!

Here are the versions that I used

~ $ rpm -qi firefox
Name : firefox
Version : 149.0
Release : 4.fc43
Architecture: x86_64

Name : chromium
Version : 146.0.7680.177
Release : 1.fc43
Architecture: x86_64

br,
KK

https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/work-life/i-speed-tested-11-browsers-and-the-fastest-might-surprise-you/

[ After writing the reply below I opened the article, and it is by Jack
Wallen, a byname that has previously written not-so-great articles on
ZDnet and who also engages in content recycling. ]

see e.g. (from comp.os.linux.misc)
Message-ID: <10eglkf$nnrr$1@dont-email.me>
Message-ID: <10k9aif$btvl$2@dont-email.me>
Message-ID: <vshpm2$6sd5$2@dont-email.me>
Message-ID: <107j83e$5993$3@dont-email.me>


It's possible the article is actually good, but I hope my suspicions
here are understandable...

"Start times [lower is better]

Chromium: 1.95 seconds \
Firefox: 1.93 seconds \___ Tests like this need a *lot* of attention to details
Chrome: 0.70 seconds / Clean OS, reboot before test run, and so on.

And start times arguably don't matter much, as far as they're in an
acceptable ballpark. Also, could this difference be e.g. the result of
the approaches used in compilation and linking?

Speedometer 3.0 results [higher is better]

Firefox: 25.0
Chromium: 30.7
Chrome: 31.5
"

"The margins between the winners and losers here are fairly
small. <===

I'm more concerned about the difference between Chromium and Chrome. Is
it really significant, or is this highlighting the marging of error?

The only reason you might switch to the fastest all-around
browser (Chrome)

(Hey, I take offense to "fastest all-around browser", surely lynx and
elinks might be much faster, especially if ignoring CSS and so on!)

is if you regularly visit websites that demand speed in ways that require
switching browsers. Or maybe you're a power user who simply wants to ensure
you're using the absolute fastest browser on the market. In that case,
the choice is easyrCa Chrome. "

And that tells you, there is likely some configuration problem which could
be improved upon. Just an auto-proxy versus no-proxy setting could
do it. Go through the Preferences and make sure they're set the best
way possible. Then the difference between them will be smaller.

The cache on browsers, can be set to disk or set to memory. See
if both browsers are configured the same way. I like memory caching,
just to reduce wear on the SSD. If your cache2 has never been cleaned
and you set the cache size too large inadvertently, that can cause
a big problem. My brother phoned me once about browser speed, and
we decided the root cause was the humongous cache setting he was using.
There might have been something like 300,000 files in the cache at the time, cached to a hard drive.

At one point several years ago, I disabled on-disk cache. The problem
was that, besides its usefulness being questionable for most of my
browsing, it IIRC caused a problem where Firefox (at least I think when
this happened I was on Firefox) would become painfully slow after
resuming from hibernation, because of the on-disk cache.
--
Nuno Silva
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From Newsgroup: comp.unix.programmer

Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

And that tells you, there is likely some configuration problem which could
be improved upon. Just an auto-proxy versus no-proxy setting could
do it. Go through the Preferences and make sure they're set the best
way possible. Then the difference between them will be smaller.

Using the newest Firefox on Fedora 43, the site I use is sluggish
as hell. When I type text, it takes 10-20 seconds for the first
letters to appear. Using Chromium, everything is almpost
instantaneous.

The difference is just staggering. Never going back to FF anymore.

br,
KK
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.unix.programmer

On 14.04.2026 19:55 Uhr Kalevi Kolttonen wrote:

Sorry for the off-topic, but I have to let others
know...

Is there any issue posting in comp.os.linux.misc?
--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1776189326muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

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From Newsgroup: comp.unix.programmer

Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

On 14.04.2026 19:55 Uhr Kalevi Kolttonen wrote:

Sorry for the off-topic, but I have to let others
know...

Is there any issue posting in comp.os.linux.misc?

I do not think so, but I was unaware of that group.

br,
KK
--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2