Comments on: Fast as my browser http://mozillalinks.org/2009/06/fast-as-my-browser/ Your source for Mozilla news, tips, reviews, and more. Sat, 24 Mar 2012 19:31:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: James http://mozillalinks.org/2009/06/fast-as-my-browser/comment-page-1/#comment-71522 James Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:16:54 +0000 http://mozillalinks.org/wp/?p=3255#comment-71522 According to my SunSpider tests on a Windows XP machine, Firefox 3.5 beta 4 is about 2.4 times as fast as Firefox 3.0.x (x is 10 or 11) , and the result is pretty stable from test to test. Yesterday I did another bunch of SunSpider tests on another machine, which dual-boots Windows XP and Fedora 11 (two OS's on same hardware). Firefox 3.0.11 runs on Windows XP and Firefox 3.5 beta 4 runs on Fedora 11. Surprisingly, beta 4 is about 50% to 100% slower in Linux (Fedora 11) than the 3.0.11 in XP, and the Linux result is quite unstable from test to test, with most of the results fall in the range of "50% to 100% slower" and some slower than 100%, although I had tried to make sure the only app running in Linux is Firefox. A Google search told me that this was not a new discovery. Firefox in Linux has been notoriously slow for quite a while and, what's more, it seems nobody is sure about the true cause. The closest I can come up is a performance issue on Linux kernel fsync() call, which is kind of fixed in kernel 2.6.30 (Fedora 11 uses kernel 2.6.29). But I don't know if SunSpider script will cause disk I/O in Linux (and thus can perhaps touch fsync()). Even if it does, it might not account for 100% of the Firefox slowness... According to my SunSpider tests on a Windows XP machine, Firefox 3.5 beta 4 is about 2.4 times as fast as Firefox 3.0.x (x is 10 or 11) , and the result is pretty stable from test to test. Yesterday I did another bunch of SunSpider tests on another machine, which dual-boots Windows XP and Fedora 11 (two OS’s on same hardware). Firefox 3.0.11 runs on Windows XP and Firefox 3.5 beta 4 runs on Fedora 11. Surprisingly, beta 4 is about 50% to 100% slower in Linux (Fedora 11) than the 3.0.11 in XP, and the Linux result is quite unstable from test to test, with most of the results fall in the range of “50% to 100% slower” and some slower than 100%, although I had tried to make sure the only app running in Linux is Firefox.

A Google search told me that this was not a new discovery. Firefox in Linux has been notoriously slow for quite a while and, what’s more, it seems nobody is sure about the true cause. The closest I can come up is a performance issue on Linux kernel fsync() call, which is kind of fixed in kernel 2.6.30 (Fedora 11 uses kernel 2.6.29). But I don’t know if SunSpider script will cause disk I/O in Linux (and thus can perhaps touch fsync()). Even if it does, it might not account for 100% of the Firefox slowness…

]]> By: Niels R. http://mozillalinks.org/2009/06/fast-as-my-browser/comment-page-1/#comment-71254 Niels R. Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:49:08 +0000 http://mozillalinks.org/wp/?p=3255#comment-71254 Does this mean that Firefox 3.5 will be loading faster on both Windows and Linux when you start it the first time? Or are you only talking about rendering times? Does this mean that Firefox 3.5 will be loading faster on both Windows and Linux when you start it the first time?

Or are you only talking about rendering times?

]]>