firefox-3.0 on Jaunty uses a lot more memory than firefox-3.5 on XP

[Stuart Gillies]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

Firefox 3.0.14 under Ubuntu 9.04 uses 794.6 MB for a set of 6 tabs. The exact same six tabs under Firefox 3.5.3 under XP SP3 uses 172.6 MB. Both systems are fully up to date. I can see why there might be a difference, but not one of 4.6 times!

Doing something with this much ram must be a drain on the system performance one way or another! Perhaps some of this ram could be released for other uses?

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0.14+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.04.1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-15-generic i686

[Stuart Gillies (gillies)]

The Extensions are different on each installation:

Both have DownThemAll

XP has Microsoft .net; Java Quickstarter, AVG safe search and Adobe DLM

Ubuntu has the Met Office and the Ubuntu extensions

I doubt that these differences could account for 622MB

[Stuart Gillies (gillies)]

I noticed that the memory size as reported by system monitor had increased to 827.5 MB, the only change being the bug reporting tab. So I closed all tabs except this bug reporting page and the memory usage reduced to 816.0 MB (a net increase of over 20MB). I did the same on XP and the memory reduced to 126,728MB (varying slightly) (a reduction of over 50MB).

[Stuart Gillies (gillies)]

I then closed and reopened firefox on both systems, and opened the six original tabs plus this debug page. Memory usage is now 171.9 MB, much closer to the XP figure which is now 142MB after reopening.

[Nicolas Joyard (joyard-nicolas)]

Thanks for your report.

Memory usage was one of the big issues with Firefox 3.0, and as you probably noticed, Firefox 3.5 is a lot better at it. I encourage you to compare what is comparable, and either check memory usage with Firefox 3.0 in Windows, or with Firefox 3.5 in Ubuntu. You can use Ubuntuzilla (http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ubuntuzilla/index.php?title=Main_Page) to install it, or find a PPA repository to install it manually.

As Firefox 3.5 will be installed by default with Karmic Koala, I don't think this issue is likely to be addressed. If I were you, I'd close this bug (if of course you are satisfied with Firefox 3.5 memory usage), but I won't take the decision for you.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Thank you for reporting this to Ubuntu. Could you please install Firefox 3.5 on Jaunty and compare apples to apples? Please let us know what you find. There were many improvements in Firefox 3.5

[Stuart Gillies (gillies)]

I was comparing the latest release on Ubuntu 9.04 with the latest release on XP. I am a user, not a developer, and I stay away from unreleased code normally. I did not realise that your release numbering was the same on different platforms.

F-3.0 on Ubuntu had increased its memory usage overnight to 1.6GB with half a dozen tabs open and no user activity. Except it had forced my system into constant virtual memory paging.

I have now installed the prerelease 3.5 for Ubuntu. My first reaction is that memory allocation is dynamic i.e. I see it going down as well as up, which I did not see before.

- after leaving it running for 10 hours the memory usage is now 219.6MB, comparable with the XP usage.

It would appear that the problem is solved in this version, which I assume will be pushed to all users as an update at the appropriate time.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Firefox 3.5 in Jaunty is the release version if you update your
packages. It is still called Shiretoko, but it is the release version.

Stuart Gillies wrote:
> I was comparing the latest release on Ubuntu 9.04 with the latest
> release on XP. I am a user, not a developer, and I stay away from
> unreleased code normally. I did not realise that your release
> numbering was the same on different platforms.
>
> F-3.0 on Ubuntu had increased its memory usage overnight to 1.6GB
> with half a dozen tabs open and no user activity. Except it had
> forced my system into constant virtual memory paging.
>
> I have now installed the prerelease 3.5 for Ubuntu. My first
> reaction is that memory allocation is dynamic i.e. I see it going
> down as well as up, which I did not see before.
>
> - after leaving it running for 10 hours the memory usage is now
> 219.6MB, comparable with the XP usage.
>
> It would appear that the problem is solved in this version, which I
> assume will be pushed to all users as an update at the appropriate
> time.
>
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[Alexander Sack (asac)]

thats clearly and invalid comparison. if you want to compare, compre 3.5 vs. 3.5 ;) ... but even then its not a specific bug anyone can deal with :).