Comment 5 for bug 1908082

Sorry this is a bit late, but here once again are the speedometer benchmarks. This time I made sure to include the package version.

I used a different computer than my first test but the conclusion is still the same: Firefox deb is beaten by alternative packages of firefox (in this case snap).

Speedometer score (https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/):
Tested on Ubuntu 20.04.2 (ISO: ubuntu-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.iso)

Firefox Snap:
Score: 36.6±2.0
Package: 86.0-3

Firefox Deb:
Score: 28.89±0.18
Package: 86.0+build3-0ubuntu0.20.04.1

For further research it may be useful to benchmark firefox deb vs firefox snap/flatpak in various tests, similarly to how phoronix compares chrome and firefox on linux (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Chrome-89-Firefox-86).

However, even though the speedometer score is evidently lower on the deb that doesn't mean it is necessarily an real-world issue. As noted by google when they retired octane as a recommended benchmark (tests javascript), web benchmarks can be misleading and can poorly represent real-world performance (https://v8.dev/blog/retiring-octane). The lower score on firefox deb may not correlated with a perceiveable performance difference.

My opinion is that a fix for this issue is not worth putting considerable time into if we cannot demonstrate clear real-world performance deficiencies in firefox deb.