Chromium vs Firefox : Need testimonies

[PCMan]

On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 1:53 AM, Julien Lavergne <gilir at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In order to have more feedbacks before deciding to switch to Firefox,
> or to keep Chromium by default, I would like to ask you some
> testimonies and any feedbacks about the use of the 2 browsers. We need
> to evaluate the use of the 2 browsers *on old and not-so-fast
> hardware*. It's important because our main targets are this type of
> hardware. I know people are using Lubuntu on high specs hardware (like
> me), but this is not our main goal to optimize the system for this
> type of people.
>
> One tip if you want to compare memory usage between the 2 browsers :
> go to the address chrome://memory under chromium. That should not be
> the only source of information, but it can help in your evaluation.
>
> So, if you have feedback on using both browsers, please bring it to us
> :-) But please, keep the discussion on this topic (feedback on low
> spec hardware).
>
> Thanks in advance :-)
>
> Regards,
> Julien Lavergne

I did some test with my old dsektop PC with the following spec:
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 3GHz (single core) with HT turned on.
RAM: 768 MB
OS: ArchLinux (no ubuntu on this machine)
I tested Firefox, Chromium, Midori, Arora, and Qupzilla.
None of them work after I open more than 3-4 tabs because they use up my RAM.
Almost all of them are frozen after I open facebook + yahoo.
The command "free" showed that simply after opening 3-4 pages I run
out of my RAM.
My swap is being used quite frequently. Hence the freeze.

However, after I did the following, things changed a lot.
1. Use CK-patched kernel (BFS scheduler)  => only mild improvement
2. Edit /etc/sysctl.conf to set "swappiness" to 10 instead of the
default 60 => use swap less frequently inititally
3. Install zram module => Greatly improve overall performance!!!

After the preceding changes, Midori becomes the fastest. Things are
still smooth after I open several tabs.
Switching among tabs are fastest with Midori. Then Firefox is the
second smooth browser.
Arora and Qupzilla are still slower than Midori.

I dropped Midori long time ago because it crashes constantly.
However it has improved a lot in these years, too, just like Firefox.
So maybe it should be an option again.

I'd suggest that we enable zRAM by default on Lubuntu and set
swappiness to a lower value.
Compression/decompression in RAM is something that a 586 cpu can do
easily so it's always faster than reading or writing to the swap. It
also decreases read/writes for your hard disk due to decreased use of
on-disk swap. This is a plus if you're using SSD.

Thanks!