Chromium vs Firefox : Need testimonies

[Leszek Lesner]

Am 01.06.2013 23:21, schrieb 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!
>
+1
zram really should be enabled by default. There are now downsides to it.
Tweaking the sysctl.conf swappiness is however another question. I would 
recommend leaving it at the default value.