Firefox is slower and heftier than Brave

Jason · May 01, 2021, 12:37:28 PM

Not a big long rant from me on it (first time for everything, eh?) but I started using Firefox because of a pernicious bug in the Brave browser and man, is it slower, compared to it. I'm not sure if it's because Brave blocks more ads or has a faster engine (it uses the same one that powers Chrome/Chromium) but it's quite noticeable on many websites that I use.

The other thing is that Firefox takes more memory right off the bat. When you start Brave, it uses about 1 GB of memory used with one extension (LastPass) and 3 tabs opened. When Firefox is opened, it uses about 300-500 MB more. It was at 300 MB and then moved up to 500 GB maybe because of fetches from the Forum.

For most people, the higher memory usage won't matter but on this 4 GB system, I need everything I got to have multiple applications open. I've had this laptop freeze a few times because memory usage was full and it was using the swap a lot (it got up to 1 GB at one point, it has 2 GB total).

I hope the bug is fixed in Brave soon so I can get back to it. I also like how you can turn off the blocking of ads, etc. when a website gets all uppity about it. The bug is that it's not remembering that I was logged into a website when I close it and come back later. Very annoying.

gmiller1977 · May 06, 2021, 10:13:17 AM

Maybe I missed it in another thread, but what is the bug in Brave that you are referring to?

I used Firefox as a secondary browser for a long time, but moved to Brave about 4 months ago, and I agree that it makes FF look slow.

Jason · May 06, 2021, 10:44:35 AM

Quote from: gmiller1977 on May 06, 2021, 10:13:17 AM
Maybe I missed it in another thread, but what is the bug in Brave that you are referring to?

I may not have mentioned it. But basically when I was logged into a website and exited the browser and came back, it "forgot" and I had to log in again. One guy in the Brave community was helpful in trying to track it down although we weren't able to. But we were able to ascertain that it wasn't a problem with the browser but something else (another program, the OS, just file corruption, who knows?). I found it out by following his suggestion to try installing and using Brave from a flash drive and Brave acted as expected. So I did a fresh install of Linux and all is well again.

For those curious, I installed Lubuntu 21.04, something I've demonstrated at a meeting but just to play with.

fox · November 01, 2021, 09:19:53 AM

After reading this week's DistroWatch, which focused on browsers instead of distros, I downloaded Brave and tested it out this morning on Ubuntu 21.10. I must say that I'm impressed with its speed and flexibility. I had no trouble importing my bookmarks from FF, and was able to customize it quickly without reading any instructions. I like how it handles ads, and most of my sites worked OK without accepting cookies or ads. (A few didn't, but it was easy to turn off Brave Shields to make these work. It was noticeably faster than FF, although I never had an issue with FF's loading speed. For now, I'm going to set Brave as my default browser and we'll see how it performs.

One thing I could not set in Brave was a default for magnification. If any of you know how to do this, please post. At least it remembers what you set a site for previously.

Jason · November 01, 2021, 10:58:49 AM

Quote from: fox on November 01, 2021, 09:19:53 AM
One thing I could not set in Brave was a default for magnification. If any of you know how to do this, please post. At least it remembers what you set a site for previously.

It's in Settings. Click on the "hamburger" menu in the top-right and choose Settings. There's a search in the upper right-hand corner of settings. Enter zoom and it'll show you where it appears. Unlike Firefox AFAIK, when you change the zoom on a specific site, Brave remembers so you can have different zoom levels for different sites which I definitely make use of. Chrome does that, too. I know that with this Forum, I have to crank it up to 125 or 133%. While I can see it when it's lower, it's not very comfortable on the eyes.

I'm back on Brave now after trying out Firefox for maybe a month. The biggest thing I noticed almost right away was that my favourite sites had more ads, some a LOT more. The feature above I also find very helpful.

One thing to note with Brave. The sync feature they have is different from other browsers. There's no account that you log into as with Firefox (or Chrome) to get your bookmarks, etc.

When you plan to sync to another device, you click on Sync in the hamburger menu. It will generate a random passphrase (a bunch of random words). When you set up that other device, you enter that passphrase. Then, on the other device you choose Sync and enter the passphrase there. From then on, those devices are part of a sync "chain" and sync with each other the same as on Firefox, Chrome or other browsers with a sync feature.

But I'm not sure about one thing. In the past, Brave said their Sync only synced between devices. So if you removed all the devices from the chain, you'd lose your data since there is nothing left to sync from. In other words, it shouldn't be used as a backup. That's different from Chrome or Firefox. I read about this from Brave Support on a Reddit post from two years ago. Their Sync system has changed substantially over time going through different versions of Sync that operated differently internally. And I just can't tell in the docs if that is still the case. Say maybe it doesn't apply anymore. To be safe, back up your settings (e.g. bookmarks, etc.) regularly. You should be doing that anyway.

buster · November 02, 2021, 04:12:13 PM

"After reading this week's DistroWatch, which focused on browsers instead of distros..."

a) I read Jesse's article after I read your post Fox. Seemed sensible, with lots of posts about browsers at the end of Distrowatch. But Jesse seemed to be trying to do something else that to my eyes, seemed totally against his nature, and he put me in mind of my cousin who has tried to be humorous for decades, but has never quite got there. I'm willing to be contradicted about Jesse's new style :

" like a hyper-active flea on its sixth cup of coffee"
"sucks back memory like a hummingbird trying to relieve a bad case of cotton-mouth"
"makes me feel like an old man who needs glasses and who doesn't understand these new-fangled interfaces"
"GNOME Web crashed more often than a car driven by a blindfolded monkey."

b) It's interesting that Microsoft (I believe) has posted their browser Edge as a deb, and it requires only a click to install it in a large number of distros. Still in beta form.

Jason · November 03, 2021, 06:14:31 AM

My responses:

a) What the hell? Did someone give him a book of bad metaphors recently?

b) Why, God, why? Nobody on Linux, at least that uses it now, wants to use, or probably even try Edge on Linux. Hell, the only reason people use it on Windows is that they don't realize there are better alternatives. My experience with Edge is that I can't browse the web for more than 20 minutes before it chokes on a website. Even on Windows machines, I don't use it. It has some interesting features like the web snipping tool, but if it can't work reliably, who cares?

fox · November 03, 2021, 09:19:17 AM

Surprisingly perhaps, several individuals commenting on Jesse's DistroWatch article had good things to say about Edge. I haven't tried it myself, as I prefer to stick with open source unless the app I need is unsatisfactory.

Jason · November 03, 2021, 03:52:56 PM

Were you able to find the magnification setting in Brave, Fox? I made a suggestion about where it was.

fox · November 03, 2021, 05:30:25 PM

I was, thank you. I initially had it mixed up with the settings for the page, but it's good now.

buster · November 03, 2021, 07:17:13 PM

"Surprisingly perhaps, several individuals commenting on Jesse's DistroWatch article had good things to say about Edge."

I did some research on it. It's built on open source Chromium, and the latest Edge, not the earlier ones, is getting good reviews. Here's one ad laden review that is very enthusiastic:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3513973/microsofts-new-edge-browser-third-times-the-charm.html

Maybe I'll try it in one of my virtuals, though it is against my principles to have to learn something when I don't need to, at least with computers.

fox · November 04, 2021, 08:43:32 AM

Thanks for posting that review, buster. Very positive as you noted, but bear in mind that the review is for the Windows version, not the Linux version. Some of the features the reviewer was touting may not work in Linux, and the speed and RAM usage characteristics might be different. Most of the review compared Edge to Chrome; understandable since Chrome is the most popular browser. In my case, I have four browsers (Chrome, Chromium, FireFox and Brave), but I rarely use the first two and they're only there for when I'm having trouble in FireFox. If I wasn't already testing out Brave (which I really like so far), I would try Edge. I would be interested in hearing about someone's experience with it in Linux.

Jason · November 04, 2021, 11:11:06 AM

It still hurts my heart every time you say "virtuals" when referring to virtual machines. It's not going to catch on, you know. I might just start editing your posts replacing "virtuals" with "VMs" but that would only remind me of the trauma.

Maybe I'll make a script that re-writes the appearances for me kind of like the Bork-Bork browser that Opera released years ago. Bill might know of a GreaseMonkey script.

Anyway, thanks for posting about Edge. Personally, I won't use a Microsoft product unless it's the only or best option. And like Fox, I prefer Open Source, especially for a browser because it handles a lot of our data, probably most of most people's data. Being built on open source doesn't make it open source. It just means at least some of the code is open source.

One thing I do like is that Microsoft gave on making up lies about and calling Linux a "cancer" and now actually makes stuff for it. I'm not sure what their strategy is. They're making it easier to install Linux under Windows and Windows products under Linux. Maybe they will make Office for Linux someday.

But to make this more relevant to the thread, have you tried Brave, Buster, and compared it to Firefox?

If we want to continue discussing Edge (in Linux, preferably), it might be good to start another topic.

buster · November 04, 2021, 05:07:37 PM

"It still hurts my heart every time you say "virtuals" when referring to virtual machines."

These are not 'machines', a cold and heartless designation! They are my children, and shall be referred to with a pleasant, friendly name. In our family, during less formal situations, we call them as 'verts'.

Jason · November 04, 2021, 05:17:29 PM

Quote from: buster on November 04, 2021, 05:07:37 PM
"It still hurts my heart every time you say "virtuals" when referring to virtual machines."

These are not 'machines', a cold and heartless designation! They are my children, and shall be referred to with a pleasant, friendly name. In our family, during less formal situations, we call them as 'verts'.

"Virtuals" make me think of little graphical people in an imaginary universe like the Sims or the denizens of Second Life (a virtual hangout/game/world). It's like calling us "reals".