Ancestors

Written by Eugenia L on 2024-12-30 at 16:46

A big battle on Lemmy about why I prefer Chrome/ium instead of Firefox on the old laptops I rescue from the landfills: https://lemmy.ml/post/24202956/15809331

People need to stop thinking with GNU glasses on, and become more objective. The reality is, Chrome is FASTER and uses less RAM than Firefox. This has a HUGE IMPACT on the desktop experience on OLD Pcs (not on your modern PCs, no).

But noooo... we have to support Firefox no matter what. Cultists.

[#]linux #opensource #foss #firefox #mozilla #browser

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-30 at 17:00

@eugenialoli Firefox has VA-API decode on Wayland and many older chipsets -- that can make a real difference in video playback that Chrome (perhaps not Chromium) will struggle with.

Perhaps esoteric, but old machines aren't going to be good for YouTube very much otherwise anyway.

Also, I used to report bugs to Mozilla for slow pages - you can buy yourself options by doing the same: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/performance/reporting_a_performance_problem.html

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-30 at 17:06

@eugenialoli PS: This also means that running a supported Windows may be a better option than Linux, but I guess that may antagonize you to other cultists. 😄

IME, Firefox runs better with video acceleration on Linux, Windows runs terribly without an SSD, and Linux does better in lower RAM situations.

Every situation is different - I strongly prefer Linux and Firefox, but of course they aren't necessarily the best options.

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Written by Eugenia L on 2024-12-30 at 17:13

@yoasif In Greece, people can't buy new laptops. So they have to run Linux, and for now, Chrome performs better on it.

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-30 at 17:13

@eugenialoli Not sure you read what I wrote about VA-API video acceleration on Linux. 🤷

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Written by Eugenia L on 2024-12-30 at 17:14

@yoasif I did, but in my tests, Chrome is faster on youtube than firefox. Much faster. So no matter what, for now, Chrome wins in the situations we use it on.

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-30 at 17:20

@eugenialoli Have your tests included enabling VA-API on Linux Firefox? It is unfortunately not enabled by default.

It probably should be, but most developers aren't targeting super old hardware where this makes more of a difference.

My current understanding is that it needs VA-API and hardware decode features. Enabling VA-API requires setting media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled to true in about:config and restarting Firefox.

More information here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Firefox_Hardware_acceleration#Video_decoding

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Written by Eugenia L on 2024-12-30 at 17:21

@yoasif The distros I install for these old Pcs are on X, not wayland. It's either Cinnamon or XFce for 4 GB PCs, and TDE for 2 GB PCs. These are still best with X11.

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-30 at 17:23

@eugenialoli My information was outdated - you don't need Wayland anymore, just decode support. Check out the Fedora wiki page I linked to for some instructions.

If your hardware lacks video decode, of course this makes less of a difference.

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Written by Eugenia L on 2024-12-30 at 17:33

@yoasif Intel GPUs always have gpu decode in the last 15 years, so it's there. But I don't think that firefox does't have that enabled.

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-30 at 17:34

@eugenialoli Easy to check, it likely isn't enabled on your hardware. about:support should show you the status via the HARDWARE_VIDEO_DECODING entry.

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Toot

Written by Eugenia L on 2024-12-30 at 17:44

@yoasif I'm pretty sure it's enabled. It would be god-awefully slow if it wasn't on the kid of hardware i m using it with.

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Descendants

Written by yoasif on 2024-12-30 at 17:46

@eugenialoli 🤷 It wasn't on mine, and I have pretty new hardware. Easy to check.

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Written by Eugenia L on 2024-12-30 at 17:56

@yoasif I just checked, it's on.

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Written by yoasif on 2024-12-30 at 19:51

@eugenialoli Worth a shot to check. My fairly new hardware wasn't enabled.

FWIW, that should make Firefox more competitive on video playback, since Chrome doesn't have hardware video decode on Linux.

=> View attached media

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