My Browser Builds (Part 5)

[IDA-RE-things]

44 minutes ago, roytam1 said:

let me test if I can make it happen in next SP52 32bit build.

Ok, I will wait for next build.

Is the code compiled with standard MSVC or with MS CLang compiler before linking ? I see MyPal68 uses "clang-cl.exe"

[Nicholas McAnespy]

5 hours ago, IDA-RE-things said:

Ok, I will wait for next build.

Is the code compiled with standard MSVC or with MS CLang compiler before linking ? I see MyPal68 uses "clang-cl.exe"

Roytam1's UXP browsers (Serpent 52, New Moon 28, Borealis Navigator and a few others)  are currently compiled using Visual C++  2017 (update 9 if I remember the terminology correctly).

Edited June 18 by Nicholas McAnespy

[UCyborg]

Had a bit longer browsing session with Pale Moon recently, it's absurd how things slow down to crawl. Even tab switching is considerably delayed. Click, wait 3 seconds, repeat later. Had another session before that on a poor laptop with 2 GB of RAM, System Informer showed about 700 MB private bytes for palemoon.exe, still had about 500 MB free physical memory. And it just got stuck in a loop, had to end palemoon.exe.

Sometimes I can't help but think using such browser is self-torture.

Other times I think maybe I should do myself a favor and buy something modern with decent amount of RAM and just daily drive Firefox, then it can leak as much as it wants.

Edited June 18 by UCyborg

[Nicholas McAnespy]

8 minutes ago, UCyborg said:

Had a bit longer browsing session with Pale Moon recently, it's absurd how things slow down to crawl. Even tab switching is considerably delayed. Click, wait 3 seconds, repeat later. Had another session before that on a poor laptop with 2 GB of RAM, System Informer showed about 700 MB private bytes for palemoon.exe, still had about 500 MB free physical memory. And it just got stuck in a loop, had to end palemoon.exe.

Sometimes I can't help but think using such browser is self-torture.

Other times I think maybe I should do myself a favor and buy something modern with decent amount of RAM and just daily drive Firefox, then it can leak as much as it wants.

In your profile you advertise your OS as Windows 10. If you have access to Windows 10, what are the specs of the computer you are running it on?

[UCyborg]

It's nothing new, I'm just venting. Symptoms are apparent on much newer hardware as well, browse long enough on heavy enough sites and it slows down and you have to restart if you want it to go faster again.

Add lower RAM amount into the mix and it may eventually get stuck in the loop. Maybe the latter only happens in 32-bit builds. It's probably even worse idea to run 32-bit builds on modern Windows, process address space probably gets fragmented enough from extensions as-is, then there are extra system DLLs and some 3rd party software's DLLs may end up in there.

I seem to remember people in the Fx52 era writing 64-bit build was more stable. Should probably switch at this point, at least on desktop where I can. Running 32-bit Pale Moon is an old habit that persisted even after adding more RAM, though 32-bit build could actually be a bit more responsive compared to 64-bit.

Edited June 18 by UCyborg

[modnar]

10 hours ago, UCyborg said:

It's nothing new, I'm just venting. Symptoms are apparent on much newer hardware as well, browse long enough on heavy enough sites and it slows down and you have to restart if you want it to go faster again.

Add lower RAM amount into the mix and it may eventually get stuck in the loop. Maybe the latter only happens in 32-bit builds. It's probably even worse idea to run 32-bit builds on modern Windows, process address space probably gets fragmented enough from extensions as-is, then there are extra system DLLs and some 3rd party software's DLLs may end up in there.

I seem to remember people in the Fx52 era writing 64-bit build was more stable. Should probably switch at this point, at least on desktop where I can. Running 32-bit Pale Moon is an old habit that persisted even after adding more RAM, though 32-bit build could actually be a bit more responsive compared to 64-bit.

Just keep using x86 version (Serpent 52.9 preferably), it builds character.

[UCyborg]

64-bit version is definitely much more stable, although unloading larger amount of tabs can take minutes and result in a big spike in RAM consumption while the browser is unusable. Got to total 5,6 GB / 6 GB RAM utilization, 3,6 GB of those occupied by Pale Moon. Unloaded all other tabs except the one with MSFN, browser settled to little over 600 MB afterwards, there was a spike to about 7,2 GB while it was frozen according to Event Viewer (resource exhaustion event), auto-scrolling was again smooth afterwards.

What I noticed while testing, browser in 64-bit flavor had an easier time pumping event loop (less occurrences of its window being marked as not responding) and sitting in the middle of comments section on YouTube didn't load the CPU as much, it could actually downclock, 32-bit version would usually just sit at constant 100% on one core.

I just avoided most of GitHub except wiki pages due to problems with ghost windows they cause internally.

[anton12]

UCyborg said:
"64-bit version is definitely much more stable, although unloading larger amount of tabs can take minutes and result in a big spike in RAM consumption while the browser is unusable. Got to total 5,6 GB / 6 GB RAM utilization, 3,6 GB of those occupied by Pale Moon."
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Here is a techno-philosophical question:

How could it be that we got along with 256MB - 1024MB(1GB)
RAM when NT5.0/5.1 dominated the web ?

The "MODERN" web gives the impression that it often "loves" to
collide with the KISS-Principle.

Ignoring the KISS-Principle in technology is the scource of endless trouble.

Albert Einstein: "Keep it simple, but not simpler."

(Keep It Simple,Stupid !)

 

Edited June 20 by anton12

[Mathwiz]

On 6/16/2024 at 9:30 PM, Mathwiz said:

For what you're asking for, you probably need a UXP fix, which would have to come from Moonchild's team.

Moonchild has made it abundantly clear that users of @roytam1's builds are unwelcome in his forums. So to even report the problem, you'd need to:

On 6/17/2024 at 11:43 AM, VistaLover said:

... Let me remind  readers of this thread that the actual issue discussed here has been already reported to UXP-"upstream" (i.e. MCP: Moonchild Productions) by @UCyborg some three weeks ago: 

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&p=251950&sid=14291391b8552d3afe8f153cf401c56c#p251950

but. as you can probably see for yourselves , nothing has even budged there so far ...

If one finds this problem particularly vexing, I think it makes sense to report it to MCP again. If the same problem keeps getting reported, it might get bumped up in priority. Heck, I even identified a probable fix, although porting it to UXP may be tough:

On 6/7/2024 at 9:31 PM, Mathwiz said:

The pixai issue looks like a longstanding Firefox bug, finally fixed in Mo 93. CreateImageBitmap is supposed to take 1, 2, 5, or 6 parameters, but the 2-parameter case throws this error.

This appears to be the fix: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/426b58b5faa1. Not sure if it can be backported to UXP; we may need to wait on an upstream fix.

... followed by a rather long digression on just what "upstream" means in the context of UXP....

[AstroSkipper]

2 hours ago, anton12 said:

How could it be that we got along with 250MB - 1000MB(1GB)
RAM when NT5.0/5.1 dominated the web ?

My old Windows XP machine has 1.5 GB RAM only. And surfing the web works if you keep it simple. Tons of open tabs are not actually necessary, though. My browsers New Moon 28, Serpent 52, Mypal 68 and even Thorium rarely need more than 500 - 600 MB. Abnormal websites are fodder for my Android tablet. At the moment, I am using New Moon 28 with 74 extensions installed, 4 of them disabled, and only the MSFN website opened by a RAM usage of round about 400 MB.

Edited June 20 by AstroSkipper

[Mathwiz]

3 hours ago, UCyborg said:

64-bit version is definitely much more stable, although unloading larger amount of tabs can take minutes and result in a big spike in RAM consumption while the browser is unusable.

That's the advantage of the 64-bit version: it can actually address all the memory it uses (even if most of that memory is virtual/slow). With the 32-bit version, you just run out, whereupon bad things happen.

Serpent adds the option of multiprocess mode. The support is primitive and insecure (especially St 52), and a lot of legacy extensions won't work - but it does keep the browser alive and somewhat responsive even when pressed to the limit. And if a crash does happen, it's often (not always) just one tab instead of the whole browser.

[UCyborg]

7 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

With the 32-bit version, you just run out, whereupon bad things happen.

And I'm not sure you can even reliably tell by the numbers in Task Manager/Process Hacker/System Informer when exactly it happens. Somehow it took me until now to realize how important this can be in some of my usage patterns.

I've been actually using 64-bit build at work for years now, though I don't remember ever getting to even 2 GB there. Same with most other software in general (at home also), I lean towards x64 build when available.

But it's easy to accumulate with a web browser and kept it at 32-bit to save a little bit of RAM, which upgrade I kept putting off for over a decade to the point it's hard to come by it (DDR2), let alone a decent one, but got an extra stick last year, which is really out of place near the old ones, they run at an odd frequency and timings because of that.

11 hours ago, anton12 said:

How could it be that we got along with 256MB - 1024MB(1GB)
RAM when NT5.0/5.1 dominated the web ?

People change, expectations change.

[AstroSkipper]

I always have Process Hacker running in the background for many, many years. I regularly monitor my browsers in terms of RAM and CPU utilisation by Process Hacker's systray icons as a first measure. New Moon 28 32-bit, well configured and used appropriately, consumes the least RAM compared to other browsers. If I have a few extensions installed and only have one tab open, I am at around 200 MB after starting the browser. I think that's a good value compared to others. What is always problematic, with all browsers, is the release of RAM when tabs are unloaded or even closed. This always leads to additional consumption after prolonged use of the browser, which is actually unnecessary but has unfortunately never been solved by the developers (and by that I mean Mozilla in particular). 

Edited June 20 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[AstroSkipper]

Websites which consumes extremely large amounts of RAM are immediately closed by me in New Moon 28 and opened in Mypal 68 or, more recently, also in Thorium. If that doesn't work very well either, it flies to my Android tablet, which can open all pages.  This strategy works quite well, at least until now. 

Edited June 20 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[AstroSkipper]

2 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

New Moon 28 32-bit, well configured and used appropriately, consumes the least RAM compared to other browsers. If I have a few extensions installed and only have one tab open, I am at around 200 MB after starting the browser. I think that's a good value compared to others.

I have to correct my statement a bit. Mypal 68.14.2b 32-bit in single-process mode installed with 23 extensions  (7 of them disabled), 14 uc.js scripts, 13 css stylesheets and one open tab consumes only round about 180 MB after browser start. So, a bit less than New Moon 28. 

Edited June 20 by AstroSkipper
Update of content