Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

cyprinus · 2007-04-23 22:53:43

Welcome,
I've just installed Swiftfox (from AUR). And I have to admit, that on my Celeron2, it works flawlessly.
~30% speed up during the start
~40-50% "lighter" during surfing the net, also switching tabs are quiet faster.
It's quiet comparative to Opera ...with many tabs opened but Konqueror with KHTML rooles.
Nevertheless I'm fully satisfacted while using Swiftfox (pacman -Rns firefox)

JUST GREAT. - my opinion

xerverius · 2007-04-24 06:47:56

Any raw number, of is this just the placebo 'it feels faster' post?

You don't hear me saying it's not faster, but in theory the speed difference between the i686 O2 optimized arch version is not much faster then the flags Swiftfox uses (say, if the difference if 5% it's damn good). The static build Swiftfox uses might give a small boost when starting, but not _a lot_.

Anyway, I'm happy your happy with it , but keep your feet on the ground.

cyprinus · 2007-04-24 11:57:47

xerverius wrote:

Any raw number, of is this just the placebo 'it feels faster' post?

As You wish - every test in KDEMOD.
1. "fresh" system
2. Opened only home page - google.com
3. 4 tabs - flash page, 2 pure html sites and very "flash'y" site
1 2 3
Swiftfox 81,7MB 96,8MB 119MB
Firefox 82MB 104MB 137MB

When many nowadays computers have 1GB and more RAM those 18MB difference in the last column isn't much, but it is still over 15% - and that's a lot (IMHO) .Maybe my test isn't great, but it shows how "big" firefox is.

xerverius · 2007-04-24 14:36:34

The size difference is (most likely) the build method used by swiftfox (static not shared), not the architecture optimized cflags. And although this is a nice win for startup/memory, which is 13% btw (119-137)/137*100=-13), it doesn't make the browser 'snappier'.
Of course cpu specific compile flags are better, they don't have a big performance inpact on your system. A good example of this is Gentoo, some people claim it's a lot faster then other distros, but I'm sure when you compare it to Arch we talking about a couple of percentages and if the impact is not big system wide, it's defenitly not in firefox (look for the custom build kernel thread, same discussion).

So Swiftfox is smaller on memory, it won't be much faster (render speed for example) then a Arch build. But that's just my personal view on this subject...

Last edited by xerverius (2007-04-24 14:37:01)

AndyRTR · 2007-04-24 19:58:57

it's indeed much faster. but not because only due the cflags. most speedup comes from using more http pipelines. only rendering is improved by better cflags

iphitus · 2007-04-24 22:01:07

AndyRTR wrote:

it's indeed much faster. but not because only due the cflags. most speedup comes from using more http pipelines. only rendering is improved by better cflags

and that's configurable in firefox anyway... in about:config, search pipelining

cyprinus · 2007-04-24 23:02:45

xerverius wrote:

And although this is a nice win for startup/memory, which is 13% btw (119-137)/137*100=-13), it doesn't make the browser 'snappier'.

I wrote about 15% increase, not 13% of decrease (IMHO sounds better )
After those 2,3 days of usage Swiftfox - I can say it's quiet nice. But nobody have to agree with me

syd · 2007-04-24 23:09:15

I'm using swiftfox and its heaps better that firefox.
But in the end it still is firefox.

I wish opera was a gtk app i cant seem to make it fit my other apps.
Im thinking of switching back to opera soon anyway.

pecan · 2007-04-25 01:32:16

I was using swiftfox, it "feels" faster then firefox, but that could be the placebo effect talking. Currently I'm using konqueror because I'm interested in its development, its very unresponsive compared to firefox and swiftfox but I love its integration.

Mikos · 2007-04-26 15:36:53

pecan wrote:

I was using swiftfox, it "feels" faster then firefox, but that could be the placebo effect talking. Currently I'm using konqueror because I'm interested in its development, its very unresponsive compared to firefox and swiftfox but I love its integration.

Konqueror and unresponsive? You must be kidding! Konqueror is _MUCH_ faster than Firefox (even than Opera) on my system. It is so much faster and more responsive than Firefox/Swiftfox, that it can't be even compared to it. Gecko-based browsers are monsters (because of Gecko).

hacosta · 2007-05-04 09:42:54

/me hates it when people fork a project just because they use different compile flags and change the icon

STiAT · 2007-05-04 10:48:51

Mikos wrote:

pecan wrote:
I was using swiftfox, it "feels" faster then firefox, but that could be the placebo effect talking. Currently I'm using konqueror because I'm interested in its development, its very unresponsive compared to firefox and swiftfox but I love its integration.
Konqueror and unresponsive? You must be kidding! Konqueror is _MUCH_ faster than Firefox (even than Opera) on my system. It is so much faster and more responsive than Firefox/Swiftfox, that it can't be even compared to it. Gecko-based browsers are monsters (because of Gecko).

Parts of this are true. Parts, what you have to consider is:
Firefox is by far more stable than Konqueror.
Firefox has an implementation for canvas, and much more impressive javascript handling (which konqueror does not provide at all), which makes konqueror appear to be faster. If they implement webkit as a browser engine (currently, kde devs have no plans on this, but they are porting webkit features into khtml), konqueror will have to prove if it's really faster.

Gecko currently is the fastest full featured rendering engine available (with the implementation of mozilla.dom).

// STi

siccness · 2007-05-04 10:53:39

hacosta wrote:

/me hates it when people fork a project just because they use different compile flags and change the icon

Well said.

KerowynM · 2007-05-04 10:54:10

I'm not really sure about Swiftfox being a 'fork', seems to me more like an alternate build.

Anyway, with the changes to firefox's licensing, there are a lot of firefox packages out there that are mostly a simple re-compile. Blame Mozilla.

oli · 2007-05-04 11:36:31

http://community.linux.com/article.pl?s … 3235&tid=5

Something a different opinion to this "hype-ware" ...

test1000 · 2007-05-04 11:40:29

is swiftfox "safe"? Wasn't there an article a while back about the dude making the build not releasing source code and deleting posts on his forum requesting it?

How do we know this isn't some original russian credit-card hacker?

shamrok · 2007-05-04 14:44:23

Reading about this made me switch back to firefox (startup seems a bit slower, but rest feels the same, i'm using fasterfox extension).

shen · 2007-05-04 15:39:51

You can always look at some of the patches he uses such as

http://getswiftfox.com/source/swiftfox-1.8branch.patch

Now if you goto http://getswiftfox.com/source/ there is nothing listed but I found that link via a google search.

There's lots of controversy surrounding swiftfox ad how it goes against what an opensource browser was mean to be. The only thing he is really holding out on is his patches and what changes he makes or adds to the about:config. It would be nice if he would share but if Mozilla doesn't say anything there isn't much that can be done. I did read a couple posts that he basically says he has the right to make his changes closed source. I am sure one could easily go through the config files and do a diff on them and figure out the changes he does.

You can easily build firefox with opts just like swift and get the same load times and such. Then tweak the about:config settings and things should work the same.

Last edited by shen (2007-05-04 15:46:08)

shining · 2007-05-04 19:32:05

shen wrote:

You can always look at some of the patches he uses such as
http://getswiftfox.com/source/swiftfox-1.8branch.patch
Now if you goto http://getswiftfox.com/source/ there is nothing listed but I found that link via a google search.
There's lots of controversy surrounding swiftfox ad how it goes against what an opensource browser was mean to be. The only thing he is really holding out on is his patches and what changes he makes or adds to the about:config. It would be nice if he would share but if Mozilla doesn't say anything there isn't much that can be done. I did read a couple posts that he basically says he has the right to make his changes closed source. I am sure one could easily go through the config files and do a diff on them and figure out the changes he does.
You can easily build firefox with opts just like swift and get the same load times and such. Then tweak the about:config settings and things should work the same.

I'm confused by your post.
The patch above seems to tweak firefox settings, doesn't it?
So there isn't anything hidden, is there?

dejitarob · 2007-05-05 00:29:31

According to wikipedia, swiftfox will no longer be actively maintained.

KerowynM · 2007-05-05 15:54:08

Well I guess that solves the issue

I poked my nose into the firefox PKGBUILD once, and at a glance I wasn't able to figure out how to play with it (I just said screw it and installed swiftfox). Now would probably be a good time to get back to it and figure out how to do the optimizations manually. Would it really be as simple as changes makepkg.conf to use -march=athlon-xp etc, or are their a trillion ./configure options I'm unaware of? Hehe more work to do...

test1000 · 2007-05-05 16:40:39

i suppose you could do that and then also download "fasterfox" plugin.. should not be a noticable difference. or you could try kazehakaze or something

Arch Linux

#1 2007-04-23 22:53:43

Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#2 2007-04-24 06:47:56

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#3 2007-04-24 11:57:47

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#4 2007-04-24 14:36:34

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#5 2007-04-24 19:58:57

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#6 2007-04-24 22:01:07

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#7 2007-04-24 23:02:45

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#8 2007-04-24 23:09:15

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#9 2007-04-25 01:32:16

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#10 2007-04-26 15:36:53

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#11 2007-05-04 09:42:54

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#12 2007-05-04 10:48:51

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#13 2007-05-04 10:53:39

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#14 2007-05-04 10:54:10

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#15 2007-05-04 11:36:31

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#16 2007-05-04 11:40:29

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#17 2007-05-04 14:44:23

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#18 2007-05-04 15:39:51

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#19 2007-05-04 19:32:05

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#20 2007-05-05 00:29:31

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#21 2007-05-05 15:54:08

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

#22 2007-05-05 16:40:39

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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