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

cyprinus
Member
From: /home/cyprinus
Registered: 2007-02-07
Posts: 33

Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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 smile but Konqueror with KHTML rooles.
Nevertheless I'm fully satisfacted while using Swiftfox (pacman -Rns firefox)

JUST GREAT. - my opinion cool

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

xerverius
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From: ~
Registered: 2004-11-02
Posts: 230
Website

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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 smile, but keep your feet on the ground.

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

cyprinus
Member
From: /home/cyprinus
Registered: 2007-02-07
Posts: 33

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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.

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

xerverius
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From: ~
Registered: 2004-11-02
Posts: 230
Website

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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)

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

AndyRTR
Developer
From: Magdeburg/Germany
Registered: 2005-10-07
Posts: 1,641

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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 wink

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

iphitus
Forum Fellow
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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 wink

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

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

cyprinus
Member
From: /home/cyprinus
Registered: 2007-02-07
Posts: 33

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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 smile )
After those 2,3 days of usage Swiftfox - I can say it's quiet nice. But nobody have to agree with me smile

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

syd
Member
From: Auckland, NZ
Registered: 2006-01-22
Posts: 155

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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

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.

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

pecan
Member
Registered: 2007-04-06
Posts: 93

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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.

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

Mikos
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From: Prague, Czech Republic
Registered: 2005-05-03
Posts: 228
Website

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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).

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

hacosta
Member
From: Mexico
Registered: 2006-10-22
Posts: 423

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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

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

STiAT
Member
From: Vienna, Austria
Registered: 2004-12-23
Posts: 606

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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


Ability is nothing without opportunity.

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

siccness
Member
Registered: 2007-04-25
Posts: 6

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

hacosta wrote:

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

Well said.

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

KerowynM
Member
Registered: 2006-06-04
Posts: 78

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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.

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

oli
Member
From: 127.0.0.1
Registered: 2006-02-07
Posts: 164
Website

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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

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


Use UNIX or die.

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

test1000
Member
Registered: 2005-04-03
Posts: 834

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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?


KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

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

shamrok
Member
From: Poland, Kraków
Registered: 2006-02-20
Posts: 61

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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

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

shen
Member
Registered: 2003-09-05
Posts: 272
Website

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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)

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

shining
Pacman Developer
Registered: 2006-05-10
Posts: 2,043

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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?


pacman roulette : pacman -S $(pacman -Slq | LANG=C sort -R | head -n $((RANDOM % 10)))

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

dejitarob
Member
From: Gainesville, FL
Registered: 2007-04-28
Posts: 10
Website

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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


We do not want a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation is bought by accepting the risk of dying of boredom. -Raoul Vaneigem / Students for a Human Society

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

KerowynM
Member
Registered: 2006-06-04
Posts: 78

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

Well I guess that solves the issue tongue

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...

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

test1000
Member
Registered: 2005-04-03
Posts: 834

Re: Swiftfox vs. Firefox - Final Countdown.

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


KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

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