[rescue] Mozilla Firefox

[Dave McGuire]

On Apr 21, 2004, at 10:15 PM, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
>>> I run Netscape 7.1 right now, because it leaks memory slower than
>>> Mozilla 1.6.
>>>
>>> But really... why should *any* browser use more than around 32MB?
>>>
>>> What on Earth are they doing?
>>
>>   In the case of Mozilla, its entire user interface is built from
>> compiled-in, run-time-interpreted JavaScript.  It's like some kid
>> decided he wanted to show off how "clever" he was.  Fucking morons.
>
> Do you think that is why it eats so much memory?

   No, I think that's why it's so blasted slow.

> In other words, if you open 12 windows, close them, and then open the
> same 12 the high water mark should not change.
>
> It does.

   Yeeesh.  If not memory leaks, perhaps memory fragmentation?  If one 
isn't using a low-fragmentation malloc() implementation, malloc() arena 
fragmentation can really hose you...if the malloc() code keeps needing 
to call sbrk() to increase the arena size rather than coalescing 
smaller blocks into larger ones upon calls to free().

   The old system-supplied malloc() that came with NetBSD in the 1.3 
days is particularly bad about this, I can say from personal experience 
and a remaining anal burning sensation.  I solved that problem very 
effectively by replacing it with a package called "dlmalloc" which you 
may have heard of.

           -Dave

--
Dave McGuire          "PC users only know two 'solutions'...
Cape Coral, FL          reboot and upgrade."    -Jonathan Patschke