Anyone using Waterfox?


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I used to use it. I hate it. They bundled ads with the installer in the past, but the worst part is that they are incredibly slow to keep up with Firefox's updates. Stay with an outdated browser? Hells no. Also, the performance increases of using a native 64 bit browser are minimal.

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I used it for a while.   I am now back to normal Fox and I like it better.    Waterfox is slow to keep up and I noticed ZERO improvement over Firefox, other then the knowledge that it is 64bit...  

which is totally useless to me, as it does not add any real performance gains.

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I used to use it. I hate it. They bundled ads with the installer in the past, but the worst part is that they are incredibly slow to keep up with Firefox's updates. Stay with an outdated browser? Hells no. Also, the performance increases of using a native 64 bit browser are minimal.

For a long time the 64bit browser was actually slower than the 32bit variant.

Mozilla don't consider the 64bit Windows build to be "shippable" for a reason, that includes hard to track down bugs, compiler issues, etc.

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I'm using it at the moment.  I know it was slow to update in the past, but at the moment it's at the current Firefox version, 26.

 

It's much better than Firefox, which gets bogged down and takes an age to load a page (stuck on establishing a connection) after it's been open for a while, even on a high end system.  Oh, and it still, after 2 years, has the issue where flash videos pause briefly every few seconds if the browser has been open for a while as well.

 

Waterfox doesn't.

 

I also tried Firefox Light, which was even snappier, however Adfender doesn't support it at this point in time.  Never heard of Cyberfox, I'll look into that.

 

EDIT; just looked at Cyberfox, there's a tremendous lack of information about it on their own site - what do they cut out? What does it do different?

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I'm using it at the moment.  I know it was slow to update in the past, but at the moment it's at the current Firefox version, 26.

 

It's much better than Firefox, which gets bogged down and takes an age to load a page (stuck on establishing a connection) after it's been open for a while, even on a high end system.  Oh, and it still, after 2 years, has the issue where flash videos pause briefly every few seconds if the browser has been open for a while as well.

 

Waterfox doesn't.

 

I also tried Firefox Light, which was even snappier, however Adfender doesn't support it at this point in time.  Never heard of Cyberfox, I'll look into that.

 

EDIT; just looked at Cyberfox, there's a tremendous lack of information about it on their own site - what do they cut out? What does it do different?

I've never encountered that, are you sure you don't have some 32bit app hooking into Firefox?

I leave Firefox open for weeks at a time, it's never slow to respond.

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i tried it a while ago but Pale Moon x64 seems like the better all around choice for a 64bit variation of Firefox. i been using Pale Moon x64 for a while now and i have no issues and it gets updates (security etc) pretty quickly to.

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I've used it a few times, but simply quit because it was a Firefox wanna be, and I've never liked Firefox anyway, and it never really blew my hair back.

 

Never heard of  Cyberfox either. May look into it.

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I used to use it. I hate it. They bundled ads with the installer in the past, but the worst part is that they are incredibly slow to keep up with Firefox's updates. Stay with an outdated browser? Hells no. Also, the performance increases of using a native 64 bit browser are minimal.

They may added ads in the past but they don't anymore, very clean browser... it has not slow performance, don't know its because i have 8GB in my laptop. But so far the experience with waterfox is similar to Firefox with the latest updates.
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Just another one to toss out there for consideration is pcxFirefox, has both x86 and x64 builds.  Seemed pretty reliable last time I experimented with it.

 

But I'm of a similar mind to The_Decryptor, I've yet to run a 64 bit version on my hardware that was faster than the x86 build (at least on the benchmark sites), nor have I had a burning need for a 64 bit build.  Quite happy with the vanilla x86 build myself, solid as a rock for me.

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I used it for a while.   I am now back to normal Fox and I like it better.    Waterfox is slow to keep up and I noticed ZERO improvement over Firefox, other then the knowledge that it is 64bit...  

which is totally useless to me, as it does not add any real performance gains.

Are you sure?

 

Waterfox features:

  • Compiled in Intel's C++ Compiler
  • Intel's Math Library
  • Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
  • Advanced Vector Extensions
  • Jemalloc
  • Profile-Guided Optimisation
  • /O3 Switch
  • 100% Extension Compatibility
  • 64-bit Plugin Support
  • Future Proof!
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FWIW and slightly off topic, but seen this topic on front page again.. I just installed Cyberfox and it seems pretty darn good. Definitely quicker than Firefox ever seemed to be.

 

I see that reply that mentions pcxFirefox. Going to have to give that one atry also, on my 32bit machines! :)

 

Thanks for mentioning it, Max!

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Are you sure?

 

Waterfox features:

  • Compiled in Intel's C++ Compiler
  • Intel's Math Library
  • Streaming SIMD Extensions 3
  • Advanced Vector Extensions
  • Jemalloc
  • Profile-Guided Optimisation
  • /O3 Switch
  • 100% Extension Compatibility
  • 64-bit Plugin Support
  • Future Proof!

Most of those are things normal Firefox does (Like PGO, SSE, AVX, jemalloc, optimisation flags, etc.), and that's ignoring stuff like "Future Proof" (Whatever that means, WoW64 isn't going anywhere any time soon)

I also don't think using the Intel Math Library would do anything other than make the binary larger, it's a specialised library (Meant for scientific applications), and unless the code is changed to take advantage of it, it probably wouldn't do anything (Really the only thing it could be used for is matrix handling, but they already use optimised code for that) Same with using the Intel compiler.

The only functional difference is that you can use 64bit plugins, but since the majority of plugins are 32bit that's not really a benefit. And again, that's ignoring the actual issues the 64bit builds have (Currently Mozilla can't even do proper testing of the 64bit builds due to issues with them, so while they might work for a specific workload a end user might have, they're not stable enough for every day use for a large portion of people)

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i think if you want a native 64bit Browser thats worth using on a OS, use it on MACOSX or Linux. Windows isnt worth running 64bit Browser but eventually the way OS's are going to go there wont be any 32bit Variant of the OS . 64bit only . even RHEL7 there aint any 32bit

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Waterfox is made by Mozilla ;)

no, it's made by mr. alex, a student in cyprus who has been rightfully attending classes and doing waterfox in his limited spare time. the delay of v26 was due to his exams taking precidence as well as working out a few bugs in intel's compiler that stopped the code from working.

 

Most of those are things normal Firefox does (Like PGO, SSE, AVX, jemalloc, optimisation flags, etc.), and that's ignoring stuff like "Future Proof" (Whatever that means, WoW64 isn't going anywhere any time soon)

I also don't think using the Intel Math Library would do anything other than make the binary larger, it's a specialised library (Meant for scientific applications), and unless the code is changed to take advantage of it, it probably wouldn't do anything (Really the only thing it could be used for is matrix handling, but they already use optimised code for that) Same with using the Intel compiler.

The only functional difference is that you can use 64bit plugins, but since the majority of plugins are 32bit that's not really a benefit. And again, that's ignoring the actual issues the 64bit builds have (Currently Mozilla can't even do proper testing of the 64bit builds due to issues with them, so while they might work for a specific workload a end user might have, they're not stable enough for every day use for a large portion of people)

 

32bit firefox doesn't use any 64 bit optimizations. the 64 trial builds available in mozilla nightlies is not optimized and uses straight 32bit code. the 64bit pgo builds at mozilla are very dodgy bleeding edge trials of bug fixes. most of the other third party builds modify mozilla code in some way. mr alex uses the same code with just the mozilla mandated name/icon changes for the 'about' window. the intel compiler and optimizations should make a faster 64 bit version than the other 64 bit versions, none of which are as yet faster than the 32 bit versions because the code is written for 32 bit. compilers do not change 32bit optoimized code to 64 bit optimized code before compiling it.

 

and 32bit addons (extensions), like adblock plus, work prefectly well in 64 bit versions. they are javascript and bit size independent.

PLUGINS like java (which you should not need to install, it's still insecure), and flash do require the 64 bit versions, which work perfectly well.

 

What? No it's not.

 

correct. mr. alex is a private citizen with no big corporation behind him, no funding other than his own purse, and no staff beyond himself. i salute his efforts and the years of time he has devoted to all of us sharing his knowledge and efforts..

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...

32bit firefox doesn't use any 64 bit optimizations. the 64 trial builds available in mozilla nightlies is not optimized and uses straight 32bit code. the 64bit pgo builds at mozilla are very dodgy bleeding edge trials of bug fixes. most of the other third party builds modify mozilla code in some way. mr alex uses the same code with just the mozilla mandated name/icon changes for the 'about' window. the intel compiler and optimizations should make a faster 64 bit version than the other 64 bit versions, none of which are as yet faster than the 32 bit versions because the code is written for 32 bit. compilers do not change 32bit optoimized code to 64 bit optimized code before compiling it.

...

None of that makes any sense, you do know how compilers work, right?

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I've used them all. Honestly, I just go back to 32-bit Firefox as I see no benefit and they're all actually slower than vanilla Firefox (that and Waterfox has known issues with locking up it seems). If I want to use a 64-bit build, I'll use Nightly.

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