Why do we continually have to tolerate Firefox's ridiculous mem leak?

[brentaal]

Honestly, it's probably that kind of attitude which is why they don't ever fix this problem.

Yeah, that must be it. /facepalm

[Glowstick]

Let me clue you in: Firefox caches stuff in memory if there's plenty free.

Now let me clue you in some more on the screenshot you took:

Physical memory usage: 40%

[Growled Member]

I've found that opening and closes tabs seems to increase FF's memory usage. It seems to have a difficult time releasing the memory back to the system.

[jnelsoninjax]

I have 13 tabs open ATM, and am only using 67 MB of my 4 GB... the highest I think I have ever seen FF reach is 250 MB and that is after it has been running for 6-8 hours solid.

[ToneKnee]

It's a PLUGIN/EXTENSION PROBLEM

It's a PLUGIN/EXTENSION PROBLEM

It's a PLUGIN/EXTENSION PROBLEM

It's a PLUGIN/EXTENSION PROBLEM

It's a PLUGIN/EXTENSION PROBLEM

It's a PLUGIN/EXTENSION PROBLEM

It's a PLUGIN/EXTENSION PROBLEM

[Eric Veteran]

I've never had memory leaks with Firefox and I leave it open all night quite often. As other said, it must be an extension.

[Glowstick]

I have four tabs open and it eats 500MB. Well, it's a long session, anyway.

[boogerjones]

Honestly, it's probably that kind of attitude which is why they don't ever fix this problem.

Who's "they" and what, specifically, is the problem? It's almost certainly an extension or plugin (Flash is frequently the culprit) causing the problem. So Mozilla has nothing to fix here.

[mail]

Never had memory leak either.

[Salgoth]

To the OP, it's not Firefox. I've tested this under both Windows 7/FF 3.5.5 and Kubuntu 9.10/FF 3.5.5 and showed no memory leak even though the conditions I used are unlikely to be anyone's real-world usage. You can go to the linked post and see the screenshots if you don't believe me.

https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?show...#entry591905014

Test sites (61 simultaneous tabs): 20 tabs of CNN news stories (some with video), 20 MSNBC news stories (some with video), 20 Deviant Art member profile pages, and last (but never least) the Neowin home page.

Test conducted under 64 bit versions of Kubuntu 9.10 and Windows 7 using the same FF profile and the same extensions.

Test duration 30 minutes after all pages had been viewed.

FF 3.5.5/Kubuntu 9.10: 579.7 MB or an average of 9.5 MB per tab.

FF 3.5.5/Windows 7: 338.488 MB or an average of 5.5 MB per tab.

[Solid Knight]

I have eight tabs open and only 95Mb of memory is being used.

Edited January 2, 2010 by Solid Knight

[pdmcmahon]

I have one tab open (to Neowin, go figure, right?) and only two extensions - ForecastFox and Flash Video Resources Downloader.

This is on a Mac Mini 2.0 with 4GB of RAM and two other applications running.

[corrosive23]

Ive got 4, 3 of which are buffering youtube videos and im at 130 megs.

[DJ-Light]

[ViperAFK]

Why do we have to tolerate people blaming firefox for 'memory leaks' when there is a 99.99999% chance its something on their end like a plugin or extension at fault? I have used firefox since 1.x and have NEVER had any such issue.

Most benchmarks such as the one posted above usually show firefox as having lower mem usage than other browsers. The only time my firefox EVER goes above 200 megs is using flash. Mine is usually ~60- 120 mb

Edited January 2, 2010 by ViperAFK

[ilev]

It could be easier to find the problem if Mozilla could add the shift+esc to show how much memory each addon / TAB ,uses , like in Chrome.

[ToneKnee]

I have one tab open (to Neowin, go figure, right?) and only two extensions - ForecastFox and Flash Video Resources Downloader.

This is on a Mac Mini 2.0 with 4GB of RAM and two other applications running.

Sounds like something is foobar'd with your config.

[ViperAFK]

Do a complete clean install and use a new profile. If it still does it then its firefox, if not it was something wrong with your profile or a plugin/extension.

[pdmcmahon]

Sounds like something is foobar'd with your config.

Try again, I am not complaining.

[LiquidSolstice]

But it's not a bug, it's a feature :p

That phrase is getting really old and pathetic.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

My memory usage for Firefox 3.5.6 is ~130 MB with 5 tabs and 9 add-ons. It must be an issue with one of your add-ons or maybe a site (e.g. Flash heavy) that creates a memory leak.

[notta]

I was going to come on here and post that same exact question. I had to finally switch to Chrome the other day. It sucks because Chrome doesn't have the addons I use with Firefox.

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

Firefox 3.5.6

Windows 7 x86 Professional

18 Tabs, including (but not limited to):

• neowin.net
  
• My (former) university intranet
  
• Facebook
  
• LinkedIn
  
• My Portfolio website
  
• Google Analytics
  
• Brizzly (Twitter web client)
  
• Miniclip.com
  

Extensions:

• ChatZilla (Not Open)
  
• Download Statusbar
  
• Google Gears
  
• Hide Menubar
  
• Tab Mix Plus
  
• Web Developer Toolbar
  
• Xmarks (Formerly Foxmarks)
  

Total Memory Usage: 195MB

Thats not bad, given that at least 30MB accounts for the Flash on miniclip.com. Facebook and Brizzly JavaScript heavy too, with a lot of JavaScript functionality that can ramp up memory usage. If I close Facebook, Miniclip, Brizzly and Google Analytics, memory usage drops from 195MB down to 145MB, less than 25% of what you're using WastedJoker, hence it seems that you either have a hell of a lot of flash/JavaScript heavy tabs open, or its an extension leaking/abusing memory.

Bear in mind too that Firefox also caches a lot of pages for speedier revisits (in 2006, it was claimed that 39% of all page navigations were revisits to previously viewed pages), so as it caches more things, it will occupy more space, but still not 600MB of it.

[Solid Knight]

I can only get up to 300+ Mb by streaming movies from Netflix.

[GreenMartian]

I've found that opening and closes tabs seems to increase FF's memory usage. It seems to have a difficult time releasing the memory back to the system.

This.

Try using ff for 3 days straight, under heavy duty use (opening and closing of millions of tabs). *Doesnt matter how many you have open simultaneously at any point of time* you'll see that your memory will climb to a ridiculous amount. Even on vanilla install/profile.

They claim this is by design... Yeah, i've heard the 'caching for revisits' argument a million times. But seriously, utilise some more intelligent disk caching ffs.