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I'm trying to use both Firefox Quantum 68.10.0 ESR 64-bit and TOR browser 9.5.1 (= based on said Firefox 68.10.0 ESR) on a Linux Mint Debian Edition 4 machine. What's with the resources squander of these browsers?

Both show up in gnome-system-monitor with several processes, for Firefox Quantum it's

firefox.real
Web Content
WebExtensions

and for TOR browser it's

firefox-bin
Web Content
WebExtensions

The culprits are the two main processes, firefox.real and firefox-bin (one per instance), and the process Web Content (up to several per instance). Just running a YouTube video or surfing around causes CPU load to spike to 40-60% and RAM usage to 600-900 MB, with the latter usually not decreasing by itself anywhere fast enough. To make matters worse, the audio in all YouTube videos is extremely choppy, i.e. there is a high-frequency "glitching/crackling" that directly modulates with the volume (if someone speaks up, the crackling gets worse).

What's the matter with Firefox these days? Just 10 years ago, this would have simply and inevitably crashed/freezed any normal PC - as a matter of fact: Both do tend to freeze-crash any live Linux system running on USB 3.0 flash drives or external SSDs with high reliability, which is why I cannot use them on live systems.

How can a mundane web browser demand this much resources and underperform compared to literally any of its competitors? It feels like looking after a badly spoiled, hyper-entitled brat - and it's both Firefox and TOR browser which are affected, so clearly this is an underlying Firefox issue. Disabling all extensions, disabling Javascript, and resetting all settings is not helping, neither is purging and reinstalling. Plus, I'm positive that more people are experiencing exactly the same issues as anyone can easily tell from a quick web search - but Mozilla so far has not been able or willing to present working solutions. If I'm wrong with this statement, I would be glad to be pointed towards the right source!

What exactly is causing this abnormal behaviour? Are there any diagnostics that one could run?

I'm happy for any suggestions and will provide any information requested. Furthermore, this topic will be up for bounty shortly. Looking forward to your ideas!

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  • I observed issues similar to what you describe with faulty graphics drivers. Is OpenGL available on your system and fully functional?
    – Hermann
    Jul 28, 2020 at 23:03
  • I occasionaly (but rarely) experience those choppy audio issues in Firefox. But every mainstream browser is a resource hog. I would not blame them, but the cranky, bloated webpages out there, with which the browsers have to deal.
    – Quasímodo
    Jul 28, 2020 at 23:21
  • @Quasimodo: Other browsers such as Chromium does not seem to have this problem. It really is specific to Firefox and it's not a new issue as well
    – david
    Jul 30, 2020 at 13:13
  • @Hermann: How do I check the OpenGL status on Linux? When doing inxi -Gx, I get this: Graphics: Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RV515/M54 [Mobility Radeon X1400] driver: radeon v: kernel Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: ati,radeon unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1400x1050~60Hz OpenGL: renderer: ATI RV515 v: 2.1 Mesa 18.3.6
    – david
    Jul 30, 2020 at 13:37
  • All browsers do this now, all the blink/webkit/gecko rendering engine + javascript engine ones do anyway. Firefox just looks/acts worse because it's running all tabs in one thread, whereas chromium/safari/chrome/vivalidi/opera and other webkit/blink based ones run each tab in a separate thread. I'm surprised that this is the first time you've noticed this, I was not able to use firefox without noscript and ublock origin for years because of this issue, plus modern websites are now loading huge javascript applications just to display a page
    – Lizardx
    Jul 30, 2020 at 18:01

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