Hi forum,

I had been running K-Meleon for years on a beautiful but 10 yrs old Sony subnotebook with 128MB RAM, 2GB SSD, 400MHz Pentium III Mobile, Windows XP.

K-Meleon used to run great, however lately has become incredibly slow at times, probably because newer websites use so much RAM and CPU power (eg. JS-heavy sites like eBay, Gmail etc.).

K-Meleon has started to use up to 80MB RAM only for like three tabs, and also wouldn't release much of that RAM when closing tabs/layers. "Config trim on minimize" didn't change much.

Since Google Chrome on this notbeook sort of not even displays one single tab properly because it takes incredible amounts of RAM, I thought why not give Firefox 3 (portable) a try.

And what should I say: FF3 runs beautifully, feels actually crisper than good old K-Meleon, takes much less CPU and RAM (can be easily below 50MB with several tabs open), I have the Awesomebar, my favourite addons etc. pp.

So i thought, it's sad but I think FF3 is amazingly well coded to such an extent that it even makes my much loved K-Meleon obsolete!

I'm wondering what everybody thinks about this,

Cheers David.P

Quote
David.P
FF3 runs beautifully, feels actually crisper than good old K-Meleon

Use FF3 if it is better for You!

Quote
David.P
takes much less CPU and RAM (can be easily below 50MB with several tabs open)

Unlikely.

(To build the same functionality?! AFAIK Firefox by construction needs smaller amounts of CPU and more RAM.)

p.s. FF3 has GRE 1.9.x which is more modern.
K-Meleon uses only GRE components needed for a browser.
I use P III 500 with 192 MB RAM, here the reduction makes K-Meleon with GRE 1.8.x about as fast.

GRE 1.9.1 will even have much faster JavaScript. It is used in dev versions now.
GRE 1.9.1 will greatly increase K-Meleon's speed. Pre-release K-Meleon components for GRE 1.9.x are in use in Hao's CCF versions. I just wanted to mention it - case You need more speed.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2008 12:39PM by guenter.

Thanks guenter, for the reply.

I don't quite get what all those figures mean over there.

Anyway, here's just the numbers from Task Manager:

K-Meleon, 61MB:


Firefox 3, 39MB:


And if Firefox is simply minimized, it gets down to like below 10MB!

Cheers David.P



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2008 02:45PM by guenter.

Holy whilikers! Is that FF 3.0.5 or 3.1beta? How long was Kmeleon running, and how much browsing had taken place before the screen captures? It should be identical for this reading to be meaningful, methinks.

My thoughts also, jmillar. Minimize them both, then bring them up and make your measurements. They will either be similar, or K-M will maintain a smaller footprint longer.

Dieses Topic ist Asbach. Wenn Firefox bei dir besser läuft... Es kommt bei der Browserwahl stark darauf an, was man meist macht.

Du hast übrigens einen Firefox Portable benutzt, nimmt bitte einen K-Meleon mit den gleichen Cache Einstellungen. Z. B. einen identisch eingestellten Portable.

Die Zahlen: verschiedene Browser - Testzeiten: kleiner = besser.

I do not argue.
If Firefox runs better for You and Your PC - You use Firefox.
If K-Meleon runs better for me and my PC - I use K-Meleon.

Much depends on what You generally do.

A last test.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1a2pre) Gecko K-Meleon/1.5.0 (= an older K-Meleon.exe for 1.9 Protoptype)

This GRE was started with the appropriate FF and K-Meleon version from the same folder (the later use 5 MB less 167/162 respectively). Actually the value for RAM in the test should have been the identical. Procedere: Start go > Google maps go > wolfenbüttel. Make sure both have the same cache settings and delete/clear caches.

Cave this test was run with a complete Firefox chrome!
You would have to compare Firefox2 with K-Meleon1.5.

K-Meleon's normal chromes are much smaller.
& I am certain abour chrome sizes - I personally trimm them.


p.s. The numbers on the linked Test Chart mean that K-Meleon for 1.9 was (at the time of the tests) the fastest overall browser on earth when run with GRE 1.9.1.xpre.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2008 04:50PM by guenter.

Well I'll have to try a portable version of K-Meleon then...

It was just that it was slow down to un-usability for me (e.g. when loading a tab in the background, the foreground tab would be unresponsive etc.)

Anyway, the screenshots were taken after just starting the respective browser, opening the respective same tabs, minimizing and then re-maximizing the browser.

Cheers David.P

David,

AFAIK: K-Meleon is not obsolete!

Portable? No You only need to set identical values for memory and hdd cache.
You should not minimize and maximize. Because that flushes RAM.

You need browsers with the same GRE version. Firefox 3 has another GRE version then K-Meleon 1.5. Here I cannot get Firefox 2 started - How do You do?

Firefox GRE includes components for Thunderbird... (keyword XUL runner)
K-Meleon GRE includes only browser components and is therefore smaller.

I know FFox, SeaMonk, TBird, Xulrunner... and K-Meleon chromes.
I trim these chromes for K-Meleon since 2005 or so. Ours are all smaller.

Chrome -> it is loaded! A "out of the box" Firefox already has several more MB.
You have to install several Firefox extensions with lots of additional MB chrome to get the same functionality. Remember:"To build the same functionality?!"
Else You would have to deactivate several kplugins to lower the "out of the box" functionality to a mere FF level.

p.s.: please use Forum search for more info on testing, browser speeds: Firefox, Opera, KHTML, Safari, Google chrome, Iron ...

If Firefox runs better for You and Your PC - You use Firefox.
If K-Meleon runs better for me and my PC - I use K-Meleon.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2008 07:52PM by guenter.

Kmeleon is not obsolete, but FF3 has reached a very good development.

Quote
renuug
...FF3 has reached a very good development.

Yes.

p.s. David, maybe I get other values because I use Process explorer by Sysinternals.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2008 08:05PM by guenter.

Hi Günter,

bist Du zufällig Admin oder Mod?

Könntest Du dann vielleicht die beiden Sceenshots von mir dort oben löschen?

Vielen Dank schonmal und Grüße David



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2008 03:14PM by guenter.

I will not agree that firefox is faster nor better than k-meleon because ive used the new firefox and i ve used kmeleon on my true machine at OC-1 and higher speeds firefox can not handle it it crashes stops freezes and none of the plugins work correct ,to me kmeleon with bugs out performs it 6 to 1. and always will .with firefox my machine feels trapped it trys to control my machine but kmeleon does not.

Quote
mrbig
I will not agree that firefox is faster nor better than k-meleon because ive used the new firefox and i ve used kmeleon on my true machine at OC-1 and higher speeds

You are pointing exactly at what I was trying to tell David.
What browser is best mostly depends on what You are doing, Your machine ...

With the same engine K-Meleon will use less RAM plus be faster by design.
At least during normal browsing. FF3 uses newer engine. It is fast for some things.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2008 06:51PM by guenter.

Guenter,

<<Portable? No You only need to set identical values for memory and hdd cache.
You should not minimize and maximize. Because that flushes RAM.>>

You never know when you're going to learn something new (and good) with KM. Thanks for the tip on memory usage and a Happy New Years to you and yours.

<VBG>

N

Quote
ndebord
You never know when you're going to learn something new ... with KM.

I also picked it up here

And a Happy New Years to you and yours also.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/2009 05:48PM by guenter.

I have but one word:

HA!



A.K.A. Arual the Wyrd

Quote
mrbig
I will not agree that firefox is faster nor better than k-meleon because ive used the new firefox and i ve used kmeleon on my true machine at OC-1 and higher speeds firefox can not handle it it crashes stops freezes and none of the plugins work correct ,to me kmeleon with bugs out performs it 6 to 1. and always will .with firefox my machine feels trapped it trys to control my machine but kmeleon does not.

Totally agree!

I've used K-meleon for many years and also use FF and sadly IE7/8 and in all honesty KM performs far superior than FF and IE due to it been highly configurable, leaner and certainly updated / developed.

KM wins hands down for me, always has done.

Yeah! KM sometimes misbehaves but, certainly not to the level of FF and certainly not IE lol

--
★ e n c o d e r X ★



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2009 10:32PM by encoderX.

firefox was my preferred browser for years, but it is a HOG and a PIG. FF:

• consumes more RAM than any other browser i've tried
• takes longer than km to load
• takes way longer than km to unload (stays in memory, slowing down machine and eating up ram for several minutes after you close it. you can see it in task manager)

km is my favorite browser now. it is fast and light, more features than FF out of the box. rendering is as solid and stable as FF (much more solid clean rendering than IE or chrome, both of which mangle many pages).

km has all the advantages of FF without the drawbacks. i recommend it to everyone.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2009 01:46AM by johnywhy.

Would mods make this one sticky so we do not have to answer to idiot posts like that in ther future please???

Thank you


Nevermind...

To every dumbass out there who would start a topic like that and would make me loose precious time to answer and get my effin` coffe cold in the process..

If you beleive that Firefox running on a 10 yrs old Sony subnotebook with 128MB RAM, 2GB SSD, 400MHz Pentium III Mobile, Windows XP. is is smoother and faster than K-meleon than you are a...read bellow..

Du bist ein dummkopf..

Eres más tonto que un bocado en la polla..

You just have a brain fart..

Vous êtes un idiot...

Esti batut in cap...




Why ??? lemme show you why...

On my computer ...7 years old 1200 MHz 736 MB RAM

Latest firefox as you can see in the first picture below on the bottom of the screen downloaded half of hour ago....



Firefox acts like a Vacuum effing cleaner sucking up all my resurces....turning my extremly tweaked laptop in a slugghis creature..that takes 3 minutes for a ALT +TAB to take effect

The test has been made today 15 minutes ago...I went to the Youtube...(Did not even dared to approach resurces intensive sites like BBCiPlayer of Chanel 4 on demand ) and opened both of the browesers on the same page ...Both of them only one tab...With Firfox...God protect you if you dare to open more than 2 and you do not have a 3000 MHz and 4 GB RAM...

The results of the test speaks for itself...It is said that a picture is worth thousands words...

See the pics









For those who does have a problem in reading i will state THE FACTS AGAIN...

ONLY ONE OPEN TAB EACH....FIREFOX NEEDS 111 MB OF RAM WHEREAS K-MELEON 33 MB OF RAM AND THE PEAK USAGE WOULD BE 38 MB RAM...











EDIT:

At JohnHell`s request i added two more photos featuring the "Mem Usage" and the "Virtual Memory Size"


For those that would bother to check will see the way firfox draines my memory resurces with only one open window....

You might want to notice that i clicked on show process from all the users and that in my task bar under the proccesses section there are not so many of them...Meaning most of my services are set on disabled and all my memory hungry eye candy is gone..The firefox i tested is a "out of the box firefox " with no adds on no tool bars plugins and other extension that might increase even more the memory usage..Just imagine what the memory usage it would look like on a firefox with all kinds of add ons, extensions and other bollocks the usual firefox freak happly instales because it`s cool ...and rad...








My favorite forums
http://www.graphixanstuff.com
http://www.closeprotectionworld.co.uk/index.php?referrerid=11530



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2009 11:32AM by Gorilla no baka.

I shouldn't answer as both of you are doing to a very old topic, but, just a note to Gorilla.

You are monitoring only the RAM (current and peak) but not the total used, just the physical memory, by the program.

This doesn't invalidate your exposition, Firefox still use much memory, but to measure and estimate (as you must understand both registers) the total amount of memory, you need the "Mem Usage" and the "Virtual Memory Size" assigned to the process. Then you can say the real amount of memory a process is using.

Quote
JohnHell
I shouldn't answer as both of you are doing to a very old topic, but, just a note to Gorilla.

You are monitoring only the RAM (current and peak) but not the total used, just the physical memory, by the program.

This doesn't invalidate your exposition, Firefox still use much memory, but to measure and estimate (as you must understand both registers) the total amount of memory, you need the "Mem Usage" and the "Virtual Memory Size" assigned to the process. Then you can say the real amount of memory a process is using.

Nice one...i did not want to cluter the task manager window...But Yeah i guess you are right both about taskmgr and the old topic stuff...As i wrote in the post i did not have time to drink my morning coffe...

Lemme boot into Windowx XP partition and i will update the screen shots...(PNG as allways which makes the pictures 180 KB each...:cool


My favorite forums
http://www.graphixanstuff.com
http://www.closeprotectionworld.co.uk/index.php?referrerid=11530

HOWEVER, KM still suffers from a memory-management problem.

after using KM, with one window open, several tabs, for about 24 hours, on many sites, it's RAM was up to 211 megs. KM started to slow down my computer.

then i restarted KM, restoring same session with session Saver, and KM's RAM is only 33 Megs-- with the same 6 tabs open.

5 minutes later it's up to 66 Megs, with only trivial browsing (to this forum, on 1 new tab).

Like Firefox, it's memory footprint seems to grow over time. Not as fast, and not as big, but still an issue.

Could it do some sort of memory cleanup every few seconds or minutes? Is there a plugin for that? I think there is a firefox memory cleanup plugin, would that work? (i think memory management should be in the core, not a plugin).



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2009 02:03AM by johnywhy.

It is like with Firefox a feature of the GRE.
GRE vendor/maker think unused mem is idle mem.
You have to change GRE to webkit or whatever to avoid.

Your comments show that K-Meleon is not bleeding = making mem unusable so that the OS has to be started again or a special memory manager is needed to free memory.

p.s.I find the idea funny, that an application and not the OS is responsible for memory management and should do a memory cleanup periodically before it is shut down. Cleaning memory periodically is the job of a dedicated memory manager. & that is AFAIK a different application. K-Meleon has no mail client either.

A memory manager that does the job You describe was last needed when You watched lake applets on win 9X - that OS needed an application to free mem. Maybe there are GRE settings to limit the grabbing of idle memory but I have not looked for them. There is simply no reason to stop it when no other application is used, and if another is used - it is OS job to manage multi tasking.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2009 07:05AM by guenter.

this is the only gecko memory tweak i know of
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Config.trim_on_minimize

it makes ff release memory on minimise..since it's already default behaviour, i think it has no affect on km

there's a memory management extension on the dev page.. with a live memory monitor and can be used to detect over usage to automatically minimise

http://kmext.sourceforge.net/ext5.htm

i tried the km memory plugin.

--my km was up to 150 megs in task manager.
--i clicked 'memory release' in the memory manager.
--after done, km was still using 150 megs. no change.
--then i restarted km, with same tabs using session manager.
--on restart, km was using 90 megs.

seems restarting km is currently only way to release unused km memory.

this seems awfully lot for kmeleon..how many tabs were open? something is not right.. mine never exceeds 50mb with about 6-7 tabs..even with hefty js.. only the flash plugin will make the memory hit the roof like that but this is not really kmeleon related even if the memory is assigned to kmeleon, it's actually flash npswf32.dll that's using that memory through kmeleon.. for proper memory reading, making sure no page is using flash(especially actionscript flash, games etc) or any np plugin for that matter.

the memory release has a bug as it only works with windows classic theme and not with luna xp or aero or any other non-classic because it calculates the minimise button position on the titlebar and i couldn't do it for aero etc because their bitmapped buttons are bigger and out of place.. if your browser didn't minimise whilst releasing memory that means it's not working...the very baroque method to automate find and click on the button is because win sw_minimize command does not release the memory for some odd reason and only actually clicking on the button releases.. also note, releasing memory has very little to almost no effect if a page is using the flash plugin especially if it's actionscript flash

May i ask a question as well??

Did you (or anyone in your house ) by any chance messed with "set priority" function??

Because that would explain some of the "symptoms" so to speak...If the priority is set on "above normal" "High" "Real time" that yeah...

Otherwise i can not see why your lisard would act that strange...


My favorite forums
http://www.graphixanstuff.com
http://www.closeprotectionworld.co.uk/index.php?referrerid=11530

Quote
johnywhy
seems restarting km is currently only way to release unused km memory.

This isn't really, K-Meleon release memory when you minimized the KM window.

K-Meleon in Spanish

Quote
Gorilla no baka
May i ask a question as well??

Did you (or anyone in your house ) by any chance messed with "set priority" function??

Because that would explain some of the "symptoms" so to speak...If the priority is set on "above normal" "High" "Real time" that yeah...

Otherwise i can not see why your lisard would act that strange...

Memory usage is not related with priority and/or affinity. But beware, NEVER, assign real-time cpu time for a process. The probabilities of freeze (not necessary crash) increase exponentially.

Disrupted explains the common problems with memory usage.