What would be your minimum CPU recommendation for a Linux OS based browser build?

[escrow4]

I wouldn't use a dual core for anything anymore. Especially a desktop. Even smart TVs are going quad. 2 cores will get hammered when you load some fat arse Web 2.0 page even with an ad blocker and ghostery.

 

[crashtech]

Four thread i3s from the last couple generations are still able to hold their own in a home/office productivity machine, but that won't last much longer.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe that's why the Kaby Lake Pentiums (at least one of them) is going to have HyperThreading enabled.

 

[NTMBK]

Snapdragon 400.

 

[cbn]

I wouldn't use a dual core for anything anymore. Especially a desktop. Even smart TVs are going quad. 2 cores will get hammered when you load some fat arse Web 2.0 page even with an ad blocker and ghostery.

What browser do you use?

 

[cbn]

Some additional details on project Quantum from the following Mozilla Wiki page (which included the video linked below):

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum

Of particular interest (at 5:59 in the video below) is the mention of increased CPU power efficiency:

Bascially they took some desktop CPUs and disabled turbo to save power and found they got the same performance with 40% power reduction (due to the increased parallelism).

 

[ninaholic37]

Pentium 3 @800MHz or better should be ok

 

[whm1974]

Pentium 3 @800MHz or better should be ok

Maybe if you are using Puppy or Bodhi Linux, and that still will depend on what applications you using and your workload.

Will most Distros even run on such an old CPU?

 

[escrow4]

What browser do you use?

Chrome since a very long time. I have a cheapo prepaid Android here with a 210 and 1GB of RAM and basic browsing in Chrome and having an additional app open causes the home screen to literally refresh like its 1995 frequently. Don't use it for much so haven't bothered to splurge on another with double the RAM, ROM, and a better quad core. Same point stands with Windows. Apps/software and OSs are getting fat and piggy and you need a base level of hardware just to compensate hence a desktop i5 with a slab of RAM and an SSD to eliminate bottlenecks. A basic dual core in Windows isn't enough for anything. Is simple. I have no idea why people are so tight for an extra few hundred on a box that will be in use near every day until it drops.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Chrome since a very long time. I have a cheapo prepaid Android here with a 210 and 1GB of RAM and basic browsing in Chrome and having an additional app open causes the home screen to literally refresh like its 1995 frequently. Don't use it for much so haven't bothered to splurge on another with double the RAM, ROM, and a better quad core. Same point stands with Windows. Apps/software and OSs are getting fat and piggy and you need a base level of hardware just to compensate hence a desktop i5 with a slab of RAM and an SSD to eliminate bottlenecks. A basic dual core in Windows isn't enough for anything. Is simple. I have no idea why people are so tight for an extra few hundred on a box that will be in use near every day until it drops.

You're using Chrome on an older Android smartphone, as the reasoning behind desktop PCs needing a quad-core to browse? Really???

I don't use trying to install or use Skype and browse in Firefox on a 512MB Android tablet, to claim that you need 16GB of RAM on PC to do the same thing.

Sigh.

Edit: And I do run Skype on my current Android phone, which I think has 1 or 1.5MB of RAM. Runs just fine, for the most part.

 

[Ranulf]

https://brave.com/

Seems to be getting better lately. Win, Mac or Linux.

Is Waterfox any better than Palemoon? On windows I'm usually using FF or PM. I have a 5 year old 2.4ghz i5 laptop that can barely keep up with FF or Chrome. Though I think that is more the intel graphics than anything. 4gb or 8gb of system ram doesn't matter.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Interesting. Never heard of Brave. What browsing engine does it use?

 

[cbn]

Interesting. Never heard of Brave. What browsing engine does it use?

Blink, but the iOS version is based on Firefox:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)

https://github.com/brave/browser-ios

Brave iOS Browser

Download in the App Store

Brave is based on Firefox iOS, most of the Brave-specific code is in the brave dir

These steps should be sufficient to build, but if you need more info, refer to the the Firefox iOS readme

https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios/blob/master/README.md

 

[Sheep221]

I wouldn't use a dual core for anything anymore. Especially a desktop. Even smart TVs are going quad. 2 cores will get hammered when you load some fat arse Web 2.0 page even with an ad blocker and ghostery.

Not all cores are created equal.
CPUs in TVs are very much like those in phones, they do have 4 to 8 cores but combined they are way slower than 1 core of desktop computer. It seems like a no brainer to buy i5s but just for web browsing i3 will do just fine for half the price.

 

[ummduh]

I just built my parents a basic browser build. A4-7300, 4GB RAM (the horror!), 240GB SSD, done.

I ended up shutting off the live window dragging feature in Win7 cuz it really didn't like it, but other than that, it works very well. I didn't even dual channel the RAM, just a single 4GB stick, 1600MHz. I'm not even ashamed. I ran it for a couple days to make sure it'd get the job done and honestly it never got in my way.

My other option was I wanted to try a 5350 build, but I just couldn't pull the trigger.

I can't fathom any average person NEEDING 16GB RAM in a browser computer. I very rarely even stress out 4GB.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I ended up shutting off the live window dragging feature in Win7 cuz it really didn't like it, but other than that, it works very well. I didn't even dual channel the RAM, just a single 4GB stick, 1600MHz.

I think that those two things might be related. My FM1 dual-core APU's scrolling performance under Linux improved noticeably when I put in 2x2GB DDR3-1600, rather than a single 8GB DDR3-1866 stick.

I can't fathom any average person NEEDING 16GB RAM in a browser computer. I very rarely even stress out 4GB.

It depends. For most browsing sessions, unless you open like 100 tabs (and even if you do), you would be hard-pressed to exceed 4GB of RAM. But when you're running Flash Player, leaving the browser open and the computer running for a week at a time, with Windows Update churning away in the background, yeah, better get at least 8GB.

 

[Torn Mind]

I just built my parents a basic browser build. A4-7300, 4GB RAM (the horror!), 240GB SSD, done.

I ended up shutting off the live window dragging feature in Win7 cuz it really didn't like it, but other than that, it works very well. I didn't even dual channel the RAM, just a single 4GB stick, 1600MHz. I'm not even ashamed. I ran it for a couple days to make sure it'd get the job done and honestly it never got in my way.

My other option was I wanted to try a 5350 build, but I just couldn't pull the trigger.

I can't fathom any average person NEEDING 16GB RAM in a browser computer. I very rarely even stress out 4GB.

I have 33 Chrome tabs open with 9.1 GBs in RAM and 13.7 GBs total amount of data in memory. For Chrome sesssions, any excess is dumped into the pagefile. The SSD provides for faster paging than a HDD, thus masking the symptoms of browser accessing your drive. I also disabled Chrome's auto tab shutdown because I don't want my tabs being wiped out and the refreshed upon click. Yes, some people want to preserve the tabs in the background instead having them auto blanked out.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Same as for Windows. i3 or better, ssd, 16GB RAM.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I ended up shutting off the live window dragging feature in Win7 cuz it really didn't like it, but other than that, it works very well. I didn't even dual channel the RAM, just a single 4GB stick, 1600MHz. I'm not even ashamed. I ran it for a couple days to make sure it'd get the job done and honestly it never got in my way.

I think that those two things might be related. My FM1 dual-core APU's scrolling performance under Linux improved noticeably when I put in 2x2GB DDR3-1600, rather than a single 8GB DDR3-1866 stick.

AMD APUs really like dual channel, preferably with double-rank DIMMs, when you use the IGP. Single channel memory just cripples AMDs memory controller.

With Intel you can get away with single channel, but only if you don't use the IGP.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah. I just re-built this entry-level rig to sell, it's using a Winsis mini-DTX case (though with only one expansion slot, it's an ITX case that takes a mini-DTX mobo too, and this mobo is an ECS H81 board that is mini-DTX), and I reduced the RAM from 2x8GB DDR3L-1600, to 1x4GB DDR3-1600, and reduced the SSD from a 240GB MLC, to a 120GB TLC. Just put Linux Mint 18 Mate on it.

It's running really well. The scrolling isn't glass-smooth, like it is with a video card in Windows, but it's fairly snappy still, probably due to the Haswell Celeron G1820 CPU. I don't think that the single-channel RAM is holding back the IGP all that much. Yeah, scrolling could probably be smoother, but the difference isn't quite as much night-and-day as it was on the AMD FM1 APU (between single- and dual-channel RAM using iGPU).

 

[DrMrLordX]

Pentium 3 @800MHz or better should be ok

Er . . . maybe not. I've had a lot of experience lately with stripped-down Lubuntu machines running on old Stars chips (Phenom, Phenom II) and basic Firefox sessions can be a nightmare. Granted some of it is due to the slow-as-balls storage, but even with the browser fully loaded and no swapping it's still clunky. Flash-heavy sites? Hell no, they won't go.

Maybe if you are using Puppy or Bodhi Linux, and that still will depend on what applications you using and your workload.

Will most Distros even run on such an old CPU?

Most, no. You have to use a 32-bit distro naturally, and you really need one of the stripped-down distros. Like Puppy. Lubuntu and Xubuntu might work too.

 

[cbn]

An article on Firefox that mentions some new tech (the servo engine) that goes beyond Electrolysis :

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/firefox-quantum-leap-performance-security,32938.html

Second Step: Gradual Adoption Of Servo Components And The Rust Language

In 2013, Mozilla started developing the Servo browser engine in the Rust language, as a research alternative to its in-production Gecko engine. The new engine aimed to eliminate entire classes of bugs such as buffer overflows by utilizing Rust, which is thread- and memory-safe, and also see what could be done with a brand new browser engine that doesn’t need to support any legacy code.

Due to the focus of Rust on high-parallelism, Servo can take advantage of all of a CPU’s threads to load a page. Therefore, it can increase the performance of page loads by up to 4x for many users of multi-core computers and devices.

Servo vs Gecko time to load page (less is better)For now, Servo itself remains a continuously developed research project, but Mozilla doesn’t plan to replace Gecko with Servo anytime soon. Instead, the organization seems to have adopted a more modular (and gradual) approach by replacing Gecko components with Servo components one by one.
Mozilla is internally calling this project “Quantum,” referring to the “quantum leap” in performance it expects Firefox to gain once enough of Servo’s components have been added to the browser.

"We are striving for performance gains from Quantum that will be so noticeable that your entire web experience will feel different,” said David Bryant, Head of Platform Engineering at Mozilla, in a Medium post.

“Pages will load faster, and scrolling will be silky smooth. Animations and interactive apps will respond instantly, and be able to handle more intensive content while holding consistent frame rates. And the content most important to you will automatically get the highest priority, focusing processing power where you need it the most,” he added.

Bryant also said that the plan is to rethink and re-engineer foundational building blocks of the browser engine used by Mozilla, with much of the work already being done by the Servo team and the community behind it. Electrolysis has also been an important precursor step because Firefox's new multi-process architecture will help the highly-parallelized Servo code to maximize the performance of the Firefox browser.

Very pleased with FireFox 57 Developer edition I downloaded to my workstation yesterday. It is using all eight threads of my processor and the web page loading is much faster than it is in the current mainstream release of Firefox 56 (Firefox 57 for mainstream won't be available until November 14.). .

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...ntum-leap-forward-with-new-developer-edition/

More important, but less immediately visible, is that Firefox 57 has received a ton of performance enhancement. Project Quantum has several strands to it: Mozilla has developed a new CSS engine, Stylo, that parses CSS files, applies the styling rules to elements on the page, and calculates object sizes and positions. There is also a new rendering engine, WebRender, that uses the GPU to draw the (styled) elements of the page. Compositor combines the individual rendered elements and builds them into a complete page, while Quantum DOM changes how JavaScript runs, especially in background tabs. As well as this new development, there's a final part, Quantum Flow, which has focused on fixing bugs and adding optimizations to those parts of the browser that aren't being redeveloped.

WebRender is due to arrive in Firefox 59, but the rest of Quantum is part of Firefox 57.

With this noted It will be interesting to hear how Firefox 57 (and later) run on 15W AMD and Intel 4C/8T laptop processors (especially when WebRender comes).

 

[R0H1T]

Very pleased with FireFox 57 Developer edition I downloaded to my workstation yesterday. It is using all eight threads of my processor and the web page loading is much faster than it is in the current mainstream release of Firefox 56 (Firefox 57 for mainstream won't be available until November 14.). .

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...ntum-leap-forward-with-new-developer-edition/



With this noted It will be interesting to hear how Firefox 57 (and later) run on 15W AMD and Intel 4C/8T laptop processors (especially when WebRender comes).

Didn't es10 enable that before the switch to servo?

There are webrender builds available right now, you can try them & see the results yourself.

 

[coercitiv]

Very pleased with FireFox 57 Developer edition I downloaded to my workstation yesterday. It is using all eight threads of my processor and the web page loading is much faster than it is in the current mainstream release of Firefox 56 (Firefox 57 for mainstream won't be available until November 14.).

With this noted It will be interesting to hear how Firefox 57 (and later) run on 15W AMD and Intel 4C/8T laptop processors (especially when WebRender comes).

Yup, ever since I heard about the beta I switched on all my machines and it's been a great experience. I can tell you my i7 4510U laptop feels miles faster, especially when running on battery. (when plugged in it was already configured to keep clocks at 2.6Ghz).

Didn't es10 enable that before the switch to servo?

es10 used a separate thread for the UI with the aim of improving responsiveness. Personally I saw little gains in browsing speed with es10 enabled, rendering pages was still a mainly ST heavy activity. It did however stop FF from freezing the UI while rendering pages at startup.

With the new build there are many changes to how tabs are handled, FF is finally making use of modern CPUs: CSS render is multithreaded, tabs have their own thread and background tabs are managed in such a way as to give performance priority to foreground tab. The result in render speed makes FF subjectively equal to Chrome.

There were other performance issues with the older FF builds that were not render related - using a synced profile ended up making FF crawl while starting even on a fast SSD (lots of disk activity, some related to session backup, some not). The new version feels like a clean install even though I'm using the same old profile, with the same addons. Something was broken in the old versions and got fixed with this major update.

Last but not least, the cleaner UI is a welcome addition, and browser syncing is improved, with better UX.

Mozilla did a great job.

 

[TeknoBug]

I have an i3 6100U NUC with 8GB ram, handles pretty much everything that gets thrown at Vivaldi or Chrome.

Although if you play games on Facebook (most of which uses Flash), it will heat up the NUC and cause it to reboot or behave funny.

One issue I have with Firefox is the edit box in Livefyre discussion threads, when typing more than 3 lines it constantly scrolls back up so I can't see my text below 3 lines.