[PLUG] Re: Firefox Heap Memory Constipation

[John Jason Jordan]

On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 13:09:12 -0700 (PDT)
Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> dijo:

>    What tool displays the memory use of a single application? Top shows only
> those most active processes, and mmap appears not to be on this system
> (although the man page is).

I use gnome-system-monitor, which shows Firefox as currently using
139.6 MB (four tabs open). Second in line is soffice.bin
(OpenOffice.org) at 107.2 MB, which is just its "quickstarter" parts,
since there are no documents currently open. And third is Opera at 49.6
MB (five tabs). You can sort gnome-system-monitor on any of the
headings by clicking on the heading, so you can have all the apps
sorted on memory amount if you wish. Surely in other desktops there is
an equivalent utility?

Since this trhead started I've been watching Firefox (2.0.0.4). The max
memory I've seen it use is 210 MB, and that was with 14 tabs open. It's
true, however, that when I close tabs it doesn't seem to release all
the memory. At the same time, 14 tabs is tops for me. Someone else said
he had a hundred tabs open. How do you even find a tab when you have
that many open?

I must also suggest Opera for those who want something full-featured
but less piggish. It runs slower than Firefox for me, but that's
probably because it's 32-bit and Firefox is 64-bit.