Abusive memory usage through X server

[Francis Giraldeau]

Hi,

It seems that Firefox uses a lot of RAM through X server (xorg) under
Linux, when many pages with graphics are opened in tabs, even with
optimisations discussed here :

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_(Firefox)

With linux terminals (like LTSP) the memory used by the X server is
realy an issue, because it can (and will) crash the terminal. The memory
on a terminal is usualy low, and swap by network should be avoided to
prevent network staturation.

Firefox, konqueror, and Mozilla all have this behavior. The only one
that perform well is Opera. The RAM used through X server by this
browser seems to be constant, no matter the number of simultaneous tabs
opened.

Is there any way to avoid this kind of memory problem with Firefox?

Thanks,

--
Francis Giraldeau, Ing jr.
Revolution Linux
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[Tim Howe]

Francis Giraldeau <francis....@revolutionlinux.com> writes:

> It seems that Firefox uses a lot of RAM through X server (xorg) under
> Linux, when many pages with graphics are opened in tabs, even with
> optimisations discussed here :

Not just RAM, but bandwidth. Mozilla apps and Java/Swing are the
absolute worst at running remotely. Some of the Mozilla stuff seems
like it might be able to be optimized away through parallelization,
since I see (just looking at a bandwidth meter) lots of tiny
back-and-forth between the client and the server before the first window
ever even pops up.

Strangely, once a window is mapped interactions with it don't seem out
of the ordinary. Obviously room for improvement, but nothing like at
startup or when a new window is created.

I'd love to assist in tracking this down and improving it but I'd have
no idea where to start. Any ideas? Is anyone already looking into
this?

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