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Topic: Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light (Read 1068 times) previous topic - next topic
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Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light

Hey again everyone! I thought I'd make this post to let you guys know about this internet browser Microsoft Edge. I couldn't watch Odysee.com videos on my dual-core 2GHz 2GB RAM@667MHz piece of crap I have with Chromium, but guess what?! Microsoft Edge runs way less RAM so I can watch Odysee.com easy, and have pidgin open!

It feels sort of dirty using something Microsoft made, but to be honest I have no other choice if I want to watch that one website. I'm kind of impressed Microsoft actually made something good for once. I hear its built on Chromium, but for some reason it works better. Any insight into why it works better if that is indeed true?

Re: Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light

Reply #1 –
It could have improved or just enabled HW acceleration for video decoding.

The best way on such machine is to download the video and watch it in your media player which will try to use HW acceleration and I bet is more lightweight when it comes to video playbaks than any browser out there.

Re: Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light

Reply #2 –
@kenny_w You should ask yourself two things when it comes to software (especially web browsers):

  • Is the software using a Free license, preferably GPL-compatible?
  • Is the software's source code publicly available?

If the answer to any of the above questions is no, it is recommended to avoid the said software.

For web browsers, see also:

Re: Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light

Reply #3 –
Quote from: strajder – on
@kenny_w You should ask yourself two things when it comes to software (especially web browsers):
  • Is the software using a Free license, preferably GPL-compatible?
  • Is the software's source code publicly available?
This. If it's closed source, then all your data have already been transmitted to its author. Pic related, bottom frame true for linux running skype or other closed source cr-apps.

Re: Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light

Reply #4 –
Chromium used less than 400MB RAM to watch an odysee.com video in a single tab when I tried, total including Mate desktop was under 800MB, you probably have some bug or problem specific to your OS, HW and that website.

Re: Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light

Reply #5 –
Quote from: strajder – on
@kenny_w You should ask yourself two things when it comes to software (especially web browsers):

  • Is the software using a Free license, preferably GPL-compatible?
  • Is the software's source code publicly available?

If the answer to any of the above questions is no, it is recommended to avoid the said software.

For web browsers, see also:


isn't it open-source if its based on Chromium?

https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge

its on github apparently

Re: Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light

Reply #6 –
Quote from: SGOrava – on
It could have improved or just enabled HW acceleration for video decoding.

The best way on such machine is to download the video and watch it in your media player which will try to use HW acceleration and I bet is more lightweight when it comes to video playbaks than any browser out there.

can't open a livestream in VLC that way.

Re: Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light

Reply #7 –
Quote from: ####### – on
Chromium used less than 400MB RAM to watch an odysee.com video in a single tab when I tried, total including Mate desktop was under 800MB, you probably have some bug or problem specific to your OS, HW and that website.

I doubt it. Chromium uses way more RAM & that's a fact, I've checked.

Re: Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light

Reply #8 –
Quote from: kenny_w – on

isn't it open-source if its based on Chromium?

https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge

its on github apparently
See the other pages I linked. Privacy is also important, along with software freedom. Chromium by default doesn't respect privacy. Projects like Ungoogled Chromium exist to remove or disable Google's privacy-intruding code.

P.S: I find Microsoft's new "Open Source-oriented" policy distasteful. It's like they try different strategies to gain control, and since brute force confrontational approach failed, this is part of that latest strategy, "join them", along with "WSL" and VS Code. Avoid.

Re: Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light

Reply #9 –
Actually that was ungoogled-chromium to be precise, but Firefox and Waterfox used barely more RAM than that too - I do have ad blockers, perhaps that made a difference - and that was from real life tests using the output of top. I have 8GB RAM, 4 cores, 8 threads, nothing to stop it using much more here if it needed to.  So there's definitely some bug you are experiencing there I think. You have a memory leak somewhere.  (The only other possibility is your setup is using system RAM for graphics RAM like some Intel on chip types without video RAM might do, but it's still using more than I would have expected)

Re: Microsoft Edge turns out to be very light

Reply #10 –
Chromium/Chrome and Firefox are different. Chromium/Chrome uses a separate process to handle each tab whilst Firefox uses a thread. If there's only one tab opened, Chromium/Chrome may use less memory than Firefox. If you open a lot of tabs in the browser, add up, Chromium/Chrome may use more.

MS Edge is built on top of Chromium, user privacy wise, Chromium is bad, Edge is worse.