Switching to Opera: It's Time to Break up with Chrome and All the RAM It Eats Up

Megalith

Megalith

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While I hate seeing all of the duplicate Chrome entries in Task Manager, I have not experienced what this guy is complaining about: Google’s browser, he claims, uses so much RAM that it is practically unusable. The author urges everyone to switch to Opera, which supposedly performs flawlessly in comparison, particularly in regard to handling large numbers of tabs. Is this just a clever ad for the new update, “Reborn,” or is Opera really the right alternative? The browser was bought by a Chinese consortium last year for $600 million.

…if you like opening more than a couple tabs at once, Google Chrome is not the browser for you. Over the last few years, I have grown endlessly frustrated with Chrome's resource management, especially on MacOS. Admittedly, I open too many tabs, but I'd wager that a lot of you do, too. With Chrome, my computer crawls to complete unusability multiple times a day. After one too many times of having to go into Activity Monitor to find that one single Chrome tab is using several gigs of RAM, I decided enough was enough. I switched to Opera, a browser I had previously thought was only for contrarians.
 
I have used Opera exclusively for about 4 years now for all of my computers. While it does create multiple threads, and uses more RAM than I think it should (I'm by no means a Browser expert and have no idea what an ideal amount would be), I switched to it from Firefox, and since then my experience has been flawless. For the last year or so, it's included a built in Ad blocker (I white-list Hardocp and the Hard Forum :) ) which is nice as well. I find it very stable, and have very few issues with crashing like I was with Firebox.

It's a shame that Firefox went the way it did, I had been using it since version .8 back when it was supposed to be a lightweight browser compared to running full Mozilla. I've had nothing but frustrating experiences with Chrome.
 
The reasons to not use Chrome are pretty clear. I'm not sure why one would use Opera over Firefox though.

Showbiz said:
I switched to it from Firefox, and since then my experience has been flawless. For the last year or so, it's included a built in Ad blocker (I white-list Hardocp and the Hard Forum :) ) which is nice as well. I find it very stable, and have very few issues with crashing like I was with Firebox.

It's a shame that Firefox went the way it did
Click to expand...

I have not had Firefox crash in over a year, and I'm on the Beta update channel even. I tried Opera and firefox was actually faster on my computer. Have you used Firefox since they drastically increased multi-threading? (Version 48 and above IIRC)
 
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GotNoRice said:
The reasons to not use Chrome are pretty clear. I'm not sure why one would use Opera over Firefox though.



I have not had Firefox crash in over a year, and I'm on the Beta update channel even. I tried Opera and firefox was actually faster on my computer. Have you used Firefox since they drastically increased multi-threading? (Version 48 and above IIRC)
Click to expand...

Honestly I haven't even looked back. Firefox could very well be superior to opera, but since I switched 4 years ago, and it's be working flawlessly for me since then, I haven't had a reason to look again. If an Opera update breaks something for me, I'll give Firefox another try, but for now I just have no reason to risk losing time at work having to re-login, and reload everything.
 
The root problem is the way all browsers are designed. In order to get around old Win32 address limitations (2GB per app), browsers had an unhealthy habit of creating multiple processes, as each PROCESS could individually address up to 2GB. Problem is, there's a lot of duplication you have to do as a part of that, all of which eats up additional RAM. Obviously, this is no longer a concern on x86-64 based platforms.

"Oh, but security". No; there's no technical reason why you can't have the same level of security through proper use of threading. Each tab gets managed by one primary thread. Simple. No reason to duplicate the entire Windows API in memory every time I clock "Add New Tab".
 
I use slim jet (based on chrome) but I have noticed that I still can easily use 1-2 GB Ram with 10-30 tabs open, sometimes 3 GB

Not as bad as IE was pre-Windows 11, I'd get up to 11-18 GB of Ram lol.

But, I have 32 GB of Ram so I'm not really running into walls or anything

It's not like it really does anything to slow down my experience, and when I game or what not it doesn't get in the way. If for some reason I needed that extra 2-3 GB back I'd just close the windows, but even on smaller 16 GB systems I've never noticed an issue
 
I don't get the whole "I have to have 80+ Tabs open!" Like it's some super user status thing.

Just shows to me a messy unorganised mind that loves to wait while 80+ tabs populate when they open a browser and then moan when their machine runs out of ram.

On a bad day I may go to 9-10 tabs. Average is three to four. That's it.
 
And I'm reading this in a Chrome window and have had no issues for quite some time. That being said, I have seen it remain open in task manager after I close it and have no windows open. And yes, there is usually one of them, I think it is the actually running one, using up more resources than the other copies. I suspect this is by design. When you kill that one, it kills all the rest. I used to run the precursor to Firefox, and had issues back then with it, but I'm sure it has changed a lot since I last really used it. I do use it for my gaming sites, as I like the "keep the same tabs open between closings" aspect.

Tried Opera a few times, am playing with Vivaldi and Neon, which is Opera kinda... I'll download the stable build of Opera now to play with, but frankly, I keep returning to Chrome for day to day use. Kind of a shame, as I would actually like to remove google and amazon from my life in places they have too much info from already, even though I fully suspect it is way too late to worry about those 2 companies knowing what I buy or look at.
 
daglesj said:
I don't get the whole "I have to have 80+ Tabs open!" Like it's some super user status thing.

Just shows to me a messy unorganised mind that loves to wait while 80+ tabs populate when they open a browser and then moan when their machine runs out of ram.

On a bad day I may go to 9-10 tabs. Average is three to four. That's it.
Click to expand...

I never have understood that either... who the f keeps that many tabs open, and for what purpose.

They make medicine for that kind of behavior :D
 
All that memory duplication that Chrome does is part of it's sandboxing to protect you.

You don't want protection, then have them run 1 DLL that saves memory but has access to multiple processes so it can corrupt your OS with a virus.
 
All the browsers seem to be getting shittier.

As far as opera goes, I've used opera for so long I actually PAID for it. At least since version 3. The New opera, unless they changed something really, really recently has lost almost all the features that made opera nice, and is just a skin on the chrome engine. The only reason I still run it is because it at least appears to have been chrome the good version. However, it seems the version I am on has some sort of bug where text entry boxes can lag out the browser ot near unusableness if you have various web sites loaded up. Also checking just now, it seemed to have broken update checks too because I'm no longer in sync.

Firefox is mostly firefox, but more bloaty than ever with the same old mozilla holy war issues. It does seem to be the most stable, but will eventually need a restart or crash.

IE 11 is the same steaming pile it has always been. But thanks MS for making it necessary to keep around becuase of activeX bullshit you won't update in O365 administration interfaces.

Chrome seems to have moved to all beta all the time!!!! WTF google? I keep a copy around to check compatibility with things, but it seems to really not get along with a bunch of stuff randomly. I'm not sure how one can justify the state of this browser with the notion that chromeOS and the web being the OS is a thing.

Edge seems to render ok, but the UI/UX is shit. It also crashes more than it should.

I'm looking at the state of vivaldi again.
 
You know, I was sort of following the majority of this author's Opera fluff piece right up until, near the end, he showed his browser with 65 tabs open and he admitted that he regularly "taxes" his machine like that.

You clearly have no clue how to use a computer if you think having 65 tabs open is somehow necessary to be productive. His poor little Mac deserves to grind to a halt.
 
daglesj said:
I don't get the whole "I have to have 80+ Tabs open!" Like it's some super user status thing.

Just shows to me a messy unorganised mind that loves to wait while 80+ tabs populate when they open a browser and then moan when their machine runs out of ram.

On a bad day I may go to 9-10 tabs. Average is three to four. That's it.
Click to expand...

jlbenedict said:
I never have understood that either... who the f keeps that many tabs open, and for what purpose.

They make medicine for that kind of behavior :D
Click to expand...

Some us who work remotely 100%, have to by necessity.... you know for work?

Here's my boiler plate to start my day:
2 or 3 tabs of the company intranet so I can have access to several Tours for our electronic filing system and HR stuff
Sharepoint
Groupon Merchant Center
Report Pro (old Ticketmaster) so I can pull old school audits and caudits
3 or 4 instances of TMOne (new ticketmaster)
Outbox (Veritix)
Comcast Tix
Concur
BofA works
Amex V payment
Oanda

All of these run in a browser, there is literally no other way to access these systems. And that's a minimum. Add on H forum, probably Facebook, and a youtube/pandora stream, I'm probably sitting somewhere around 20 tabs all day.

Now when I'm not at work, or just fucking around, i'll have between 1-4 tabs open usually.
 
Im a tab whore and regularly leave a dozen or three tabs open at all tabs and can see a high usage of RAM, but I understand that.
Seeing as how a Chinese company bought Opera I will never use that product as Im sure The Chinese govt has their dirty little hands in user data (not that Google isn't looking at browsing data).
 
I'm back on Firefox after about... 12 years of Chrome.
 
I tried it, doesn't jive with me. Too accustomed to my Firefox, Custom ui, and extensions. I have over 100 tabs open at all times, uses anywhere from 2.5 - 4Gb memory :D
 
Sonicks said:
You know, I was sort of following the majority of this author's Opera fluff piece right up until, near the end, he showed his browser with 65 tabs open and he admitted that he regularly "taxes" his machine like that.

You clearly have no clue how to use a computer if you think having 65 tabs open is somehow necessary to be productive. His poor little Mac deserves to grind to a halt.
Click to expand...
I see this all the time when people complain about Google's memory management. At most I'll have a dozen tabs open. It's like when people complain about a game performing poorly and/or crashing and it turns out they have Chrome running in the background with 30+ tabs, have music playing, have 3-4 different text and voice chat programs running, are recording and/or encoding video... all at the same time they're trying to play a game.
 
65 TABS, JEEZ wtf is he doing?

at MOST i have had about 10-15 tabs open and that is when i am doing research for street layouts in boston ma... 1 tab for the main search result, then one tab each- for a pdf- of that individual street layout... once i hit tabs going across my screen on my browser (i use firefox for most things) i start closing the one's that i have finished with to get back down to 1-2 so i can keep the print settings i have for those pages...

there have been a few instances where i accidentally opened 30+ but once i realize what i did, i start closing the tabs asap.

typically i have 3-4 tabs open max.
 
Showbiz said:
Some us who work remotely 100%, have to by necessity.... you know for work?

Here's my boiler plate to start my day:
2 or 3 tabs of the company intranet so I can have access to several Tours for our electronic filing system and HR stuff
Sharepoint
Groupon Merchant Center
Report Pro (old Ticketmaster) so I can pull old school audits and caudits
3 or 4 instances of TMOne (new ticketmaster)
Outbox (Veritix)
Comcast Tix
Concur
BofA works
Amex V payment
Oanda

All of these run in a browser, there is literally no other way to access these systems. And that's a minimum. Add on H forum, probably Facebook, and a youtube/pandora stream, I'm probably sitting somewhere around 20 tabs all day.

Now when I'm not at work, or just fucking around, i'll have between 1-4 tabs open usually.
Click to expand...

Dude, I'm no stranger to sites like this when I'm at work but I only ever run 4 tabs at once...and two of them are usually the [H] front page and the forum. If I'm being very workhorse heavy, I may have up to 8 open but never more than 10. Every other intranet resource that I utilize at work is right beneath Chrome's address box in the Favorites bar for quick access. "Preloading" all of them would be a waste of my PCs resources. I never have every thing I need running at once in Chrome. My work PC drags ass as it is with Outlook, SQL Studio, a few company proprietary apps, and multiple RDP connections.

I guess if you work remote it can be slightly different but I still don't see why you'd need all them open at once. Again, I don't see any benefit to preloading sites because I know I'll use them at some later point. This is why I have the bookmarks bar with all the important work stuff visible to me up front.
 
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I have well over 100, maybe 150. I have a massive backlog of articles to read some well over a year to get to. Someti mes i just have to go through and speed read when it gets ridiculous just to close some out. But if i just book mark stuff i'll never get to it.

Plus there are a ton of things i need quick access to reference ect.
 
Use Brave. Developed by Brendan Eich, who was railroaded out of Mozilla by SJWs back when Firefox was still worth using.
 
Proper sand boxing has its drawbacks, it's why chrome, opera, edge and ie love to eat memory overhead per tab is huge because of that security. It's also why Opera, which uses chrome as a base eats up alot of memory it's hardly any better lol.
 
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jlbenedict said:
I never have understood that either... who the f keeps that many tabs open, and for what purpose.

They make medicine for that kind of behavior :D
Click to expand...
Seriously it is also quicker to use a bookmark to get to the page you want w/o digging through 80 tabs to find what you looking for.
 
vegeta535 said:
Seriously it is also quicker to use a bookmark to get to the page you want w/o digging through 80 tabs to find what you looking for.
Click to expand...
It's really not. In fact i find it quicker just to Google some stuff, even though i know i have it bookmarked somwhere.
Guess it also depends on how many bookmarks you have :D
 
vegeta535 said:
Seriously it is also quicker to use a bookmark to get to the page you want w/o digging through 80 tabs to find what you looking for.
Click to expand...
Yup I've found ui elements speeddail like tacked onto new tabs the best for it. Have my most common places I go to all bookmarked there quick and easy, i close tabs as soon as i'm done with them. That with proper session management tools cuts down a lot of what i actually need open. Usually only have around 10-20 tabs open at a time.

If people want to continue with crappy habits they just need to pay the not so steep price of just buying more ram. It's not like you have to break the bank to get 16+ gigs of ram now of days.
 
vegeta535 said:
Seriously it is also quicker to use a bookmark to get to the page you want w/o digging through 80 tabs to find what you looking for.
Click to expand...

I often have tabs open to things to remind me to read or its a page I need to reference but don't want to log in each time. Or component data sheets and crosses will easily create 30 tabs in 10 minutes that I look at over a couple hours, then I get tasked with something else, so I open a new window with tabs basically to represent a new project current in work.

TL;DR : It really doesn't matter whether people use lots of tabs or don't.
 
Btw you can set tabs to not load until you click them. That along with hotkeys and just scrolling the tab bar which is super speedy. and also having them somewhat ordered makes it basicallly like having visual bookmarks. It's fast for me. I rareley use my bookmarks.
 
Dan_D said:
I've got enough RAM that this isn't an issue or even something I've ever noticed.
Click to expand...

Same here. I mean, I have 16GB and I have never noticed an issue. Also, I am so deeply ingrained into the Google ecosystem that switching to me will never. Being able to have certain tabs open that I need, leaving and then being able to view those same tabs from my phone is great. Also, being able to access all my bookmarks no matter where I am is great. Not to mention that there are Chrome extensions I could not do without; the couple that come sot mind are Hover Zoom which allows me to views images and GIFs without having to click on the pictures and open in a new tab/windows. Black Google home page, black YouTube theme, black chrome theme (easier on the eyes) "Lights Out" which darkens everything around a playing video on a page, YouTube comment disabler which disables comments on all YouTube videos so I am not tempted to read bullshit and can focus on the video, auto tab/page refresher, video downloader, a extension that does a full-page snapshot of the webpage no matter how far I would normally have to scroll... the point is that Chrome is perfect for me. I honestly haven't researched if there are alternatives to these on other browsers because I never even thought of switching because like Dan says the memory issues are not something I ever notice and I honestly never have many tabs open either.
 
Showbiz said:
Some us who work remotely 100%, have to by necessity.... you know for work?

Here's my boiler plate to start my day:
2 or 3 tabs of the company intranet so I can have access to several Tours for our electronic filing system and HR stuff
Sharepoint
Groupon Merchant Center
Report Pro (old Ticketmaster) so I can pull old school audits and caudits
3 or 4 instances of TMOne (new ticketmaster)
Outbox (Veritix)
Comcast Tix
Concur
BofA works
Amex V payment
Oanda

All of these run in a browser, there is literally no other way to access these systems. And that's a minimum. Add on H forum, probably Facebook, and a youtube/pandora stream, I'm probably sitting somewhere around 20 tabs all day.

Now when I'm not at work, or just fucking around, i'll have between 1-4 tabs open usually.
Click to expand...


There's always one...:D
 
Semantics said:
Proper sand boxing has its drawbacks, it's why chrome, opera, edge and ie love to eat memory overhead per tab is huge because of that security. It's also why Opera, which uses chrome as a base eats up alot of memory it's hardly any better lol.
Click to expand...

If you check the PWN2OWN contests sand-boxing in browsers means jackshit. Don't put any faith in that technique.
 
Christ, if I have more than half a dozen tabs open, I'm doing something wrong.
 
All opera's innovators moved to Vivaldi, opera has nothing to offer anymore really other then the name and its legacy. Private tabs still don't exist outside of a addon for a firefox based browsers anymore even though opera originally created it. Firefox alternatives seem to be lighter on ram then either of them anyways.
 
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I think some of us still suffer from early 90's PC phobia. I know I do.

You know when every byte of RAM was sacred so you only ram the bare minimum of software and that 120MB HDD meant that Doom had to remain in a .zip folder so it didn't take up to much space.

I have a 3TB RAID1 NAS and I get the sweats if I have more than 1.2TB of stuff on it (even though I probably have another 10+TB of storage in unused drives on my workbench). I am getting over the RAM issue though. Using as much RAM as possible is a good thing mostly.

Always run lean and mean. Keep your Autoexec.bat and Config.sys optimised to perfection. Old habits...
 
daglesj said:
If you check the PWN2OWN contests sand-boxing in browsers means jackshit. Don't put any faith in that technique.
Click to expand...
Hardly say sandboxing means jackshit when base Chrome was left unexploited this year in the very contest you mentioned.
 
Sonicks said:
You know, I was sort of following the majority of this author's Opera fluff piece right up until, near the end, he showed his browser with 65 tabs open and he admitted that he regularly "taxes" his machine like that.

You clearly have no clue how to use a computer if you think having 65 tabs open is somehow necessary to be productive. His poor little Mac deserves to grind to a halt.
Click to expand...

I kind of get it. Sometimes when I go to "certain websites" for "research" I open a lot of tabs by right clicking and reverse image searching. For science.

Never 65 tabs though.

Just noticed this is a motherboard.com article. Seriously? I come here because I'm an enthusiast, not to waste my time clicking links to motherboard.com.
 
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