Speed up boot times

Users and developers helping users with generic and technical Pale Moon issues on all operating systems.

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This board is for technical/general usage questions and troubleshooting for the Pale Moon browser only.
Technical issues and questions not related to the Pale Moon browser should be posted in other boards!
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megaman

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by megaman » 2014-01-28, 09:46

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdTclPkj ... e=youtu.be

Temp vid, unlisted so only those with the link can see it.

My timings were off, about 5 - 6 seconds for regular boot.
About 750ms to 1 second to load with Preloader.

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Moonchild
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Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by Moonchild » 2014-01-28, 12:25

link68759 wrote:I have pm set to not load a tab until I selected it, so if I understand this correctly, start up routines are working with 1 tab.
Nope, you don't understand how sessions work.
A tab is a "container". Even if you don't load the contents of the container straight away, you still have to initialize the container. The container also includes the individual history for that container (otherwise a restored session won't have the option to use the back navigation option) and everything that would need to be initialized for an active tab, will also have to be initialized for an inactive tab.

Also, if you have multiple tab groups, the tabs in other groups have the same weight as the tabs in your active group, "background groups" are tabs that are hidden from view but initialized all the same.

Also, any pinned tabs as stated are all fully loaded and will slow down your browser start. Pinned tabs are considered "web applications" and "should at all times be running". Pinned tabs in background groups are also fully loaded the same way, just hidden from view.
Last edited by Admin on 2014-01-30, 15:00, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Flame-inducing content removed.
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jumba

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by jumba » 2014-01-28, 17:28

link68759 wrote:As far as the unloading options not working- I'm calling that a happy accident. Why the heck should closing the preloader also force palemoon to exit? The only setback is that if you exit the preloader while palemoon is *not* running, a preloaded palemoon.exe will probably remain until the next time you start palemoon or kill it yourself. I haven't noticed any conflicts with sessions yet though, and IMO I'd rather have it this way than having it kill my opened browser should I want to close the preloader. Regardless, I'll look into it.
Agreed, I think that it would be better to remove these options from the tray menu altogether.

For the start up time reduction converstation, I think that preloading is a good way to hide the cold boot from the user and make an illusion of fast startup, just what microsoft does with IE, right?

link68759

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by link68759 » 2014-01-28, 18:52

jumba wrote:
link68759 wrote:As far as the unloading options not working- I'm calling that a happy accident. Why the heck should closing the preloader also force palemoon to exit? The only setback is that if you exit the preloader while palemoon is *not* running, a preloaded palemoon.exe will probably remain until the next time you start palemoon or kill it yourself. I haven't noticed any conflicts with sessions yet though, and IMO I'd rather have it this way than having it kill my opened browser should I want to close the preloader. Regardless, I'll look into it.
Agreed, I think that it would be better to remove these options from the tray menu altogether.

For the start up time reduction converstation, I think that preloading is a good way to hide the cold boot from the user and make an illusion of fast startup, just what microsoft does with IE, right?
IE does something, but it's nothing compared to what chrome does. IE takes a good 7 seconds to open up 15 tabs, whereas chrome seems to open instantly with a very high number of tabs. I'll see what I can do about the tray icon options and the popup.
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Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by Moonchild » 2014-01-29, 00:28

(content removed)

**deep breath**

Now that's out of my system, I'm not going to respond any more to this thread, as I have better things to do. If you figure out a way to make the preloader bug-free, awesome, and I'll make sure to make more of a mention of it (I already adjusted the FAQ on http://www.palemoon.org to indicate it's being worked on). The preloader combats some symptoms of cold start by forcing Windows to cache browser components, but as you've seen even with that a heavily loaded browser with a large session will still take more that "what you find acceptable" by a factor 4 or more because of what I explained needs to be done in a browser in that situation.
Last edited by Admin on 2014-01-30, 15:02, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Flame-inducing content removed.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

sIDcORK

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by sIDcORK » 2014-01-29, 03:41

...and The January 2014 Award for Patience When Dealing With an Obtuse Poster goes to... fumbles with gold envelope ...Moonchild! <rapturous applause> :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

megaman

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by megaman » 2014-01-29, 04:23

Okay, guys, please, let's stay on-topic.
Also, check my video for a demonstration of the Prealoader in action.

26F36DD

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by 26F36DD » 2014-01-29, 11:54

I don't want to switch one start for another. Thanks but no thanks.

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Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by Night Wing » 2014-01-30, 04:49

link68759 wrote:I've suspected for a while, and now it's pretty evident: moonchild is reflexively hostile to the idea that anyone would want something more than his optimizations to firefox.
If you think you can build an optimized version of Firefox like Moonchild has with Pale Moon and make it better than Pale Moon, they do so. I'm sure a person like yourself has plenty of time on their hands and won't mind spending his own hard earned money to make a better version of both Firefox and Pale Moon. And if you do, I have no doubt you'll meet another person just like yourself who will snipe at you over some "point" and then you'll find out just how much patience you have with that individual.
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link68759

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by link68759 » 2014-01-30, 05:56

Night Wing wrote:
link68759 wrote:I've suspected for a while, and now it's pretty evident: moonchild is reflexively hostile to the idea that anyone would want something more than his optimizations to firefox.
If you think you can build an optimized version of Firefox like Moonchild has with Pale Moon and make it better than Pale Moon, they do so. I'm sure a person like yourself has plenty of time on their hands and won't mind spending his own hard earned money to make a better version of both Firefox and Pale Moon. And if you do, I have no doubt you'll meet another person just like yourself who will snipe at you over some "point" and then you'll find out just how much patience you have with that individual.
No one is saying we don't appreciate his contributions, was my point. We wouldn't be here otherwise.

I don't think it's unreasonable to want firefox to start up at least as fast as chrome and IE do (my setup notwithstanding),
Last edited by Admin on 2014-01-30, 15:04, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by Admin » 2014-01-30, 15:09

I've gone through and removed all immaterial/off-topic/uncivil/flaming content from everyone involved.
If you want to continue discussing the pre-loader, go right ahead, but leave preconceptions, assumptions, personal attacks, analogies with mothers, heated debate about wording, "possible impossibilities" and the likes at the door.

Can you all do that? I'm sure you can.

I'll remove any further comments that are off-topic and/or not focused on the practical solutions offered to speed up boot times of the browser.
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megaman

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by megaman » 2014-01-30, 23:33

Let's see here...
I unloaded the Preloader, closed the thread, and installed a new vesion of Palemoon.
Upon the browser loading, my session was gone, and no option to recover it. (Completely grayed-out)
Hope there is a bug due to the steps.

link68759

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by link68759 » 2014-02-12, 17:56

It turns out the preloader doesn't work as I thought it did- my method of closing firefox (vimperator's ZZ) is different than the close button (which I had disabled), and was negating the effects of the preloader. When used correctly, it does in fact make palemoon start more or less instantly, even with all my addons.

That said, I personally don't find it stable enough to use, and firefox's startup process seems to involve the creation of a few hidden windows, so my efforts to seamlessly hide the main window at startup through AHK are so far unsuccessful.

I'll continue to try fixing the preloader up, and continue with my AHK solution, but I have a third route as well- using a RAM disk. Someone mentioned that earlier in this thread, but with an SSD I didn't think the marginal performance gain would be worth the hassle and potential instability.

I still think that, particularly under windows where you have to permanently allocate memory to a ramdisk instead of dynamically assigning as needed. But then this article (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pr ... ync-daemon) brought up the good point that it spares your SSD from unnecessary read/writes, AND they have implemented an hourly back up of your profile. Not bad.

I'll make a windows equivalent of this, and I'll be playing around with varying solutions for the backup method (recommend users install rsync, or trust windows' copy will work fine? Script a timer or use windows scheduler?), and I guess once I have all three routes working acceptably, I'll create another thread dedicated to discussion of those three solutions.

In the meantime, I can tell you that softperfect ramdisk is just ok, but its "save contents to image every X minutes" feature is -terrible-. In the event that something bad happens to your ramdisk, your image will be overwritten and you'll lose everything in it... Destroying your image when something goes wrong defeats the purpose of having a backup. Rsync would merely not run in these situations, and using rsync to mirror your profile from the ramdisk to the default location is smarter anyhow. Also, you can reliably break the ramdisk by filling it up- it doesn't seem to handle being low on space very well (nor does firefox for that matter).

megaman

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by megaman » 2014-02-13, 01:12

Okay, link. Awaiting updates on the Preloader and RAMDisk option.

leegb11

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by leegb11 » 2014-02-13, 01:34

A serious question.
Why are people obsessed with how quick a browser opens?
There are thousands of things that can effect this.
My PM gets to my homepage in 3 to 4 seconds with approx 20 add ons - once opened it responds very quickly, but if another browser is quicker I would guess most could not notice it.
I suppose some people have a lot of spare time.

megaman

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by megaman » 2014-02-13, 01:39

leegb11 wrote:I suppose some people have a lot of spare time.
We are all different, my friend. Even if it is just one person in this entire world that has a problem with waiting for a browser to load, he/she also counts into the equation.

leegb11

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by leegb11 » 2014-02-13, 01:50

Fair Point, just saying that some of the best computer experts in the the world can't work out why something is a second slower - "have you tried turning it off and on", springs to mind!
Anyway I'm enjoying PM so far.

leegb11

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by leegb11 » 2014-02-13, 02:42

Am no PC expert, but thinking 8 hours of work = 28,800 seconds - so trying to save a second or two on start-ups seems counter productive. Work out how many times you have to start your browser to equal that.
But my flatmate is a PC expert and don't like being beaten - but even he cannot solve all our problems!

megaman

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by megaman » 2014-02-13, 02:53

leegb11 wrote:Am no PC expert, but thinking 8 hours of work = 28,800 seconds - so trying to save a second or two on start-ups seems counter productive. Work out how many times you have to start your browser to equal that.
But my flatmate is a PC expert and don't like being beaten - but even he cannot solve all our problems!
It's like developers making a game that only lasts about 5 hours of gameplay, but it took them 5+ years to develop, test, and release.
If someone can do something about it, we should let them attempt it. Benefits for all.
Have you seen my video? Top of the messages a few pages back.
We can always question people for being who they are, but what they are and what they do/can do could lead to something great.

leegb11

Re: Speed up boot times

Unread post by leegb11 » 2014-02-13, 03:12

Am liking your answers, but new to here and got from rss - don't want to upset admins by treating like a chat site. Am useless with this stuff.
Can you send link to vid then I'll let this go and spend a little time working out the site.

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