Palemoon becoming more sluggish as the day progesses? Topic is solved

[Ozzed]

My experience is that during the beginning of the day, the browser is mostly fully responsive, though with some minor stalls and "microstutter" in the scrolling, but as the day progresses, the situation worsens with scrolling being smooth but the browsers coming to a complete stop every 3 seconds (scrolling completely stalls, then resumes to being smooth again for 3 seconds, then stalls for a second, then smooth for 3 seconds, rinse and repeat).

I had something similar with PM 64bit, I switched to the 32bit version and it went away completely. The 64bit operation appeared to swamp my puny hardware, same with FF 64bit. I have run PM 32bit version permanently and since then the problem has never returned. You could at least try it...

At that point I might as well run a different browser. I'm on a Ryzen 2700X, 16GB of DDR4 3600Mhz cl14 RAM and a Samsung 960 EVO. All other apps and games I run are smooth and snappy so it would feel very strange to run palemoon with 32-bit technology when I have a modern 64-bit processor that should be able to handle 64-bit programs just fine.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

At that point I might as well run a different browser.

Missing the point rather?

[Ozzed]

At that point I might as well run a different browser.

Missing the point rather?

I'm not sure what running the 32-bit version would solve. Even if it worked fine with 32-bit, it's not the version I would like to use so I'm not eager to try it unless the fact that the 32-bit version runs fine while the 64-bit version doesn't could provide information on what is wrong with my 64-bit version setup so that it could be resolved.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Suggestion: Perhaps it might help to identify the fault. Try the 32bit version - see if it works.

[Ozzed]

Ozzed, if you have the time to do so and this set of changes fixes it, can you see if you can narrow down which of the setting changes is the biggest contributor to solving these issues for you? That way I can research if there is any improvement possible by default for everyone. Start with gc.compacting and gc.generational.

I have now had more time to test this, and unfortunately my conclusion is that the settings you provided doesn't help the Gmail issue. It doesn't hurt anything, but it doesn't help either. I've isolated the issue to Gmail by using Chrome when accessing Gmail, and if the Gmail site is never loaded in Palemoon, the issue doesn't happen. I've been running Palemoon for several full days now with no issues, using Chrome when checking the mail, and then it doesn't happen, but if I open Gmail even once in a day using Palemoon, the sluggishnes comes back.

Is there anything else I can try? Since some people seem to have the issue while others don't, maybe there's something odd with settings or the profile for the users that are affected.

[Moonchild]

I'm sorry but I have no other suggestions. I don't know why the new gmail leaks resources.

[PalleP]

I've isolated the issue to Gmail by using Chrome when accessing Gmail, and if the Gmail site is never loaded in Palemoon, the issue doesn't happen. I've been running Palemoon for several full days now with no issues, using Chrome when checking the mail, and then it doesn't happen, but if I open Gmail even once in a day using Palemoon, the sluggishnes comes back.

This is an exact mirror of what I have experienced and written here, except that my PM eventually will freeze completely after the sluggishnes.
So this will save you the inconvenience of testing with the 32 bit PM. I Use PM 32bit

I notice that the release notes on v28.2.2 does not contain anything related to this problem.

[Ozzed]

I'm sorry but I have no other suggestions. I don't know why the new gmail leaks resources.

What is strange to me is that some users do not experience the issue despite using Gmail, One would think that if the problem is that Gmail leaks resources, all users that use Gmail with Palemoon would be affected but as far as I can tell that is not the case.

[José Labán]

I have a similar issue as you describe, which shows in pages like facebook and youtube. But after updating to the latest nvidia driver and restarting they mostly went off. It still feels sluggish sometimes but is much less frecuently.

[pmBill]

Pale Moon obviously has some memory leaks and/or similar issues.

I restart PM every few hours or so.

And restart my computer every couple of days or so.

[José Labán]

I have to rectify. I found that the culprit of the slugginesh was a greasemonkey script named Saveform.net helper, once I disabled it Palemoon returned to their original responsiveness. I tested Gmail and it worked just fine, however I don't have a lerge number of emails there.

[Sob__]

Pale Moon obviously has some memory leaks and/or similar issues.

It looks to me that way too, not exactly memory leaks, but as if something got stuck in the background. It looks like it may be at least two different issues, but often it's the combination of both:

a) High CPU usage. First what comes to mind is activity in background tabs, lot of websites are full of scripts that always do something. But even if I unload all tabs using Lull The Tabs and keep only one blank page, it doesn't always help and PM still uses almost one full CPU core.

b) Major lags in both UI and rendering. Even without significant CPU usage, everything is slow. Scrolling the page randomly stops for half a second. Closing tab (middle click on it), which normally happens immediatelly, takes one or two seconds from the click to actually close. Etc.

Problems are most noticeable with overscripted sites that are slow even under normal circumstances, e.g. PM's Patreon page which takes five seconds to fully load and render when things are ok, takes over ten seconds when PM is in this "slow mode". It also seems that visiting such heavy sites could be what makes PM break sooner, but I can't tell for sure.

There isn't any "what's my PM doing right now" statistics, is it?

[PalleP]

@ pmBill and Sob__

Do you use Gmail?

[Octopuss]

I feel like the performance majorly degrades over time in the past few days too
Previously I thought it was just FB and Twitch being shit, but lately the entire browser feels annoyingly lazy.

[Sob__]

@PalleP: No Gmail here. But if it does something that PM doesn't like, another site can do the same thing too. It's hard to find what exactly it could be, especially for someone like me, who uses browser a lot and visits large number of websites every day.

[pmBill]

@ pmBill and Sob__

Do you use Gmail?

I try to not use gmail or any web e-mail systems.

I have Firefox installed, and most of the other major browsers,
and I revert to them for some things when I have to.

I installed an extension that has Right-Click "Open with Browser XXX" options (Firefox, Edge, Chrome, Opera, and "View this Page in IE"), which helps sometimes.
Pale Moon just has too many issues anymore.

[Octopuss]

Also, lately, even typing does sometimes become unresponsive and CPU usage jumps by like 10%. Sometimes the whole browser freezes for a fraction of a second.
There's definitely something fishy going on.
This just makes no sense. There isn't even any video playing in t he background and as I am typing this, every third or fifth word or so I get a lag of sorts, say half a second "typing pause".

[satrow]

Check third-party involvement, esp. security-related - just a 'bad' SpyBot hosts file could trigger excess risky traffic and associated kernel CPU activity (=lag).

[Octopuss]

Definitely not the case I even disabled Windows Defender's realtime protection.
I only use about six extension too which shouldn't affect performance (Auto sort bookmarks, Copy plain text2, Guerilla scripting, Opendownload2, Session Manager and Ublock+its updater).

[back2themoon]

Definitely not the case I even disabled Windows Defender's realtime protection.
I only use about six extension too which shouldn't affect performance

Just a few posts above your own, José Labán says: "I found that the culprit of the sluggishness was a greasemonkey script named Saveform.net helper, once I disabled it Pale Moon returned to their original responsiveness."

So, in your installed extensions there is at least one that can potentially cause problems (Guerilla scripting).