Basilisk and PM size

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bmelo
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Basilisk and PM size

Unread post by bmelo » 2023-02-25, 04:40

I built PM and Basilisk both using the same mozconfig file (disabling webrtc, eme, etc. I see Basilisk is a little bit greater than PM in size (7MB). I thought Basilisk would be equal or lesser than PM considering the backend is the same and Pale Moon's frontend has more customizations capabilities. What exactly makes Basilisk greater than PM in size? Any frontend specific feature?

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Re: Basilisk and PM size

Unread post by moonbat » 2023-02-25, 05:47

Basilisk has support for WebRTC and a broken implementation of Widevine DRM; both of which don't exist in Pale Moon, so there's quite a bit of code being built there. Plus (speculating here) - all the additional Javascript fluff for the Addon SDK, Jetpack and what not.
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Re: Basilisk and PM size

Unread post by Basilisk-Dev » 2023-02-27, 15:34

Which file in particular is bigger? Are you referring to the Basilisk executable file or the libxul file?
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Re: Basilisk and PM size

Unread post by Basilisk-Dev » 2023-02-27, 15:35

moonbat wrote:
2023-02-25, 05:47
Basilisk has support for WebRTC and a broken implementation of Widevine DRM; both of which don't exist in Pale Moon, so there's quite a bit of code being built there. Plus (speculating here) - all the additional Javascript fluff for the Addon SDK, Jetpack and what not.
OP said he used the same mozconfig with WebRTC and Widevine disabled on both, but in general everything you said here is correct.
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Re: Basilisk and PM size

Unread post by bmelo » 2023-02-27, 20:07

I mean the folder size as a whole when I extract the generated package by ./mach package.

So PM itself has not these Jetpack and etc? Can I disable them during building Basilisk? Will I face any issue if I disable them?

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Re: Basilisk and PM size

Unread post by Moonchild » 2023-02-27, 23:21

Why are you bothered by some megabytes of file size difference? It'd probably be a lot more risky to try and minimize at all costs (and likely more frustrating) than just, you know, using the browser? :)
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Re: Basilisk and PM size

Unread post by moonbat » 2023-02-28, 01:47

Especially when what's more important these days is website bloat from multiple 3rd party scripts for analytics and tracking, thanks to which the same website performs at a fraction of how well it used to about 15 years ago, while running on hardware that's about 5x more capable and with much useful functionality removed in the name of 'simplicity' :silent:
The best way you can boost performance on any browser these days is by efficient adblocking - just not having to load useless scripts & resources that have nothing to do with the actual page content will reduce network, CPU and disk load.
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Re: Basilisk and PM size

Unread post by bmelo » 2023-02-28, 02:17

In fact I want to know how Firefox evolved along the time. PM and Basilisk being fork of classic Firefox is a way to know that. And then we can compare them to know if the current Firefox and other browsers are just bloatware.

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Re: Basilisk and PM size

Unread post by moonbat » 2023-02-28, 03:20

Firefox originally was a small and fast standards compliant browser with powerful XUL/XPCOM extension support (what Pale Moon has retained). So you could use it as it was out of the box, or customize it with extensions or full UI modifying themes to your liking. From 2011 or roughly version 4 onwards, Mozilla decided that aping Chrome was the way forward. They started with removing the statusbar and replacing the menu with a hamburger button, and moving to Chrome's rapid release insanity of updating the major version every few weeks. So while Firefox went from version 0.1 to 4 during its first 9 years of existence, it went over a 100 versions over the next 10.
Further down the line in their infinite wisdom, Mozilla started adding third party bloat in the form of Pocket integration, Google analytics and displaying ads on the new tab page.

You can also read this super lengthy detailed evaluation of Mozilla and their claims to support privacy in Firefox's context.
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Re: Basilisk and PM size

Unread post by bmelo » 2023-02-28, 15:13

Off-topic:
wow, many polemical things happened. This reminds me Debian system polemic 10 years ago. Interesting because all these polemics in open source communities happened basically at the same time. Would be interesting if some scholar have done some research about open source history during the last 2 decades to see exactly what happened.

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