Palemoon browser

[Drew99GT]

Firefox has turned into a bloated corpse so I'm trying out Palemoon. LOVE IT. Easily uses half the memory, my CPU runs 5 degrees C cooler, it's much faster, most of the addons I like are compatible. I'm sold. It also has the most development of the Mozilla based alternative browsers. Give it a try if you like Firefox but you don't like how slow and bloated it has become.

One of the main reasons Palemoon loads pages faster is it does not use Google Safe Search, but you can get that back via the Web of Trust addon. Even with WOT, it loads pages quite fast. With 30+ tabs open and 1 days browsing, it uses about 800 mb. Firefox would routinely be at 1.5Gb and slow as mud.

 

[Quattro Pete]

So, can Palemoon use Firefox addons or does it have its own?

Does Adblock slow it down considerably?

 

[sprite1741]

I've been on Pale Moon for months. Seems like every time Firefox updates, some add on's quit working so I left Firefox. Pale Moon has a few quirks so it's not perfect but still better than Firefox. Ad block latitude seems to work better than ad block plus. Pale Moon loads and starts faster than Firfox and most of the add ons that Firefox breaks still work in Pale Moon. Firfox has gotten too big and slow.

 

[camrydriver111]

I understand it's developed by a single person. I feel that it might be behind in security fixes.

If you want a light adblock uBlock Origin is best IMO.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: camrydriver111
If you want a light adblock uBlock Origin is best IMO.

Agreed, ever since I ditched Adblock and started using uBlock Origin, I really don't have any major qualms with FF. RAM usage has been decent as well.

 

[Saleen0679]

Moved over to Palemoon when Firefox went Australis. Mozilla added too much bloat that I would never use. Some of my addons worked fine from the start others required a few tweaks.

 

[Drew99GT]

Originally Posted By: camrydriver111
I understand it's developed by a single person. I feel that it might be behind in security fixes.

If you want a light adblock uBlock Origin is best IMO.


It's completely up do date, and the developer claims he adds additional security tweaks. latest version came out a few days ago.

 

[Drew99GT]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
So, can Palemoon use Firefox addons or does it have its own?

Does Adblock slow it down considerably?


Some addons are not compatible with Palemoon because it uses the FF version 25 visual layout (I think that's what I read), but is completely up to date security wise. It uses Firefox addons.

 

[Drew99GT]

Originally Posted By: sprite1741
I've been on Pale Moon for months. Seems like every time Firefox updates, some add on's quit working so I left Firefox. Pale Moon has a few quirks so it's not perfect but still better than Firefox. Ad block latitude seems to work better than ad block plus. Pale Moon loads and starts faster than Firfox and most of the add ons that Firefox breaks still work in Pale Moon. Firfox has gotten too big and slow.


Ublock Origin works in Palemoon.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: camrydriver111
I understand it's developed by a single person. I feel that it might be behind in security fixes.

If you want a light adblock uBlock Origin is best IMO.


It's simply a fork of Firefox with less bloat, so "maintained" might be a better word than "developed".

 

[SrDriver]

I use Google Chrome and switched to uBlock Origin blocker and love it.

 

[Kawiguy454]

Firefox with "No Script" addon works perfectly. You can also see a common site has 20+ hooks from data mining vampires.

What I'm seeing in corp IT is all the browsers are struggling with the bloat coming from the web content itself. Silverlight, flash, java etc all with different version requirements

 

[Ethan1]

The idea of trusting a browser developed by ONE GUY is laughable at best. He's probably a great developer and probably means us no harm. Probably.

 

[Drew99GT]

Originally Posted By: Ethan1
The idea of trusting a browser developed by ONE GUY is laughable at best. He's probably a great developer and probably means us no harm. Probably.


It's based ON THE OPEN SOURCE FIREFOX BROWSER. Some guy didn't create his own code in his basement. The development team uses what they think are the best features of Firefox to make the lightest and safest browser. In fact, they use code to make fix future vulnerabilities that the Firefox developers don't. It's perfectly safe and widely used.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Ethan1
The idea of trusting a browser developed by ONE GUY is laughable at best. He's probably a great developer and probably means us no harm. Probably.


It's just a fork of Firefox with some bloat removed. One person just has to make the necessary modifications to the source code for every new release, then compile it. Such is the beauty of open source software!

 

[Ethan1]

LOL I understand how FOSS works. There are a lot of FOSS projects that are maintained by one person. Based on analysis of code commits, many very important FOSS projects would fold if one or two developers left! That's bad, too. But using a browser that's someone's pet project is silly. You'd be better off with IE. At least with IE you know that a major vulnerability won't go unpatched because one guy gets the shingles or because he's binge watching Game of Thrones or something...

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Ethan1
LOL I understand how FOSS works. There are a lot of FOSS projects that are maintained by one person. Based on analysis of code commits, many very important FOSS projects would fold if one or two developers left! That's bad, too. But using a browser that's someone's pet project is silly. You'd be better off with IE. At least with IE you know that a major vulnerability won't go unpatched because one guy gets the shingles or because he's binge watching Game of Thrones or something...


With IE you have to worry about things going unpatched, period, if the parent for-profit corporation seems it unworthy to do; or if they choose not to disclose a vulnerability at all!

I understand your concern, though. This is one of the reasons I do not suggest Linux Mint to the dozen or so folks for whom I have installed OS's.

 

[ClutchDisc]

I have not noticed any issues with Firefox becoming bloated. Anyway, I downloaded Palemoon and gave it a try. Same 5 tabs open in both browsers, (and same add-ons) and Palemoon was consistently 50 to 90 more MiB than Firefox in the system monitor. I also prefer the interface of Firefox, so I am sticking with that. I did try Ublock Origin, and I liked it, as it uses about 50 MiB less than AdBlock Plus. The only downside is I did not see an option for blocking social media site icons, like AdBlock Plus has. So I went back to AdBlock.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
I have not noticed any issues with Firefox becoming bloated.


I haven't noticed any performance degradation, but Mozilla has added Pocket integration, a video chat application, profile syncing, a lot of debugging and developer tools, etc. to the standard install; and a trend toward adding more and more features for each release seems clear... To the point where some parties are taking it upon themselves to modify the source code and release different versions, rebranded.

 

[ClutchDisc]

The only thing that they added that I use is the reader view. Very nice for reading news articles as it takes all of the side story clutter away!