
Pale Moon – Custom-built and optimized Firefox-based browser for Windows - user9756
http://www.palemoon.org/
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kevingadd
As a web developer with some extensive Firefox familiarity, please, please,
please do not use Pale Moon. Please do not suggest to others that they use
Pale Moon.

It has bugs that other versions of Firefox do not. Because he does not openly
share his build configuration/etc it's not possible for you to fix those bugs.

I've had to spend a lot of time trying to troubleshoot issues Pale Moon users
had with my HTML5 applications, and in every case the solution was for them to
use a properly built and maintained browser. :(

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casca
From the FAQ: Can I see your mozconfig/build environment/configuration files?

    
    
       The answer is: No, this is my baby.
    
    

While I'm quite happy with FF as my primary browser now that historical memory
issues are mostly resolved, I'd be interested in building a FF release from
source and having build-time options. The Pale Moon source code being
distributed via "ge.tt" seems designed to obfuscate in a world of git. I'll
pass.

~~~
piqufoh
He/She also says

    
    
        A few people have asked about getting a detailed run-down of my build
    
        clearly not always with good intentions.
    

How could you copy a build process with bad intentions? The code doesn't
belong to him/her and him/her aren't attempting to profit from Pale Moon. I'm
genuinely puzzled.

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yliu
Is there any sort of proof of this "optimization" actually contributing to
performance? The state of compiler optimization being what it is, I find it
hard to imagine flag tweaking from the default -O3 or whatever can make an
actual significant difference. The secretiveness of his build seems designed
to obfuscate third-party replication of his results.

Seems more a mouthpiece for the this fellow's self-aggrandizement than
anything else.

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AndreasFrom
Has anyone tested the difference between Mozilla's Firefox build and a local
fully-optimized for your machine build? Or something similar with another
piece of open source software. I wonder how much the "Gentoo-model" of
compiling everything yourself affects everyday performance.

~~~
kevingadd
One big gap is that release builds of Firefox tend to have had profile-guided
optimization applied, among other things, so you need to make sure you take
steps like that correctly or your custom build will end up slower.

It's probably possible to produce a custom build for your machine that runs
faster, whether by using custom instruction sets, or feeding different data to
the optimizer when it's doing PGO. However, the risk you run there is that
this could introduce bugs - Firefox and Chrome both regularly run into bugs
caused by the optimizer or linker, and in some cases the fix is to stop the
optimizer/linker from fiddling with that code.

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floatboth
Removed integrated PDF reader? For security? Seriously? PDF.js is used in
Firefox for a reason. Hint: secure sandboxing.

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ceejayoz
I love the "Beware of unofficial versions!" note in the Help menu... on an
unofficial version of Firefox.

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51Cards
On initial blush I am so far impressed. Sync pulled over all my add-ons and
Firefox info and it is definitely quicker at rendering large tables (my one
notable speed complaint with Firefox vs. Chrome). With everything working via
Sync I'm going to give it a fair shot.

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jerryhuang100
Instead of Pale Moon , please use Cyberfox, also a x64 build of Firefox on
Windows. At least it uses the same profile as Firefox!

