On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 09:55:46AM -0500, gregrwm wrote: > > i can corroborate swap slogging and thrashing has long been a problem for > both firefox and chromium, my way out has been to merely quit the browser > and relaunch, and seethe under my teeth wondering whether to blame the > horrible memory management on the kernel, browsers, libraries, or what. on > the other hand just a couple days ago i watched in amazement as firefox > actually released a ton of swap while i continued browsing. maybe somebody > is actually hip and incrementally improving something? > Blame not the Linux kernel. Linux's memory management is the best around for a general purpose OS. Users of Windows programs over WINE have noted improved performance and it is simply attributed to the Linux kernel's memory management being stellar. Firefox issues updates all the time, in contrast the the kernel developers. Firefox, and possibly all of the libraries on which it leverages, be it graphics, parsers, etc, are to blame, I am certain. The price to pay is low when having to restart the browser. It is "free software" and I honestly do not know what price I would put on a browser if I were to pay for it.