Firefox eating all RAM on Ubuntu24.04

[Bret Busby]

On 13/8/24 20:31, Carsten Agger wrote:
> Recently I've noticed, that certain rather JavaScript-heavy web pages - 
> especially RocketChat, Gitlab and Whereby.com video chat - seem to make 
> Firefox use gargantuan amounts of RAM, ending up exhausting the swap 
> space (I have 16GB of RAM and 1GB of swap space - too little swap, but 
> with 16G's of RAM that shouldn't be a problem).
> 
> I'm using Firefox 129 (Canonical snap edition) on Ubuntu 24.04. I'm not 
> seeing the same problem when viewing the same web pages in Chromium.
> 
> Does anyone have similar experiences or (in the best of cases) know of a 
> workaround?
> 
> Best,
> Carsten
> 
Apart from all of the other questions (such as how many Firefox windows 
and tabs do you have open, concurrently), is the significant question - 
since you refer to video chat, what resolution video, are you using?

When you are using video, what resolution do you use?

Firefox has always been nasty with RAM (and, anything involving the 
malignancy named javas***t, is like infecting your PC with lymphoma) - 
years ago, I learnt of a thing, in 'C' programming classes - malloc and 
(I think) dealloc. Firefoox is notorious for not using the latter, when 
closing tabs and windows and things.

I tend to use a minimum of 32GM of swap space - the rule used to be that 
swap space should be twice the size of the RAM, until 32GB RAM became 
available, then, I maintained swap at about 32GB.

Do you run anything like timeshift? I had it, and, got rid of it, when I 
figured that that was responsible for obliterating HDD free space.

Whilst you state that Firefox is eating all your RAM, you do not specify 
your system hardware. What CPU? What graphic adaptor, and, accelerator? 
How much video RAM?

..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............