Firefox memory usage degrades over time
Firefox memory usage has not improved since version 3. What seems to have improved is garbage collection, but memory is still being lost.
From time to time, FF exceeds 1 GB of RAM and apparently starts doing some kind of garbage collection or swapping. I can see the memory usage going down drastically to a few hundreds of megas, then climbing back up to almost its previous value. During this time, which can last several minutes (!), FF is unusable.
The only solution to stop this madness, is to kill FF and restart it again. Even after having restored exactly the previous session, memory usage is now normal at several hundreds of megas and FF is snappy again. Until the next time.
In short, I cannot see the publicized memory improvements in FF. What I can see is a new system of garbage collection which is worse than before.
It used to be that FF 3 would expand relentlessly its memory, but execution was always snappy, so one needed to only restart it every few hours. Now this new garbage collection mechanism is a patch worse than the problem it is supposed to solve.
Why can't there be a real solution to the memory leaks problem rather than patches?
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Well, you can try updating to Firefox 11, which has several memory and performance enhancements (http://autonome.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/firefox-11-is-smaller-and-faster/).
You can also read High memory usage, which offers some troubleshooting tips for high memory usage. Often times it isn't firefox itself, but it is addons that are installed in Firefox.
http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2012/02/16/mcafee-is-killing-us/
Have updated to Firefox 11 and waited a few days to be sure that this is still happening.
For example, just now FF became unusable. I could see it using 1.2 GB and fiddling energetically with its own memory usage, going a lot down and then slowly up.
I killed it as only solution and recovered the session, to find it now using 360 MB and having a quite snappy response.
This didn't ever happen with FF 3. I would really prefer a stable FF over an unstable one that uses just a shade less memory. The new RAM-usage "improvements" are in my book a failure.
Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
See "Basic Troubleshooting: Make a new profile":
There may be extensions and plugins installed by default in a new profile, so check that in "Tools > Add-ons > Extensions & Plugins" in case there are still problems.
If that new profile works then you can transfer some files from the old profile to that new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.
See:
I agree that I can reduce my memory usage by deleting extensions & plugins and in general restarting my profile from zero. I am also quite certain that when I have transferred everything to the new profile and memory utilization reaches the same levels as today, I will encounter again this same draconian garbage collection mechanism.
I repeat that high memory usage does not bother me much, whether memory leaks come from FF itself or from extensions. What bothers me are FF's actions triggered when memory usage exceeds a certain level.
These actions that paralyze FF for minutes are built-into the Firefox program and not into the profile. And since they fail to liberate memory, FF repeats them again and again, making killing it the only (fast) way out if I want to conserve my session.