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Reply 21 of 35, by cde

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I've setup an experiment to verify which version of Firefox would be the fastest. So I've recompiled every last ESR version from 10 to 52, in each case using the same compile (g++ 4.9.2) and compiler options (-march=athlon-xp -O3). The CPU was slowed down to 500 MHz and FSB to 100 MHz in order to make the results more pronounced. Each version of Firefox had its own profile. It is setup in private mode to avoid cache effects, and a blank run of Firefox (to allow it to setup the profile) was done in each case.

The test measures how much time it takes from starting Firefox at the command line to load https://www.google.com/ (until the circle at the top left stops spinning):

Firefox 54 (2017-03)  : 35 seconds
Firefox 45 (2016-06) : 27 seconds
Firefox 38 (2015-05) : 21 seconds
Firefox 38 (with UOC) : 17 seconds
Firefox 31 (2014-07) : 17 seconds
Firefox 24 (2013-09) : 10 seconds
Firefox 17 (2012-11) : 10 seconds
Firefox 10 (2012-01) : 9 seconds

However Firefox version 24 and below have problems correctly displaying the page with the text entry field being misplaced.

So it seems to me the "sweet spot" is around version 38, which provides decent performance and good compatibility with modern web standards. The UOC patch does indeed make the browser noticeably faster, even without NoScript.

Reply 24 of 35, by looking4awayout

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cde wrote:

Thank you for your hard work! Just to report that I tried the latest version of your patch on Debian wheezy (7.11) with Iceweasel 38.8 and it's working extremely well. Cheers!

Thank you for testing it! I am developing a new, fully rewritten from scratch version, which speeds things up even further. Unfortunately work and real life is slowing development down, but I hope to release it before Christmas.

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 25 of 35, by looking4awayout

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UPDATE!

All the versions of the UOC Patch, including the Enforcer, have been rewritten from scratch. This time, I have extensively reworked the tweaks used for the rendering engine, which allowed me to double the scrolling speed of the patched browsers, increasing the general responsiveness. Loading times have also been shortened, thanks to some tweaks backported from K-Meleon Goanna. The New Moon 28-specific version of the UOC Patch has been withdrawn, since now the Patch no longer comes with E10S enabled, due to compatibility issues on some machines with some video cards (especially ATI ones). Users of the SeaMonkey browser, especially version 2.48, can use the 45 ESR version of the Patch once again.

As all the changes are too many to be listed in a single post, I will limit myself to say that all the versions of the Patch have been extensively remade and tailored upon the peculiarities of each codebase, and this has required me to write thirteen different revisions, before coming out with the final version, which might be subjected to minor updates in future, as usual. I have successfully managed to mitigate the occasional stuttering issue that affects Mozilla based browsers, especially Firefox 45 ESR SSE, and thanks to the backporting of some parameters from K-Meleon Goanna and Serpent 52, I have managed to dramatically improve the overall speed of the browser and reduce the page loading times. This, at least on the machines where the pre-release versions have been tested, proved to be a real game changer, turning old computers, no longer usable on the web, into decent web browsing machines. I also have reintroduced favicons, since some people complained about the lack of those in the previous versions of the Patch. The Awesome bar has been disabled, keeping only the autocomplete feature active.

Please update to the newest version of the UOC Patch and the Enforcer, and start with a new, clean profile, as a "dirty" profile might hamper the performance of the patched browser.

The new build number is N2M.

Happy RDDin'!

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 26 of 35, by looking4awayout

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UPDATE!

The 38 ESR and 52 ESR versions of the UOC Patch have been updated with the new scrolling routines that have been previously implemented in the 45 ESR version. This improved the scrolling speed and smoothness even on those codebases.

Please update to the latest version!

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 28 of 35, by looking4awayout

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UPDATE!

After a long hiatus due to severe real life issues, including COVID-19 and whatnot, I have finally managed to port the UOC Patch to Firefox Quantum! And so, I can officially introduce the first release of the QUOC Patch!

The QUOC Patch is a Quantum-exclusive port of the classic UOC Patch that we all know and love, except this one has been aimed to the hardware that can (or barely) run Firefox Quantum and derivatives, including the very latest version. I have tested the patch on a very low end laptop, a Packard Bell Easynote TE-69KB with an AMD E1-2500, 4GB of RAM and Windows 8.1, and it really does make a difference compared to stock settings.

This special port of the patch has been based on the currently public N2M version, to provide the maximum stability. The QUOC Patch uses the 45 ESR version of the UOC Enforcer.

As usual, please test it and let me know how it performs on your system. 

Thanks everyone for your patience and support!!

QUOC Patch ADDENDUM: There are two keys in the QUOC Patch file that have been commented out. These are: privacy.firstparty.isolate and privacy.trackingprotection.enabled

If you remove the // and the comments in the *.JS file, enabling those keys, you will increase the privacy protection in your browser at the expense of some sites not working correctly or some others not displaying thumbnails, such as https://www.geo-ship.com . I have left them disabled in the patch, but you're free to tweak the file and enable them, if you wish.

If you use Telegram Web with the QUOC Patch and you experience videos and GIFs not loading, simply set this key dom.caches.enabled to True.

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 29 of 35, by bobsmith

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Trying out QUOC on Librewolf 106 on Windows 10 LTSC 2019 64-bit (Specs are Ryzen 3 3200G, 6GBs of 2166MHz DDR4 RAM, integrated graphics used).

Will be sure to try it on my new daily driver (i7-4790k with HD7950 and 8GBs of DDR3 RAM) when the heatsink arrives, I will be trying it on both MyPal68 on XPx32 and same 10 LTSC install, if you got any browsers you need to test though, let me know, I have access to an ol Pentium 4 OEM build and a Thinkpad with a Core 2 Duo as well as those previously listed PCs.

It seems to actually make it slower on certain sites but faster on some which is perplexing, YouTube video playback has flickering issues and that's about all I've noticed so far. Generally content like images loads way faster though.

Main PC : MSI PRO B650M-P Ryzen 5 7600, 32GB DDR5-5600, XFX RX 7600
P3 build : ASUS CUSL2-C, Pentium III @ 733MHz (Coppermine), Voodoo3 3000 AGP, 384 MB SDR-100, Audigy 2 ZS, Netgear GA311

Reply 30 of 35, by looking4awayout

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bobsmith wrote on 2023-01-03, 01:06:

Trying out QUOC on Librewolf 106 on Windows 10 LTSC 2019 64-bit (Specs are Ryzen 3 3200G, 6GBs of 2166MHz DDR4 RAM, integrated graphics used).

Will be sure to try it on my new daily driver (i7-4790k with HD7950 and 8GBs of DDR3 RAM) when the heatsink arrives, I will be trying it on both MyPal68 on XPx32 and same 10 LTSC install, if you got any browsers you need to test though, let me know, I have access to an ol Pentium 4 OEM build and a Thinkpad with a Core 2 Duo as well as those previously listed PCs.

It seems to actually make it slower on certain sites but faster on some which is perplexing, YouTube video playback has flickering issues and that's about all I've noticed so far. Generally content like images loads way faster though.

Please re-download it! I'm doing some little bugfixes and minor housekeeping tasks on the patch. 😀
You can tweak the patch according to the machine. By default, it supports DirectX 9, but you can also enable support for DirectX 11 or OpenGL if you wish.

I am currently using the Patch at work on a Core2Duo 6600 with 8GB of RAM and a Geforce GT630 with the latest version of Firefox. It runs way better than stock. No issues with Youtube as well (but I'm sure you might have to switch to either D3d11 or OpenGL on the machine where it flickers).

Also, I recommend you to use the patch on a clean profile, as the custom settings of old profiles might interfere with the tweaks of the Patch. Please, if you can, test it on as many machines as possible. The more the machines that can run Firefox Quantum and derivatives, the better.

EDIT: I have made an OpenGL-compatible version of the QUOC Patch. Feel free to test it, anyone.

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 31 of 35, by bobsmith

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looking4awayout wrote on 2023-01-03, 09:45:

I am currently using the Patch at work on a Core2Duo 6600 with 8GB of RAM and a Geforce GT630 with the latest version of Firefox. It runs way better than stock. No issues with Youtube as well (but I'm sure you might have to switch to either D3d11 or OpenGL on the machine where it flickers).

Seems that as of Firefox 92, D3D and OpenGL were both removed in favor of WebRender. I could download MyPal68 on here and try it out though.

Main PC : MSI PRO B650M-P Ryzen 5 7600, 32GB DDR5-5600, XFX RX 7600
P3 build : ASUS CUSL2-C, Pentium III @ 733MHz (Coppermine), Voodoo3 3000 AGP, 384 MB SDR-100, Audigy 2 ZS, Netgear GA311

Reply 32 of 35, by bobsmith

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Tested Octante 2.0 JS benchmark
image.png?width=720&height=416
image.png?width=720&height=414
Top is Librewolf 106 with QUOC, bottom is without
I'm 90% this would make more significant gains on older hardware but it did give me a little bit more power on newer junk so good stuff :D

So this is weird as hell, but I attempted to open OBS to record the flickering effect, come to find out when opening OBS, it goes away somehow. Completely baffled to how this even works.

Main PC : MSI PRO B650M-P Ryzen 5 7600, 32GB DDR5-5600, XFX RX 7600
P3 build : ASUS CUSL2-C, Pentium III @ 733MHz (Coppermine), Voodoo3 3000 AGP, 384 MB SDR-100, Audigy 2 ZS, Netgear GA311

Reply 33 of 35, by looking4awayout

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bobsmith wrote on 2023-01-03, 22:49:

So this is weird as hell, but I attempted to open OBS to record the flickering effect, come to find out when opening OBS, it goes away somehow. Completely baffled to how this even works.

I'm glad it brought an improvement in performance on your machine! That's what I want to achieve with the UOC and QUOC Patches. I'm even using it on my i7-7500U laptop and it makes a difference, mostly in terms of responsiveness and reduced CPU and RAM usage.

Did you use the updated version? I have released a new version of the QUOC Patch which enables hardware acceleration on Youtube, as well as releasing an OpenGL compatible version. It's curious that it doesn't happen on my machine, but I got an Nvidia card, rather than an ATI one.

Best thing would be to try it on a clean profile. Mind you, I'm developing this version of the patch using stock Firefox rather than its derivatives, so I don't know if Librewolf performs differently.

For QUOC users with an ATI graphics card who are experiencing issues with the UI appearing black, please go to about:config and set the key below:

gfx.webrender.flip-sequential to false.

I have already removed the key in the currently public version, so you can also re-download it.

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3