[UCI-Linux] update on Google chrome

[Harry Mangalam]

Been trying to live with chrome as my primary browser for the last few 
days.  For a pre-alpha browser (Google's words), it's quite 
astonishing.  It has not crashed in 3 days of steady use (vs ~1-2 
times a day for Firefox).   Below are some stats that indicate some 
trade-offs.

I restarted both FF and Chrome (both cached, so it's 
a 'load-from-cache' measurement) and measured the baseline resource 
consumption and then loaded them with the same 20 pages (including a 
number that are lousy with ads, extraneous JS, etc).

Starting up and pointing to news.google.com, firefox (1 process) takes 
4s to start and load the page, and takes up 230MB (V) & 83MB (R).

Chrome takes ~1.5s (2 processes) and takes up a total of 199MB(V) and 
48MB(R).  

* Advantage chrome.

Note that chrome starts an initial instance and then each tab as a 
separate process which reduces the probability that a fatal error in 
one will take down the rest (and it seems to be working based on my 
experience). 

* Advantage chrome.

However, for the 20 pages loaded, firefox (as a single process) uses 
about 1/3 the RAM (584MN (R) for firefox and a total of 1772MB (R) 
for chrome (21 processes)) and 2/3 of the CPU cycles as well (19.2% 
vs 28.9%).  While I didn't measure the load time of each page, it 
seemed that FF loaded them faster, especially towards the end of the 
list of pages.

* Advantage firefox.

While chrome is VERY stable, it's still quite incomplete (no printing, 
no youtube, few plugins, some interface glitches.  however, based on 
this preview, I'm very impressed.  If they can cut down on resource 
use (probable), maintain speed and stability (probable), and 
encourage the same kind of plugin and user community as FF (hmmmm), 
it's certainly a contender.  

-- 
Harry Mangalam - Research Computing, NACS, Rm 225 MSTB, UC Irvine
[ZOT 2225] / 92697  949 824-0084(o), 949 285-4487(c)
MSTB=Bldg 415 (G-5 on <http://today.uci.edu/pdf/UCI_09_map_campus.pdf>
---
Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
-- Mark Twain