Firefox 3.5 Benchmarking in Linux

So I know there are tons of benchmarks already out there about the just released Firefox 3.5, but most of them are Windows focused. So if like me you run a Linux OS there's still a little more to know perhaps?

I know most benchmarkers prefer to do everything very cleanly with nothing but the browser running and maybe even a fresh reboot for each test...but I'm doing this more real world with other programs running in the background and no reboots. Just for reference though, none of the other programs running were changed during the tests to maintain some semblance of scientific objectivity.

I run Ubuntu 8.04 (LTS) still, and so the only official Firefox available to me thru Canonical's repositories is FF 3.0.11. In theory this one should be optimized specifically for use with Ubuntu, but as others have pointed out in the last few months, FF seems to run a bit slower on Linux than Windows of all things. Most believe this to be a matter of optimization, so I am trying out SwiftFox for the first time today too. The version I'm testing is 3.5rc3 and optimized to my Pentium D (prescott, 32bit) CPU, so supposedly it will be faster than the one Ubuntu has shipped and the vanilla binary from Mozilla's website, which is where I got the copy of 3.5 I'll be using for this test. And then on top of those three I'm also going to run the same tests on Google's new Linux alpha version of Chrome (ver:3.0.190.2).

So first off, just for curiosity's sake, let's see how they all do in the ACID3 test:

Firefox 3.0.11: 72%
Firefox 3.5.0: 93%
SwiftFox 3.5.rc3: 93%
Chrome 3.0.190.2: 99.9%

As expected Firefox 3.5 and SwiftFox get the same score as they're technically the same version of the rendering engine. Chrome actually says 100/100, but then it says "linktest failed" below that and there is a big X in the top-right corner, so I've marked it down to 99.9% as I don't know what that really constitutes a score of.

Next up, we'll be running Google's own V8 Benchmark, and the scores are rather surprising.

FF 3.0: 119
FF 3.5: 194
SF 3.5: 230
Chrome: 2492

So, first off the difference between Chrome's score and the other Mozilla based browsers is almost ridiculous. As Google created this benchmark themself, it almost makes you suspicious if they specifically put in tests they knew V8 would handle better than TraceMonkey? So I'll take that portion with a grain of salt. Also these "points" don't have any real intrinsic definition as to how they are calculated, more being better obviously. As for the other three, FF 3.5 doesn't even score twice as high as 3.0 did. Swiftfox however finally proves that it is indeed much better optimized that the other 2 by scoring almost 40 points more than the vanilla build.

Last we'll go with the tried and true SunSpider benchmark provided by the WebKit team.

FF 3.0.11: 5,583ms
FF 3.5: 2,421ms
SF 3.5: 2,111ms
Chrome: 986ms

Here FF 3.5 shows it is clearly much faster than 3.0 by completing the series of tests in less than half the time it took it's older brother. Once again SwiftFox shows us it is certainly faster than its not-so-well optimized cousins. And here Chrome really shines with completing the tests in less than a second! This is over twice as fast as Swiftfox, so maybe that V8Bench score wasn't as artificially bloated as I thought?

There are obviously many other browsers I could have included here, but decided not to bother with. When Konqueror finally switches to WebKit and Squirelfish it may be worth writing about, but for now is last decades' browser. Projects like Midori are also much too new to worry with at the moment. Safari nor IE have native ports for Linux, so they're obviously right out. And last there's Opera... This is a philosophical question for most, but I refuse to use a proprietary browser when there are open source options just as good if not better, so I personally could care less about Opera at all, that and their javascript performance is still quite far behind the likes of TraceMonkey, SquirellFish & V8 from what I understand.

To conclude, Chrome is still extremely alpha at the moment, with no plugin support so it's not really viable for daily use. With no Flash nor HTML5, half the web quickly becomes unusable, so we'll see what the situation is looking like when they finally make their first stable release for Linux based OSes. For now, I know I'll be using SwiftFox from now on ;)

Death & Taxes

The US tax system is really screwed up. I technically work for an accountant (computer biz I work for is a side company of his), but I am quite far from an expert in such things to be upfront about it. Still...

A business gets to right off any kind of operating expenses when doing their taxes, this can be anything from paying employees and the power bill, to advertising and "business meetings" at fancy restaurants. However, you don't get such liberties with your personal filing (as far as I'm aware). In theory, I should in all fairness you would think, be able to write off all my rent, food, power bills, gas, clothing, etc...as they are all operating expenses of my daily life.

I'm curious if I could get away with creating a small LLC called Derick's Life or something, and have it registered as the owner/operator of all my personal expenses. I could even go so far as to contract myself so that I am employed by Derick's Life, LLC and then my real employer pays a contractors fee equivalent to my current pay rate. Then DL corp could pay me officially only what's left of my paychecks after all my bills and living expenses are paid for and budgeted out. Now, at the end of the year Derick's Life, LLC could list my rent, doctors bills, phone bills, car note, etc as expenses (even my sub-paycheck I receive from the LLC ..aka.. spending money/disposable income) and a gross profit of whatever my real employer paid for me to work there.

In theory the company should have to only pay a very small pittance in taxes, compared to what I might have to. Now of course this rant is all silliness in the end as I'm actually getting a refund this year, but still...if I were to actually make the average middle-class wages (which are double what my wife and I both made combined in 2008) I wonder if one could be better off in such a scenario. To sum up my sentiment here if you haven't already inferred it on your own...it seems like the US government give businesses and organizations a better deal than individuals when it comes to taxes...and I just think that's totally backwards of the way it should be ;)

</rant>

Addendum: Yes, I know you can itemize your deductions for personal taxes, but I'm pretty sure things like food, rent and insurance don't count....otherwise why would politicians have even been talking about tax credits for insurance in this past fall's election?

PPS: I'm an odd Libertarian....I guess you could call me a left-leaning, moderate libertarian, as I'm not against taxes completely...I just think they should be minimal and fair ...aka... the poor to lower-middle class shouldn't have to pay any, and the same goes for very small business ;)

I may post my theory on what I consider to be a fair "Dynamic Tax Graduation" in a future web log...

To blog or not to blog

I honestly have never been a big blogger. I guess putting a big long winded rant or article up where everyone can read it, makes me feel compelled to put a lot of time and effort into it, as well as the general obsessing over wording and typos. But, now that I've been tweeting for the past 9 months it seems more apparent what the division is. Most of the time I, and probably you too, want to express an opinion/ideas about something, but don't feel like putting all the effort into a big long blog post...so now with the magic of "micro-blogging" we can say our opinion simply, not worry about explaining ourselves so well, and move on.

I'm honestly tweet crazy these days, I check for Twitter updates about once an hour if not more frequently. I post things constantly there, and I don't worry so much about typos and such since I'll just end up posting something else pretty soon thereafter. It's really kinda freeing. Somehow the limitation of characters has helped me be able to express more than a blog ever did. For example, I haven't really said too much in this post yet the total character count is 1425. I'm thinking that blogs now can be reserved for the few topics that actually need a lot of explaining and going on about, and 99% of the time we can just spurt out whatever we really wanted to say in a little status update.

PS: the "statusphere" sounds much more clever to me than "blogosphere" ever did ;)