| I wish this were true but certainly on Linux I don't find this to be the case. I periodically try switching to Firefox and always end up back on Chrome for performance reasons. Features wise I prefer Firefox (containers are amazing, extra privacy features/blockers by default nice, the new picture in picture for video is nice, dev tools have a lot of cool extra features etc), but Firefox often struggles and stutters for me, whereas I rarely have issues with Chrome. The devtools are a good example, sometimes just having them open on a page I am developing slows everything down. Closing/re-opening the tab seems to fix it for a bit but then it just starts to happen again, Chrome's devtools are always snappy. Similary if I want to inspect an element on a page Chrome never has a problem doing it instantly, Firefox has to think about it for a while. In general everything that uses the GPU I find far faster in Chrome. The other day for instance I was working on a d3 SVG visualization that strained Firefox but was no problem for Chrome, canvas performance is similar but not as bad in my experience. The most common offender is trying to watch a video: in Firefox everything slows down and the fans spin up, in Chrome no effect. It is also true that all Google services that I am unfortunately tied to (GMail, Maps, Calendar etc) are snappy in Chrome and like molasses in Firefox... |
I think it comes down to what one is used to. We probably learn to sidestep problems with any browser we use, but using a different browser inevitably leads to frustration.
Of course, this is not true if you are using Google services. Google seems to put an extra effort in making sure that their pages are as slow as possible in Firefox... I don't care much myself as I don't use them, but it's a good reminder of how (non)non-evil they have become.