Firefox Vanilla

Firefox Vanilla is a customized build of Firefox based on the Firefox 128 ESR branch, focused on delivering maximum performance for Windows and Android. While initially designed as a "vanilla" version of Firefox, this project now incorporates several advanced optimizations and enhancements, including Betterfox for configuration tuning, zlib-ng for improved compression, and experimental integration with mimalloc.

Roadmap

• Android PGO
• Better PGO Process (Speedometer, MotionMark, JetStream)
• Betterfox (Fastfox configuration)
• zlib-ng integration
• mimalloc integration
• Context-sensitive PGO (Not available for Rust code on Windows due to limitations in the Rust toolchain)
• Migration from ESR branch to Release branch

Benchmark

Testing Environment

• CPU: AMD R9-7950X
• Memory: 2*48GB DDR5@5200MHz
• GPU: RTX4060 8GB
• SSD: Intel Optane P5800X 1.6TB
• Display: 2560*1440 @ 75Hz
• OS: Windows 10 LTSC 2021

Testing Candidates

• Firefox Official 128.3.1 ESR: The official Firefox ESR release
• Mercury 129.0.2 AVX2: Mercury 129.0.2 with AVX2 support. All extensions were disabled.
• Firefox tete009 SSE3 132.0.1: Someone claim this is the fastest Firefox.
• Firefox Vanilla 128.3.1 ESR: Firefox Vanilla build for x86-64-v3, with internal jemalloc allocator.
• Firefox Vanilla (mimalloc) 128.3.1 ESR: Firefox Vanilla build for x86-64-v3, with dll intected mimalloc allocator.

Benchmark Result

Browser Version	Octane 2.0	Speedometer 2.1	Speedometer 3.0	JetStream 3.0	MotionMark 1.3.1 (large @ 60fps)
Firefox Official 128.3.1 ESR	56452	451±11	27.7±0.51	166.108	1567.68±2.63%
Mercury 129.0.2 AVX2	56415 (-0.07%)	354±4.7 (-21.50%)	22.4±0.23 (-19.13%)	165.285 (-0.05%)	1263.85±2.75% (-19.38%)
Firefox tete009 SSE3 132.0.1	58015 (+2.77%)	461±9.8 (+2.22%)	28.1±0.46 (+1.44%)	162.738 (-2.03%)	1560.05±2.86% (-0.49%)
Firefox Vanilla 128.3.1 ESR	56669 (+0.38%)	460±7.9 (+2.00%)	28.3±0.37 (+2.17%)	172.434 (+3.81%)	1810.58±2.86% (+15.50%)
Firefox Vanilla (mimalloc) 128.3.1 ESR	57559 (+1.96%)	468±8.7 (+3.77%)	27.7±0.33 (+0.00%)	178.084 (+7.21%)	1727.27±2.77% (+10.18%)

Features

• Aggressive optimizations: Aggressive optimization strategy was used in the build, trading some of the security for better performance.

• Lightweight: Many unnecessary components are removed or disabled.

• PGO and Full LTO: An improved testing process was used for PGO optimization, and the Android version enjoys the same optimizations.

• Aggressive optimizations: Employs an aggressive optimization strategy, trading some security features for increased performance.

• Selective Component Removal: Disables or removes non-essential components to enhance speed and reduce memory usage.

• zlib-ng integration: Replaces the original zlib with zlib-ng, boosting performance for tasks involving network requests, PNG decoding, and caching. This integration provides a significant speedup for Firefox’s compression and decompression workloads.

• Enhanced PGO and Full LTO: The PGO process has been refined to maximize performance, benefiting both desktop and Android builds.

Supported Platforms and Architectures

Currently, the project supports building for:

• Windows (x86_64)
• Android (aarch64)

System Requirements

Note: These configurations are not strict requirements. They are based on what worked for testing but can vary based on your system setup.

Windows

1. Windows 10 or later; Windows 10 21H2 or newer is recommended.
2. At least 40 GiB of available disk space (SSD highly recommended).
3. Full-LTO builds can consume up to ~50 GiB of RAM; 64 GiB of physical RAM is recommended.

Android

1. Debian 12 or later; other Debian-based Linux distributions may also work.
2. At least 80 GiB of available disk space (SSD highly recommended).
3. Full-LTO builds can consume up to ~50 GiB of RAM; 64 GiB of physical RAM is recommended.
4. The PGO process requires a working desktop environment with hardware-based virtualization and may use ~30 GiB of RAM.

Build Guide

1. Clone this project:

   git clone https://github.com/HeXis-YS/firefox-vanilla
   cd firefox-vanilla

   Alternatively, you can download the zip package directly.

2. For Windows: Run the following script to install the Mozilla build environment:

   install-mozilla-build.bat

   This will install the build environment to C:\mozilla-build. Once installed, start the shell with:

   C:\mozilla-build\start-shell.bat

3. Prepare the source code and build environment:

   ./bootstrap.sh (windows|android)

4. Build Firefox:

   ./build.sh (windows|android)

5. The build process may take several hours, depending on your system performance. So sit back, relax, and maybe enjoy a cup of coffee while you wait.

Notes

• Personal Project: This project was created as a personal pursuit of performance optimization. It’s tailored to my own needs and may not meet all use cases.
• Feature Requests and Compatibility: This project is not designed to accommodate feature requests or platform compatibility enhancements. For specific needs, forking the project is recommended.

Contributions

This is a personal project, but contributions that improve performance or simplify the build process are welcome.

Acknowledgement

• Mozilla Firefox
• Jamie Nicol (@jamienicol)
• Mercury
• Fennec F-Droid
• Webkit
• Betterfox
• zlib-ng

License

Mozilla Public License 2.0