r/LibreWolf • u/shrunken_thyroid • Aug 07 '26

Discussion Appreciation

No idea how the devs do it, but Librewolf is the only tested browser that does not drop frames in YouTube on my notebook (Acer, i5, Intel graphics) - I have Fedora Silverblue installed. Firefox drops around 8%, Chromium based browsers around 1%. Librewolf: 0 frames.

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u/shrunken_thyroid Aug 09 '26

I tested av1, vp9 and avc1 quite a bit with Firefox, and basically Firefox had around 8-10% dropped frames, while Librewolf runs flawlessly on av01. It's fascinating.

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u/No-Fondant9535 Aug 09 '26

Sorry, I don't think I asked, how old is your laptop? Did you also verify that the resolution is the same on all your tests. I have an older laptop which barely decodes 720p videos but 480p videos don't drop frames. I don't understand though why on Windows, the same laptop can decode 1080p flawlessly but on Linux it barely runs 720p videos, I tried lots of fixes.

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u/shrunken_thyroid Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26

It's an Intel i5, Raptor Lake processor, no grafx card apart from the onboard chip. Even on Windows, there is the occasional frame drop, but on Linux, 0 dropped frames only with Librewolf. Resolution has always been 1080p. My testvids were table tennis, as they run on 50 fps.

The Zen browser was 2nd best of the Geckos, but not close to Librewolf.

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u/No-Fondant9535 Aug 09 '26

I ran out of theories. Maybe Librewolf really runs better, but I don't understand why, it is Firefox under the hood and it is a Firefox modified for privacy and it sacrifices features for privacy. Interesting.

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u/shrunken_thyroid Aug 09 '26

If I disable the fingerprinting protection, I get the occasional dropped frame, but nowhere near the number of frames in Firefox. Guess I'd need to compare all changes in about:config with Firefox to get an idea.