Firefox 8 is 20% Faster than Firefox 5, Install Firefox 8 in Ubuntu via PPA

Firefox 8 recently found its way into the nightly build channel. According to a recent study by extremetech.com, Firefox 8 is already 20% faster than Firefox 5 in almost every metric and has got a drastically reduced memory footprint as well.

Install Firefox 8 in Ubuntu via PPA

Key Points of the Study
  • Firefox 8 is 20% faster than Firefox 5 in almost every metric: start up, session restore, first paint, JavaScript execution, and even 2D canvas and 3D WebGL rendering.
  • Changes are not just under-the-hood, synthetic-benchmark, on-paper thing either: the difference between FF5 and FF8 is very noticeable.
  • Considerably faster at JavaScript execution, posting benchmark results that are about 15% faster than Firefox 5.
  • Firefox 8 is as fast or faster than the latest Dev Channel build of Chrome 14. Chrome’s WebGL implementation is still faster, but with Azure, Firefox’s 2D performance is better than Chrome. JavaScript performance is also virtually identical.
How to Install latest Firefox Nightly Build in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?
  • UPDATE: Firefox 10.0 Alpha1 is released, do the following to install the same.
  • Do the following in Terminal.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox-trunk
  • Done. Now, just search for Firefox in the Unity dash.
Firefox 8 in Ubuntu via PPA
  • You will see a new entry called Nightly Web Browser. That's nightly build of Firefox 8 for you. Launch it and see the difference for yourself.