I am using Firefox 64-bit beta 5 prerelease nightly build, it works well on my Gentoo. And Vimperator also works, well, from the repository, of course. I have to edit the install.rdf because it only sets up up to beta 4. I bumped the version and built the xpi, it works great!
Almost all addons are not compatible with beta 5, AdBlock is the only one has an update for beta 5 prerelease, but I disabled it later. The reason I dont want to use AdBlock is same as I have with Chrome. The speed has been improved, though it is still slower than Chrome.
I think I should get some numbers, so I tested it with first website I could find from search.
Before I show you the results, I must tell you that I just wanted to get a rough idea about how fast they could execute JavaScript, I didnt try to make sure my system is all ready for the benchmark test to run. I had some programs running behind but they were not heavy tasks. Firefox 3.6.8 (8 addons) and Chromium (2 extensions) have some addons installed, but I dont think it would make big difference if I disable them.
Now, here is the chart and numbers:
| Browser | Total |
|---|---|
| Chromium 6.0.490.1 | 0447.4ms +/- 12.3% |
| Opera 10.61 | 0480.8ms +/- 01.4% |
| Firefox 4.0b5pre | 0719.4ms +/- 01.9% |
| Firefox 3.6.8 | 1255.8ms +/- 01.2% |
From the results, Fireforx 4.0b5pre is about 60.8% slower, but a benchmark is an intense test in different special cases. The real use might not result in such difference. When I just fired it up, I immediately felt the performance improved and I couldnt real tell if its faster or slower than Chromium. The memory usage also seems improved, though I havent used it thoroughly.
Vimperator is always something very important addon for me, I even tried to create a similar way to open bookmark in Chromium. Since its already in beta stage and stable enough for me, so I think I should probably go back to Firefox and Vimperator. Hope the future release could have more performance improvement. UI improvement is really useless to me since I use Vimperator.