My 2010-era machine is not exactly state-of-the-art (Intel U4100 @1.30 GHz, 4 GB RAM, SSD), but I am noticing a significant different in how Firefox and Chromium perform. Firefox 42 is noticeably laggy and choppy compared to Chromium 45, which is nice and responsive. With both browsers, I have Flash disabled and only one plug-in (Adblock Plus) running. Has anyone else noticed this? Is this just an inherent difference between the browsers at this point?
I haven’t run chrome in some time now, but I have no issues with Firefox myself.
I hate to have to admit it, but Firefox is not running as well in Ubuntu as Chromium for things like streaming media. It just isn’t. I have previously stuck with Firefox because I much prefer its interface and the proper, traditional, text based menu it has running along the top. But, about a month ago, i finally gave up the ghost and have gone over to Chromium for most of my browsing. I still have Firefox installed and will return to it if it shows signs of improving on the streaming media front. In the meantime, i have installed a couple of extra plugins into Chromium to make it a bit more sane including:
Chromarks
Rescroller
Yes, in addition to poor performance of streaming media, in general it just isn’t loading pages quickly or scrolling smoothly any more, even on light sites like Reddit.
I gave up on Firefox ages ago, just did not run very good on my old dell, chromium just runs better for me
I run both Chromium and Firefox on my older dell Inspiron which is more than 5 years old. I use Ubuntu mate and both browsers run perfectly. You do have to install pepperjack flash and HAL to get certain streaming media to run very well generally. Firefox actually runs faster for me, I’m wondering if there is something else that is slowing down the browsers for you guys? I don’t know…
What’s strange is that since I made that post, I have a lower-spec machine that runs both browsers just fine, and a higher-spec machine where Firefox performs badly. I can live with it, though.
I also have an old Acer Aspire One with an Atom N455 @1.67 Ghz with crappy GMA 3150 graphics and Firefox has been performing worse each day. I only have 2 extensions working all the time, AdBlock Plus and the super-lite Blue Hell Firewall (the others I enable only when I need them). Chromium or Chrome still run blazing fast by comparison (also with 2 extensions, AdBlock Plus and Pop-Up Blocker).
So yes there is an increasing difference in performance. The problem is that I really love Firefox and all the customization options, not to mention the extensions. But anyway you can test your browsers scores here: http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/ You can use it to measure Firefox’s performance in some areas including media streaming. Needless to say that Chromium/Chrome always win in the summed up, general performance score. But my love for Firefox is still strong! 
You can, and should install Chrome. If you want to use only Chromium, then install pepperflashplugin-nonfree from repositories.
Officially, the latest version of Flash on Linux is only available via Chrome — it’s bundled and comes with Chrome itself. You don’t have to do anything special to get it, and updating Chrome automatically updates the Flash plug-in on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and even Chrome OS.
I’m a Firefox user. On my end, Chromium is slightly faster than Firefox, but I choose not to use it due to Firefox being more committed to open source. But Firefox is still really fast on my machine. One thing I can tell you is that Adblock plus is a MAJOR performance hog on Firefox. I recommend removing it and installing Ublock Origin instead, which provides you better ad blocking and seems to make browsing faster.
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I have Chrome installed in order to get flash. But I use Chromium because it doesn’t have all the intrusive Google bloat-ware bundled with it.
I also use the following as my home page:
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?complete=0
Because it gets rid of the deeply annoying google autocomplete
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Hi there @jay. Many thanks for the tip on Ublock Origin. I’m gonna go get it now and try it instead of AdBlockPlus. If it makes browsing faster and still blocks the ads I’m all for it. That’s why I use Blue Hell Firewall, because it’s very light and offers some privacy and dangerous sites protection.
Indeed one can see AdBlock Plus delaying page loads, just looking at the left bottom area, where you get the activity notifications. It’s always saying “waiting for AdBlock Plus”.
I have both installed on Ubuntu Mate 15.10, and I use more Chromium, I think this really faster.
I’ve just about given up on Firefox. With XUL extensions and Complete Themes nearing their end, switched Pale Moon on all platforms. Would probably recommend Chromium over FF, being FF is just essentially following in it’s footsteps. Why not use the original? Ultimately prefer Pale Moon above them both though. It’s awesome 
Pale Moon is really great, but given that it’s a smaller development team than Firefox, I worry that they might not be able to be as quick to address security vulnerabilities as Mozilla would be. They share the same original code base, but as I understand it, they are no longer synced with Firefox so they wouldn’t be benefiting from Mozilla’s security fixes.
I actuall have decided to give Vivaldi a shot, so far so good. It’s pretty nice.
Have you tried any speed tweaks? maybe this one will help you out. Not a super processor but Dual Core and 64bit, and using an SSD. I’ve tried some of these tweaks but anything might cause you problems, so proceed at own risk.
Are you using a 64bit OS and browser?
Have you looked into the proper way to set up SSD’s for linux?