Swiftfox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article may be too technical for a general audience.
Please help improve this article by providing more context and better explanations of technical details to make it more accessible, without removing technical details.
Swiftfox
Image:Swiftfox.png
Developed by Jason Halme
Stable release based on Firefox 2.0.0.11  (November 29, 2007) [+/−]
Preview release based on Firefox 2.0.0.13pre-2

based on Firefox 3.0pre4  (nightly) [+/−]
OS Linux
Genre Web browser
License binaries: proprietary
source: MPL 1.1
Website getswiftfox.com
Mozilla Firefox
(category)
Contents
Origins and Lineage
This box: view • talk • edit

Swiftfox is a version of Linux Mozilla Firefox for different Intel and AMD processors. It is a build of the open source Mozilla Firefox web browser for Linux made by Jason Halme. Swiftfox is freely downloadable, with open source code and proprietary binaries. Several versions of Firefox are available, each with a separate download for a specific type of microprocessor architecture. Firefox extensions and plugins are compatible with Swiftfox, with notable exceptions. The name Swiftfox comes from the animal Swift Fox. Swiftfox differs from Firefox by a limited number of changes, and builds for different processors. As these differences are technical, for general information on the browser see Firefox.

Contents

[edit] Optimization

The Swiftfox build is optimized using the following methods:

Binary code optimization

  • Compiled with the highest level of compiler optimization, rather than optimization for binary size.
    • Swiftfox is compiled -O3,[1][2] (the highest level)
      • The resulting Swiftfox binary is larger than Firefox. (It should be noted that -O3 is not necessarily faster than -O2, or -Os. -O3 introduces two more options on top of -O2: -finline-functions and -frename-registers. The latter is good for CPUs with many registers but may actually be slower on other CPUs.[3])
    • Firefox is compiled -Os[2]. (-Os is the same as -O2 but removes optimizations which would increase the binary size [3]
    • Intel and AMD: MMX, SSE, SSE2, (not generally SSE3[4]).
    • AMD only: 3DNow!
  • Optimization specific to the build microprocessor architecture.[5]
  • Compiled with newer version of GCC (Firefox 2.0 uses 3.3.2, Swiftfox 2.0 uses 4.0.4).[2]

Increased Security

  • Better protection from Buffer overflow attacks[6] (Swiftfox 2.0 uses -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2; Firefox 2.0 uses gcc 3.x, which does not support this).[2]

Simplify

Changed default preference values

[edit] Speed

[edit] Firefox speed

Firefox has been criticised for slow startup compared with other browsers [10], a criticism confirmed by pre-Firefox 2.0 speed tests.[11][12] A speed comparison of various Linux (and other) browsers has been done.[12]

[edit] Swiftfox speed

No definitive benchmarking has been reported, but a quicker startup time and a 1.7% webpage rendering speedup has been reported on the 1.5.0.6 version.[13] . There are no benchmarks for the different processors builds.

[edit] Additional options

Swiftfox is bundled with the following freely available Firefox plugins and extensions:

  • XForms extension is installed and enabled
  • libunixprintplugin.so plugin is installed

[edit] Downloads available

  • The latest released version of Firefox 2.0 - separate builds are available for each processor type covering Intel and AMD processors:
    • packaged as a tar file
    • packaged for Debian installs
  • Recent snapshots of development versions of Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 (trunk) - separate builds for AMD Athlon XP processors and Intel Pentium 4 (and compatible).

[edit] License

The same as Firefox, the Swiftfox source code is open source, with the source code under MPL 1.1 except for parts relating to branding.[14] Unlike Firefox, the Swiftfox binaries have a proprietary license[14] which does not allow redistribution. According to the author, this is to prevent the possibility of any confusion with tainted versions (see the Firefox branding argument Mozilla Firefox#Trademark and logo issues). The name Swiftfox is trademarked by Jason Halme, and accordingly cannot be used on other third party Firefox builds without his permission.

[edit] Debian

Swiftfox binaries are available as Debian packages from official site. Note that the proprietary binary license prevents Debian and other Linux distributions from having Swiftfox available as part of a distribution.

[edit] Alternatives

  • Firefox source code and Swiftfox changes are freely available for download, allowing anyone to create their own build.
  • Swiftweasel is an optimized build of the Mozilla Firefox code that is licensed under the MPL 1.1.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Swiftfox Forum.
  2. ^ a b c d Using url of about:buildconfig to check the details of the 2.0 builds
  3. ^ a b Optimize Options - Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).
  4. ^ Swiftfox Forum.
  5. ^ a b c Swiftfox 2.0pre changelog.
  6. ^ redhat.com.
  7. ^ Script Gallery - Pango.
  8. ^ a b Swiftfox 1.5.0.7 changelog.
  9. ^ Swiftfox Forum.
  10. ^ Muradin, Alex (November 30, 2005). Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Final Review. Softpedia. Retrieved on 2006-09-22.
  11. ^ Mozilla Firefox Review. Softpedia. Retrieved on 2006-10-30.
  12. ^ a b Browser speed comparisons.
  13. ^ APC Magazine: What's The Worlds Fastest Browser. Retrieved on 2006-10-30.
  14. ^ a b Swiftfox license.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links