Swiftfox
 | |
| Developer(s) | Jason Halme |
|---|---|
| Final release | 3.6.13 [±] |
| Preview release | 4.0.0 [±] |
| Operating system | Linux |
| Type | Web browser |
| License | binaries: proprietary source: MPL 1.1 |
| Website | www.getswiftfox.com (archived) |
Swiftfox was a
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. (-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])
- Swiftfox is compiled -O3,[1][2] (the highest level)
- instruction sets.[4]
- Optimization specific to the build microprocessor architecture.[4]
- Intel: Pentium 4, Pentium 3, Pentium M, Pentium III, Pentium II, Pentium 4 (Prescott).
- Athlon64(32bit binary).
- K6-2.
- 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
- Unicode fonts remain supported (see Unicode and HTML), but without certain extra features[7] provided by Pango. This simplification reduces the binary size, and reduces rendering.
Changed default preference values
- GUIto adjust these settings.
- For full details, see [1].
Swiftfox speed
No definitive benchmarking has been reported, but a quicker startup time and a 1.7% webpage rendering speedup has been reported on version 1.5.0.6.[10] There are no benchmarks for the different processors builds.
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
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.[11]
Unlike Firefox, the Swiftfox binaries have a proprietary license
Debian
Swiftfox binaries are available as Debian packages from official site. The proprietary binary license prevents Debian and other Linux distributions from having Swiftfox available as part of a distribution, so to redistribute Swiftfox one would have to change the name and icons.
See also
References
- ^ "Swiftfox Forum". Archived from the original on 2007-03-19.
- ^ a b c d Using url of about:buildconfig to check the details of the 2.0 builds
- ^ a b "Optimize Options - Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)".
- ^ a b c d "Swiftfox 2.0pre changelog".
- ^ "Swiftfox Forum". Archived from the original on 2007-03-21.
- ^ "Limiting buffer overflows with ExecShield". redhat.com. Archived from the original on 2007-02-08.
- ^ "Script Gallery - Pango".
- ^ a b "Swiftfox 1.5.0.7 changelog".
- ^ "Swiftfox Forum". Archived from the original on 2007-09-28.
- ^ "APC Magazine: What's The Worlds Fastest Browser". Retrieved 2006-10-30.
- ^ a b "Swiftfox license".