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Introducing Aquafox: A New Hope (TenFourFox fork)
- Thread starter thewireless
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That's not a dumb question at all; the naming scheme can be a bit confusing. As far as I know, the 7450 is a redesign of the 7400, and all models in the 744x and 745x series fall under the 7450 category.
Yeah, the 7450 was an enhanced evolution of the original 7400 G4 and the 7440 series was a 7450 without L3 cache. The 7447 in my PowerBook should run 7450 code, but I started wondering if there might be specific optimizations for the extra cache in that version of the software.
This is true of TenFourFox, InterWeb, and AquaFox. Always the same and always from a fresh install.
When I start the browser for the first time, the default search engine is Yahoo!. I change it in the preferences, browse around a bit, close the browser, reopen, and it's back to Yahoo! again.
So I delete Yahoo! from the search engine list and change it again, close the browser, reopen, it's back to Yahoo! again. Now here's the weird part.
Now that I've given up and just leave it, sometimes when I open the browser it goes back to the preferences as I set them. Then if I close and come back, it's back to the default of Yahoo! again. The issue is quite sporadic.
The only changes I make to my setup are TenFourFox Pep and installing Umatrix extension.
It could be interesting to test what difference (sorbet) Leopard makes.
None of the UAs appears to work with iCloud.com, so I think it relies on something else to determine whether the browser is outdated or not. This is something worth looking into, and I might do so in the future. I will certainly be streamlining the UAs in a future release, adding 115ESR, 128ESR, and possibly more (Safari?).
Interesting take; it's quite possible. However, I am unable to verify what the optimizations exactly are, as the different versions are simply created by telling the compiler which CPU we are compiling for. This is entirely handled by the compiler.
Truth be told, none of the other PPC browser ports worked with iCloud in the past, so there's that.
To try to tease apart the effects of Sorbet Leopard and AquaFox on my remarkable banking experience, I would need a single machine that dual booted vanilla Leopard (10.5.8) and Sorbet Leopard. Then I could run AquaFox on each side of the machine and observe the difference. Same hardware, same app... just different OS underneath it.
Regrettably, the G5 I am doing all this on has a Tiger/Sorbet dual boot, not a Leopard/Sorbet dual boot. An AquaFox test from the Tiger side would be interesting, but tangential. Nonetheless, I am curious now; I will give this a try and report back here what I find.
Regrettably, the G5 I am doing all this on has a Tiger/Sorbet dual boot, not a Leopard/Sorbet dual boot. An AquaFox test from the Tiger side would be interesting, but tangential. Nonetheless, I am curious now; I will give this a try and report back here what I find.
It would be very rare for a seasoned PowerPC user to be working with stock Leopard though - we all optimised the hell out of it years before Sorbet appeared.
Regarding Tiger vs Leopard, I did some testing here:
Excellent Tiger vs. Leopard results - thanks!
To add to them, I will redo my banking test on both sides of the machine (Tiger and Sorbet) and measure/record the page load times. A banking site will impose a very different type of load than video playback, so it should provide an interesting additional data point.
I'll report back here in this thread.
To add to them, I will redo my banking test on both sides of the machine (Tiger and Sorbet) and measure/record the page load times. A banking site will impose a very different type of load than video playback, so it should provide an interesting additional data point.
I'll report back here in this thread.
@thewireless Looks like I need to fix the leopard build process. It fails at applying the Leopard patches when selecting Aquaweb. Look out for that update later today.
My banking test with AquaFox has now been repeated, once on Sorbet Leopard and once on Tiger, each booted on the same PowerMac G5 DP 2.3 GHz. In both cases, the browser caches were cleared prior to running the tests. Here is the summary:
10.5.9 Sorbet Leopard
Time from Google URL for bank to bank's online page with customer login link: 10.47s
Time from login link to login page: 28.88s
Time from login page to personal accounts page: 9.86s
10.4.11 Tiger
Time from Google URL for bank to bank's online page with customer login link: 9.75s
Time from login link to login page: 24.38s
Time from login page to personal accounts page: 11.60s
These are very mixed results, and don't demonstrate any significant difference between the two sides of the machine. Tiger seems to have a bit of a speed advantage, but it is slight. Sorbet is faster at some things, while Tiger is faster at others. In the end, neither is significantly faster than the other.
From the test results I think I can conclude that AquaFox itself is the major contributor to the relative speed with which the bank's site rendered. To repeat something I have said before, AquaFox is a great piece of work - thanks!
p.s.> this post has been composed and was submitted using AquaFox on Sorbet Leopard, running on the same PowerMac G5 used for the tests.
10.5.9 Sorbet Leopard
Time from Google URL for bank to bank's online page with customer login link: 10.47s
Time from login link to login page: 28.88s
Time from login page to personal accounts page: 9.86s
10.4.11 Tiger
Time from Google URL for bank to bank's online page with customer login link: 9.75s
Time from login link to login page: 24.38s
Time from login page to personal accounts page: 11.60s
These are very mixed results, and don't demonstrate any significant difference between the two sides of the machine. Tiger seems to have a bit of a speed advantage, but it is slight. Sorbet is faster at some things, while Tiger is faster at others. In the end, neither is significantly faster than the other.
From the test results I think I can conclude that AquaFox itself is the major contributor to the relative speed with which the bank's site rendered. To repeat something I have said before, AquaFox is a great piece of work - thanks!
p.s.> this post has been composed and was submitted using AquaFox on Sorbet Leopard, running on the same PowerMac G5 used for the tests.
I was already expecting this and have added a note in the README.md on GitHub. I’ve been meaning to test building on Leopard and report back to you, but I just haven’t found the time yet. I assume the issue might be that the script is trying to find a patch with the build name, but since there are only patches for TenFourFox and InterWebPPC in the directory, it’s throwing an error.
Just a quick reminder: the name of the browser is Aquafox; AquaWeb is a different project.
Yep. That was exactly it. It's been fixed and uploaded. Sorry about the name mix-up. This has stuck in my head https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/aquaweb-aquavid.
If you do make any further changes to the mozcfg files, could you please let me know so I can update the git patch?
Would you be interested to add it to MacPorts? Perhaps as a subport of TFF, that way will be easier to merge.
Your greatest friend for PowerPC web browsing is script blocking and/or changing user agents - when mobile phones were less capable, switching to a mobile ua gave a huge boost as your browser was presented with a slimmed down page (before app requirement ubiquity arrived this meant nice pages for Youtube, Soundcloud and Flickr amongst others.)
Now, as mobiles are much more powerful, that effect isn't as pronounced but it still helps.
BTW I would never recommend Sorbet to a power user - all of it's optimisations are gleaned from this community but elements are also removed - at some point you might find something not working and struggle to find the cause.
Better to install Leopard and change it to your requirements using threads here - that's if you want to understand more the working of those improvements (or have a working install of Leopard on standby to transplant missing kexts/frameworks to Sorbet.)
I reckon nobody tried building against 10.6 SDK? (Doesn’t matter if native or Rosetta.)
I’m asking since Palemoon forks have issues with building against 10.6.
I'm interested. What needs to be done to set that in motion?
Perhaps take a look at tenfourfox portfile to see whether a similar approach works?
macports-ports/www/tenfourfox/Portfile at 1b0b48dc4ea6f1057afaf38e0be0a06dcbcf3fcf · macports/macports-ports
The MacPorts ports tree. Contribute to macports/macports-ports development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
If yes, then it can be added as a subport into the same portfile (whatever has to be overrided can be).
In a case you are unfamiliar or not comfortable with MacPorts portfile syntax, I can handle that, you could just explain what should be changed about the build. (I did not compare the code against TFF; if the changes are largely about security certificates and alike, it could be as simple as adding a name with new checksums.)
What are the benefits of building with the 10.6 SDK? I believe we also use the 10.4 SDK on Leopard. (Note: I have never built TFF or its derivatives on Leopard.)
I looked at the portfile, and although I'm still unfamiliar with the syntax, I don't see why this approach wouldn't work. After all, Aquafox is basically TenFourFox with extra steps; it's mostly preferences and compiler configuration tweaks, as well as some changes to the UI. You can see all the changes here: (link).
As for security certificates and the like, maybe Cameron Kaiser will bump it to 128ESR. I have yet to learn how to do this myself. Currently, the project is just a continuation of InterWebPPC, providing precompiled TenFourFox to people without a fast machine to build it on.
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@barracuda156, just curious:
Since AquaFox can be installed as a Mac native app, what is the benefit of adding it to MacPorts?
Since AquaFox can be installed as a Mac native app, what is the benefit of adding it to MacPorts?
Strange question. Build from source. Both as a matter of security and optimization. Then, it allows a convenient way for development.
There are a lot, but I doubt it will work. TFF needs a substantial amount of fixes to detach it from the archaic SDK of Tiger.
TFF uses 10.4 SDK in MacPorts presently, regardless of the OS version.
Perhaps a more important thing will be to get rid of a requirement of an archaic gcc and fix it for gcc14.
P. S. To be clear, when I said about MacPorts, I meant supporting 10.4–10.5. MacPorts does not officially support 10.6 (though since I am the maintainer of tenfourfox port, I can support it on a level of given port). But supporting 10.6 ppc is not something required or even expected.
Alright, please tell me what I need to do to get Aquafox on MacPorts. As mentioned before, I looked into the portfile, but I'm not entirely sure what changes are necessary for Aquafox aside from updating the name and removing the nostrip mozconfig options.
Regarding 10.6, would there be much of a difference? I noticed that the TenFourFox portfile for 10.6 is identical to the standard one, so I would assume that MacPorts for 10.6 will build Aquafox just fine.