> Stock firefox can't go further than 100 tabs, and you can't do literally anything else on your computer at that time.
Perhaps it's because of what else is running on your system and your system's hardware and OS. I regularly use Firefox with a few hundred tabs open across a couple of windows. On Windows, I find that if I have IE or Edge or Chrome running, each with a few tabs, most of my RAM just goes to them. I also hibernate my system and restart it only once every few weeks.
I use several extensions with Firefox too:
- uBlock Origin (block ads)
- Privacy Badger (tracking blocker)
- Perspectives (distributed certificate checks and better error handling)
- HTTPS Everywhere (default to https on sites and avoid plain http)
- Self-Destructing Cookies (self-destruct cookies for a tab after closing it)
- Tab Mix Plus (better tab management)
- Session Manager (better session management between restarts)
- Tree Style Tab (hierarchical tab list management)
- TooManyTabs (almost self-explanatory)
- Lazarus (save form data to restore or reuse)
- Link Alert (so I know if a link is a file or an internal site link or external site link or a popup and can then decide if I want to click it)
- FoxyProxy (switch proxies easily)
- Foxclocks (handy clocks in different times zones)
- DownThemAll (easier downloads of multiple items, which I need occasionally)
- and many more
Although I experience slow starts and long shutdowns, in general, and in comparison, the browser is not RAM hungry compared to opening just a couple of tabs on Internet Explorer/Edge or about ten tabs or so in Chrome (with fewer extensions than above in Chrome). On OS X/macOS though, Firefox seems more RAM hungry, is a bit more sluggish and consumes more energy than Safari.
Shutting down the browser and opening it again will also help since Firefox by default does not load tabs until they get the focus (this "load tabs on demand" behavior has been around for quite sometime). It will load some stuff from the cache though. One more thing you can try is create a new profile (take care to get bookmarks from the old one) and see if that avoids any problems with extensions or other cruft in the older profile.
Perhaps it's because of what else is running on your system and your system's hardware and OS. I regularly use Firefox with a few hundred tabs open across a couple of windows. On Windows, I find that if I have IE or Edge or Chrome running, each with a few tabs, most of my RAM just goes to them. I also hibernate my system and restart it only once every few weeks.
I use several extensions with Firefox too:
- uBlock Origin (block ads)
- Privacy Badger (tracking blocker)
- Perspectives (distributed certificate checks and better error handling)
- HTTPS Everywhere (default to https on sites and avoid plain http)
- Self-Destructing Cookies (self-destruct cookies for a tab after closing it)
- Tab Mix Plus (better tab management)
- Session Manager (better session management between restarts)
- Tree Style Tab (hierarchical tab list management)
- TooManyTabs (almost self-explanatory)
- Lazarus (save form data to restore or reuse)
- Link Alert (so I know if a link is a file or an internal site link or external site link or a popup and can then decide if I want to click it)
- FoxyProxy (switch proxies easily)
- Foxclocks (handy clocks in different times zones)
- DownThemAll (easier downloads of multiple items, which I need occasionally)
- and many more
Although I experience slow starts and long shutdowns, in general, and in comparison, the browser is not RAM hungry compared to opening just a couple of tabs on Internet Explorer/Edge or about ten tabs or so in Chrome (with fewer extensions than above in Chrome). On OS X/macOS though, Firefox seems more RAM hungry, is a bit more sluggish and consumes more energy than Safari.
Shutting down the browser and opening it again will also help since Firefox by default does not load tabs until they get the focus (this "load tabs on demand" behavior has been around for quite sometime). It will load some stuff from the cache though. One more thing you can try is create a new profile (take care to get bookmarks from the old one) and see if that avoids any problems with extensions or other cruft in the older profile.