Lightweight ad-blocker for firefox

On a old machine (512 MB RAM) I am currently running ubuntu jaunty and firefox 3.0.15. I tried the ad blocker addon add block plus but it eats lots of RAM (>300 MB).

Is high memory load of this add-on a bug, which is fixed in a newer version or just normal? If so, why is the memory usage so high?
Is there another ad blocker add-on for firefox, another browser- add-on combination for linux (ubuntu jaunty) or even better a browser independent solution for linux which uses significant less RAM?

student

Posted 2012-06-16T14:40:25.560

Reputation: 455

Please could you explain me why this question was closed? – student – 2012-08-11T19:18:27.080

Answers

ABP acknowledges on their forum that they have a significant memory overhead, so if you want to get your RAM usage down you will have to switch to something else.

You could always try an ad-blocking HOSTS file, which wouldn't waste RAM. This particular one is regularly updated, but be sure to check it over before adopting it and make a backup of your original to be safe, of course. Lifehacker also has a whole article on this subject.

Paul

Posted 2012-06-16T14:40:25.560

Reputation: 4 434

Can you provide a reference/link for the acknowledgement made by the ABP folks? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2012-06-16T16:37:44.210

Further looking into the ABP forums shows a lot of performance optimization threads where IT-savvy folk have got their memory consumption cut down quite a bit. There is a lot of talk about this, the best "acknowledgment" I can find is here: https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9741&p=57729&hilit=memory+overhead#p57729

– Paul – 2012-06-16T17:49:27.207

@techie007 You can also look into the mercurial logs to see the comments on what the Dev has recently changed and updated. So I recommend everyone makes sure they have an up-to-date plugin to get these fixes in too. – Paul – 2012-06-16T17:50:31.823

Check out dnsmasq

Example:

/etc/dnsmasq.d/malware.list<
address=/googlesyndication.com/0.0.0.0

blocks the ads for googlesyndication.com in every browser and app.

tao

Posted 2012-06-16T14:40:25.560

Reputation: 1 355

Not sure why this was down voted... – Supercereal – 2012-06-16T16:44:51.907

This method can be applied in modified router firmware such as DD-WRT, but could adding many of those slow down the router? – superuser – 2012-06-16T17:31:59.880

On can also use privoxy or Bfilter. For privoxy there is a script which converts adblock+ lists for privoxy, see: http://andrwe.org/scripting/bash/privoxy-blocklist, same for Bfilter: http://www.convoglio.com/bfilter/

student

Posted 2012-06-16T14:40:25.560

Reputation: 455