I use both, and frankly Firefox opens too many tabs in my opinion. I'm constantly closing them. I don't want every page I view on the internet to remain open indefinitely.
Have you tried Tab Mix Plus? It has a feature where you can specify if new links are opened in new tabs or the same one. Plus I've used a million times their feature that restores a closed tab that I didn't mean to close, with a button on the toolbar.
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1122/