I've been using Opera for a few years now and I've been enjoying its features, UI and everything. However, I (surprisingly to me) haven't noticed many people mentioning it. Also, when I was on Reddit and mentioned that I use it I got downvoted which left me somewhat confused haha.
So I'm wondering if there's anything wrong with it and/or if I should give another browser a go (I noticed Firefox is mentioned a lot on here)
Sadly this is the truth these days, opera certainly has had it moments in the sun in the past (especially on lower spec devices) but I would personally stare clear these days
Firefox is really the only true alternative
Small shout-out to edge browser’s built in pdf editing functions though, this is really handy on PC at times
And Edge’s built-in vertical tabs. They’re so clean and neat and the groups are colored and feel good to use while with most other browsers, vertical tabs feel like a hack, like you’re going against the browser’s intended usage. A year ago you’d have a hard time convincing me to use any Microsoft products but after using Edge at work for a while, I switched away from Firefox on my personal machines as well.
Nothing wrong with Opera. It’s based on Chromium, which means it’s based on the same engine as Chrome and Edge. It has a built-in VPN function; so, you can have that sort of privacy protection built in to your web browsing, depending on your trust for the company behind Opera (also called Opera). They have been involved in some questionable dealing in the past; but, there is no evidence that they are harvesting data with the VPN. The tl;dr is that it’s another way to have Chrome without directly using Google Chrome.
As for FireFox. It’s a great browser, I use it myself. It’s based on it’s own engine, Gecko. The Mozilla Foundation seems to care more about privacy and web standards than any other browser author. Though, this has pros and cons. On the plus side, FireFox can be configured to be very privacy preserving and some extensions (e.g. UBlock Origin) tend to be better at privacy on FireFox than Chromium based browsers. That said, some websites will expect Chromium and may break on FireFox (though, this is often because of explicit by web site developers. User agent spoofing often shows that the problem is fictitious).
I loved Opera 20 years ago when the built in RSS reader, email client, mouse gestures and unique rendering engine that was either faster than the others or completely incompatible with websites. Now I don’t give it much thought, all the chromium browsers feel the same.
There are extensions for Chromium browser’s that do the same thing now :) I use it at work because my mouse doesn’t have buttons for navigating back and forward, it’s great.
Opera’s always been a niche browser. One of the first to have tabs long before Firefox existed. But it was paid or you could have a perminant huge banner ad in the toolbar. That stink never entirely went away.
Then they switched engines (twice), “modernized” the UI, and sold the company. Most Opera fans switched to Vivaldi which was made in the style of classic Opera by some of the original devs.
Opera was ahead of it’s time with speed dial and tabs and it’s own engine. Now it’s just a chrome based browser with no real unique features. Vivaldi is my favourite browser nowadays
Vivaldi is definitely cool — except for the amount of RAM it uses. If it weren’t for that, I would use it a lot more, but for me, Firefox is just faster all around.
If you really want to use a chromium browser, Vivaldi is the only one I’d trust to not maliciously use my data. It was made by the people that used to own and develop opera and it has a big focus on both customization and privacy.
Also the android version of it allows you to stack tabs just like in the desktop version, and I don’t know of any other browser on android that let’s you do that so that’s pretty cool too.
There’s not much of a point in the base Opera when Opera GX exists, besides having a less gimmicky UI. If you value your privacy, don’t use it, but if you don’t, it’s a decent Chromium based browser
The Opera of today is not the same as the one from back in the days! The original company sold all their code and rights to a chinese consortium in 2016. Since then it’s basically a variant of chromium, with some propriatary features and tracking added. I don’t know the new owners, so I don’t trust them with my browsing data!
It is yet another Chromium based browser but for when Chromium is needed for compatibility reasons, it’s got some pretty cool features like split panes and mobile sites as a sidebar etc.
I switched from Chrome to Firefox about a year ago, because it’s just better for personal privacy and the freedom of the web as a whole. Brave would be my second choice, but FF lets you easily self-host a sync server for all your browsing data.
Tor browser for mostly anonymous browsing, Mullvad browser as default non-Tor browser (it’s basically an open source Firefox fork made by Mullvad and the Tor team), but I also still have a regular Firefox configured with Arkenfox’ user.js and some important extensions, as well as a Chromium with zero protections except uBlock Origin. I switch between those browsers depending on use case. Each browser has a different theme to make them easily distinguishable from each other, the “insecure” browsers which I only use for rare exceptions (websites misbehaving in any other browser) have a red-like color. All browsers are being run sandboxed.
@MelancholikhPatata It alright I guess. Stop using it when I had to keep on having to download that file to just being able to watch a video on Linux..
I just used mainly Firefox and if any website for whatever reason dislike Firefox, I use Ungoogled Chromium
Add comment