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)
Opera is just chromium with extra spyware and shit. Firefox is mentioned a lot because it is foss, and my favorite browser for that matter.
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!
The original devs of Opera went to make Vivaldi, which is a yet another Chromium based browser.
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.
Firefox always number 1 though.
Just curious, what browser do you use?
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.
Brave is littered with crypto and replaces other ad networks with their own (which does tracking basically exclusively for them).
Steer clear, it’s a trap.
You can disable Brave ads and tracking pretty easy. A lot of the crypto stuff can be disabled too.
It was the best, most full-featured browser until it (effectively) died after Opera 12 in 2013, now it’s just a Chrome skin.
Use Firefox, it’s not just (in my opinion) the best browser now but it helps protect against a Google monopoly on web standards.
Pin comment and close thread! :)
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.
Yes, and it also pioneered many features we take for granted now. Like tabs, customizable interfacez etc.
But now it is just a reskinned Chrome.
I loved their speed dial when that came. Just having a home page with a grid of your favorite websites was so innovative at the time.
Yes I forgot about this! Speed Dial was a killer feature, we just take it for granted now.
Chrome reskin; Firefox and Vivaldi (made by Opera’s creator and former owner) are much better browsers.
Please try and use non chromium based browser.
I used Opera back in the day, but I don’t trust the new development anymore.
I’d recommend using Firefox instead.
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
deleted by creator
Didn’t a lot of former members of the opera dev team go on to make Vivaldi? I really like Vivaldi but I always come back to my bae, Firefox
It’s just another Chromium browser now.
It has been awesome until 2013 when they decided to make their browser a skin on top of Chromium. Now they had more UI revamps and it doesn’t work or feel like Opera at all. I tried using it sometimes ago and now they even got those weird huge buttons…
It was a great little browser for that short period between Netscape and Firefox.
It’s owned by the Chinese government
Questionable that you can’t change the search engine to a custom one out of “concerns”
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).
