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.
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
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.
The original company was sold. Opera Software still makes the browser and its headquarters is still in Norway, but it is owned by a consortium.
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.
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.
On mobile: Tor browser, Bromite and Vanadium.
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.
I remember the mouse gestures, they were a really neat feature. I don’t think any other browser has had anything close to it since then.
Please try and use non chromium based browser.
I was a Netscape and Opera girl back in the day. I haven’t used it since my uni days but I used to love it. I think it’s owned by some pretty shady companies these days though :(
My opinion on Opera is that it’s an outdated piece of adware.
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
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
It was a great little browser for that short period between Netscape and Firefox.
Opera sold out to China years ago, stop using it ASAP. I you wanna stay in chromium use the original devs new thing, Vivaldi.
It’s owned by the Chinese government
Please don’t use Opera (or any other proprietary browser). It contains a lot of on-by-default spyware and it’s hard or impossible to disable everything.
https://www.kuketz-blog.de/opera-datensendeverhalten-desktop-version-browser-check-teil13/ (post in German, but you can see what the browser transmits. It’s a lot. Including the domains of all sites you visit). The best way to increase your privacy with Opera is to uninstall it. Apparently, this is how they make their money nowadays. They used to sell their browser, but it’s free since a while. So users pay with their data.
Also, try not to use Chromium based browsers (not even if they are purely open source, based on the open source Chromium base). Its development is very much steered by Google and their interests and you can see the effects e.g. with their Manifest v3 which cripples ad blocking extensions, for example.
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
If you want a Chromium browser that isn’t Chrome or Edge, use Brave.
Opera was acquired by a Chinese company in 2016 and has gone downhill.
Firefox is popular with an emphasis on privacy. It is also one of the few mainstream browsers not using Chromium or WebKit
Brave? The Chinese owned browser that bundled cryptominers with their software?
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.
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).
