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.
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
61 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
1454 readers
58 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
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.
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.
Please try and use non chromium based browser.
Back when they still had their own browser engine it was the greatest browser at the time. HTML5 was rolling in hard and Opera was always the first one to implement these new features. It was also faster than any other browser, had customizable UI (with full MDI instead of just tabs), builtin E-mail client and good tools for Web developers.
But as an open source person using it always felt a little bit wrong, because of it's closed source nature. Now that it's just an alternative UI for Chrome and owned by some shady Chinese company I wouldn't touch the damn thing with thousand foot pole.
I used Opera back in the day, but I don't trust the new development anymore.
I'd recommend using Firefox instead.
Opera sold out to China years ago, stop using it ASAP. I you wanna stay in chromium use the original devs new thing, Vivaldi.
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 :(
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..
Opera 12 was my main browser until it died and was replaced by a completely unrelated and terrible browser called Opera 2013. Opera 12's spiritual successor is Vivaldi, and that's what I still use now.
Vivaldi is the only browser that has all of the UI features that I want... No amount of extensions and customization of Chrome, Edge, or Firefox has been able to come anywhere close to matching it.
I recently switched from Vivaldi to Firefox. They're both good. I think I may slightly prefer Firefox though Vivaldi has some really cool features I haven't seen in another browser, but they weren't useful to me an do never really touched them.
Questionable that you canβt change the search engine to a custom one out of "concerns"
It's owned by the Chinese government
i stopped using it after learning that it was chinese owned. back to firefox.
Years ago, Opera has been my main browser and I really liked it. Back then, it was the only browser (to my knowledge) that had tabs. It was a novelty back then. Over the time they added more features, like the conversion tool. Then they added more features I didn't need or want, like the side bar, and it quickly became bloated. I switched to firefox, which offered a greater variety of add-ons. I still use firefox as my main browser. The only thing I miss is the conversion tool. There is nothing comparable like the one Opera has built in. I later learned that the original developers sold it to a chinese consortium. In hindsight, that explains the constant changes to the worse, which pushed me to another browser.
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
right, Opera GX is the one Im using, maybe I should have mentioned it. After reading all the comments I decided to check Firefox and Vivaldi out
Questionable that you can't change the search engine to a custom one out of "privacy" concerns
It was a great little browser for that short period between Netscape and Firefox.
I use it on mobile for the fast action button (basically fancy gesture controls). I know its ownership is pretty sketchy, and I'd prefer to be using Firefox or some other browser, but I haven't found any other browser with similar gesture controls.
Operaβs 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), βmodernizedβ 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.
it cringe
Proprietary. Don't trust it.
Opera for mobile is the best mobile browser by far in my opinion. For desktop, I stick with Firefox.
Spyware and something a virus will install on your computer. I used it for a while but eventually went back to brave or a Firefox fork.
When desktop opera dropped the image-compresssion proxy I went back to firefox. I still use opera mobile because of the compression.