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!

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.

Please try and use non chromium based browser.

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.

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.

Chrome reskin; Firefox and Vivaldi (made by Opera's creator and former owner) are much better browsers.

I used Opera back in the day, but I don't trust the new development anymore.

I'd recommend using Firefox instead.

My opinion on Opera is that it's an outdated piece of adware.

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 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 :(

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 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.

It's just another Chromium browser now.

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 stopped using it after learning that it was chinese owned. back to firefox.

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"

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

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.

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.

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've tried to use opera on several occasions and it just never sticks with me for one reason or another ultimately I have for more privacy options and privacy focus browsers and those that have abilities for add-ons to achieve even greater security in privacy so Firefox tends to be the direction I go or brave.

Questionable that you can't change the search engine to a custom one out of "privacy" concerns

When desktop opera dropped the image-compresssion proxy I went back to firefox. I still use opera mobile because of the compression.

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

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.

Opera for mobile is the best mobile browser by far in my opinion. For desktop, I stick with Firefox.

I was using Opera for the last 4 to 5 years. But I recently switched to Lemur browser mainly because it supports all chrome and edge extensions and I prefer it's ui over kiwi's. It is made by Chinese devs tho.