Linux.com has a review of Opera 9.5, which also includes various benchmarks for Opera, Firefox, Safari, and IE on both Windows and Linux. Linuxcom concludes: “Opera 9.5 is full to the brim with features and improvements and highly customizable. By rolling in apps such as the mail client and IRC chat application, and integrating them into a user’s browsing experience, Opera 9.5 is a worthy challenger to Firefox 3. It surely has enough power and features to make it my favorite browser. If only it were free software and open source!”
The article has a silly conclusion “if it were free and open source“. Opera is free, no longer ad supported. And Open Source is meaningless if noone can be bothered looking at the code base. Even if it were free and open source, the next complaint would be “but its not GPL”, “it doesn’t use Qt”, “it doesn’t come in pink”. Pathetic.
if it is free software, then it is already open source (isnt open source one of the critical component of free software?)
or did the summary meant, “free” as in “free beer”? but opera is already “free” as in “free beer” ..can you have a non free(as in free beer) and open source software? .. i just dont see the point of having both “free” and “open source” joined together the way the summary did ..am i missing something?
seriously, what good will it do open sourcing it?
i think the biggest challenge opera faces is having people taking the trouble to install it. as long as there is something seriously and visibly wrong with people’s browsers, most people wont go out of their way to look for other browsers and stumble on opera on their searches ..opera should start looking into making deals with computer manufactures to have it bundled on new installs ..they might start with talking to google to have it included in the software pack or whatever they call it
If Opera was OSS more(Linux) distros might include it.
If Opera was OSS maybe we’d finnaly get one with GTK-widgets.
If Opera was OSS we’d get an awesome portable fast renderingengine to use in projects.
etc etc…
If Opera was OSS every linux distro would have their own fork of it
If Opera was OSS, one opera fork would support GTK-widgets but suck with QT, one fork wouldnt support GTK-widgets and work with QT and third one would be mediocre with both.
If Opera was OSS, Opera itself wouldnt get any better, there would be just 300 forked projects for it that would act exactly same but have one single, usually meaningless, feature added to it to make it “different”
Problem with OSS is that it will never ever create a tower of babel…instead it will create tens of thousands of mudcakes…just because there’s no co-operation and every OSS developer wants to do their own little tinkering disregarding the others.
Let’s wipe Opera because Firefox already has the same functionality. HAND.
*goes looking at his 1000 mediocre versions of Linux kernel, Open Office and Firefox. Or. Not.*
Firefox
Swiftfox
IceWeasel
Camino
AT&T Pogo
K-Meleon
Mozilla Suite
…
OpenOffice
RedOffice
IBM Lotus Symphony
Star Office
NeoOffice
…
The only ones that mean anything to the majority is OpenOffice and Firefox.
And besides: Forking is a strength. Firefox was sort of a fork originally from Mozilla. The main product that they where pushing(Mozilla) had a number of issues that the fork fixed.
Essentially: Forking takes darwinism in software to a new extreme. If a projects has some flaws that the creators don’t see, ignore, etc… someone can fork it and fix it. If these issues are important and large enough the fork will win through. Survival of the fittest(best software).
haha.. darwinism
I was thinking: Then that makes IE the authority on not-so-intelligent design 
Free as in open source.
Considering that Linux.com is a magazine that pushes OSS I completely understand that this is a issue to them. Opera isn’t in fact OSS, and to them OSS is preferable where such alternatives exists.
Kinda sad that Opera is closed. It’s losing a lot on it. Before it didn’t matter much, their rendering-engine was way way better than Firefox, but now Firefox is getting better, but more importantly: WebKit is making inroads. And it is: at least as good as, if not better than Opera’s renderingengine on some areas.
Opera even has a lot of typical OSS-traits. Obsessed with standards. (Opera don’t support a lot of non-standard HTML, instead they have their browser to fix non-standard sites to become standard on-the-fly.)
They have released some OSS-stuff. (JS-frameworks.)They use a lot of OSS in their browser. (Aspell, OpenSSL, FreeType) And not least: their CTO(H~Ayenkon Wium Lie) said in a interview that he’d love to open source opera if they found a viable(economic) way to do it.
“I’ll bite”
You hereby are mistaken “free” as in beer and “Free” as in Freedom. Pathetic.
More seriously, and despite the mistake of yours, obviously, people are bored of comparing Emacs and Vim, comparing MacOS, Linux and Windows, KDE and Gnome, so now its all about Firefox and Opera.
The bottom line is: everyone is spreading a bunch of FUD.
Let’s take yours: Do you honestly think, for f–k sakes, that no one is looking at the Firefox code source?
How do you think people discover vulnerabilities, by luck?
How do you think, that during my daily job, I fix issues with Firefox?
We provide it to customers, and we’re able to fix it when trouble arise. I couldn’t fix Opera like that, because it isn’t Open source.
Maybe that, by now, you’ve taken your head out of your ass and you start looking at the world around you: maybe a closed source software makes no *direct* difference to you, but it does to others.
Note that, by not figuring out that you indirectly get a lot of Free support through Open source software, it makes you look dumb.
This aside, Opera is a very decent browser, as well as Firefox. I prefer Firefox myself because I don’t like the interface and integration of Opera. That’s really a matter of taste, I guess.
Features and performance are ok. For company use, I prefer Firefox by a large margin because we can fix it or make it do whatever we need to. In fact, we wouldn’t even think about Opera.
i’ll bite too
If i start fixing bugs in firefox, i need to check out a lot of code, spend most likely weeks to get the build environment to work and then months to understand the code so i can get started. (just checked, ff 1.5 has 10K of files and 2M lines of code).
Do you really think i can justify the time spend to any customer? I don’t know your line of business but i don’t think you can either.
From a business point of view it’s much cheaper to just pay the opera dudes to fix it. All that “you can fix it yourself” crap is pissing me off because it doesn’t work like that in the real world.
Bug fixes can only done by people who know the effects on the other components as well, therefore it’s much better to file a bugreport. In case of open source you can attach a patch as a bonus, but that’s about it.
Did you really fix some stuff in firefox? (If so, please point out a commit entry on the firefox tree made by you, so you can make a fool out of me
) Anybody else who thinks of fixing bugs, take a look at http://hg.mozilla.org/ and try to get it even up and running, i dare you!
(disclaimer : I love opensource, i run freebsd and a lot op open source products. But i only had the delusion once i could fix bugs in complex projects like firefox.)
“Free” by FSF standards. If it WAS free and open source it could come in pink.
Opera *IS* free, have you to pay anything prior to download and install ? Is the app feature and/or time limited ? Nope !
Open source ? What’s for, Opera have led the browsing experience to such an extend no other so-called ‘open-source’ software have ! Compare what is comparable : Opera is not open-source, but is sleek, fast, reliable, full featured, unlike Firefox that had to come to version 3 to implement what’s common in Opera since 7. So what’s the benefit of open-sourcing if software enhancement just crawls…
Ho, and by the way, all the “I don’t rely proprietary code” stuff is just non-sense : nVidia drivers, Opera browser, … ain’t considered as an issue on the Windows world, why would it be on the ‘open-source’ FOSS ? This is plain gross…
Kochise
I’ve used both. FF3 wins hands down. Particularly with the Ad Block Plus add-in.
If they say that anything is even in the same ballpark as FF3, they are smoking good crack.
For all the positive reviews of Opera and how superior it is, it still doesn’t gain any significant market share.
There’s something about Opera that just doesn’t appeal.
Thats the main problem I see for opera…
And please, Opera fanboys, dont try to say that “yes we have it” cos watering flower cans in my browser isnt what Im looking for…
Well integrated extensions like google ones, adblocks and stuff are the difference.
Extensions are nice, but does Joe User happy with his IE7 install really give a damn about them before he tries Firefox? I’d say the difference is Firefox’s now insane hype machine vs Opera’s attempts to market their browser.
Why should Opera have extensions?
Opera and Firefox have a fundamentally different philosohpy to features.
Firefox: simple, but *extendable* base.
Opera: everything we think most people need, and then a little more.
You could compare it to the GNOME vs. KDE thing. KDE apps tends to do more than GNOME-apps out of the box while GNOME-apps have extensions/plugins.
Personally I’ve come to prefer Firefox(just switched, partly because I’m using GNOME these days).
PS: It does support UserJS which is similar to Greasemonkey. So you can sort-of extend it there. (Widgets aren’t meant for a means to extend, they’re small programs.)
I think that both browsers are really good at their philosophy of choice. Opera has *shitloads* of functions, it’s abselutely amazing what you can do with it. Firefox has a relatively simple base, but you can extend beyond your dreams(and Opera) if you want to.
I think marketing is a important factor.
Combined with developers and webdesigners being in love with Firefox. (Firebug!)
Opera’s new debugger might change that, although I think they’re running a little late.
Agreed. Mozilla’s PR is crazy (in somewhat of a good way). FF3 was majorly hyped — IMO, overly so. Opera 9.5’s release didn’t get much press.
Mozilla had people setup parties, signup to beat a world record, etc. They even got *me* excited about the release, and I prefer Opera (because it feels faster and uses less RAM for me).
To each his own.
I know a lot of people will say extensions, but personally I think it’s down to marketing. The Firefox team have done an excellent job on getting the Firefox name out there and really promoted it as an IE alternative. They’ve done this both through grassroots campaigns, by getting journalists to write articles about it and through old fashion media advertising.
Opera on the other hand has been completely silent. I’ve never seen any advertising for Opera, or an article about it in any even vaguely mainstream press. Opera doesn’t have a hoard of users telling all their friends and family about how they should switch to Opera etc.
If two products do basically the same thing and are more or less just as good, the one with the best marketing tends to win. That’s what’s happening here.
Personally I find it to be an excellent browser but I miss Firebug and Web Developer too much. They seem to have addressed that now which is brilliant.
Cairo doesn’t support NT 4.0, Windows 98|ME etc so on this platform FF3 is out of the question if I understood my googling results this morning. This is one place I suppose Opera would be recommended if it works there.
…in some markets. So perhaps we’ll look at them and try to establish why they’re choosing Opera?
It so happens that I live in one of such places. First, numbers (also for few other countries in the region…but accidentally quite relevant when it comes to figuring out Opera marketshare)
Poland
IE – 54%
Firefox – 39%
Opera – 7%
Czech Republic
IE – 65%
Firefox – 30%
Opera – 4%
Ukraine
IE – 55%
Opera – 25%
Firefox – 17%
(yes, Opera is the leading alternative browser)
Lithuania
IE – 65%
FF – 28%
Opera – 7%
Hungary
IE – 58%
Firefox – 39%
Opera – 2%
Now, when you live here and see those numbers…it’s quite apparent that browser stats are somewhat related to overall socioeconomic situation in each country – generally Czech Republic and Hungary would be more “west like” in this regard, Ukraine far behind, while Poland and Lithuania somewhere in between.
And this would influence what/when people buy when it comes to hardware that runs their software. Yes, Ukraine would be quite a bit “behind” in this regard – my roommate was from there, and from what he told me dial-up is still dominating, and also his PC, around 1GHz and 256MB of RAM, was rather typical…
And that might be it: when it comes to searching for alternative browsers, roughly the same percentage of people do that in each of those countries (with the exception of “more west-like” economies, I’ll get back to that later), HOWEVER Opera is much better when it comes to running on slow machines. “Unfortunatelly” this situation won’t get better, long-term, for Opera…
Rampant piracy might also help Opera where it’s percentage is rather high – some “PC geek” usually has to set up WindowsXP for somebody from time to time, and he’s not only more likely to suggest alternative browser but also knows from the start that Opera does better on slow machines. But this factor doesn’t come into play in more mature markets, where people are more likely to simply buy the new machine with whole package and they’re set.
And generally people in “left behind” markets are less likelly to be influenced by PR stunts, the ones from Mozilla for example. Network of friends is more important when deciding.
If you saw something more in the data, let us now…
PS. One hope for Opera that I see is profileation of “minilatops” – their slow CPUs and small amounts of RAM should make Opera strengts particularly visible (plus it has rather nice working “fit to width” function). Not sure how long that’ll work though, I see they’re starting to get more CPU/RAM than my main machine…
Edited 2008-06-25 04:54 UTC
The thing preventing me from using Opera regularly is there’s no community driven extensions, but other than that it really a great piece of software.
edit: haha I didn’t read posts before mine
my bad.
Edited 2008-06-24 11:56 UTC
I would actually use Opera for alot of stuff if not for the simple fact that they refuse to allow you to accept certificates of your own accord. Where firefox2 and IE prompt for acceptance, and firefox3 forces you to add an exception…Opera just flat out fails and offers no recourse. /shrug
Go to opera:config, serach for Security Prefs, profit.
While I love Opera (in fact I used Opera for quite a while before discovering Firefox) there is just something about the interface they do not get ‘quite right’… (or maybe they do, but especially for a certain niche of users). That and certain pages still break because of a more strict adherence to CSS specifications.
And for me personally, the NTML authentication in Firefox is better than Opera’s (important for work).
I don’t care if Opera is OSS or not. The problem with 9.5 release is the # of bugs. They are too many and distract from browsing on linux as well as on mac. I prefer Opera to Firefox anytime provided the release is relatively bug-free. But Opera x.00 and x.50 releases tend to be very buggy. Waiting for an updated release.
If only it were free software and open source!
I’d like to understand… what would that change for you, simple user ?
And btw, if Linux distributions weren’t so close-minded, they would have more permissive licences, and including such great software as Opera in their distro wouldn’t be such a problem…
Maybe the code is opened… but for sure it’s not open as in “open-minded”…
And btw, if Linux distributions weren’t so close-minded, they would have more permissive licences, and including such great software as Opera in their distro wouldn’t be such a problem…
Their decision not to include Opera doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the license used by Linux and the distros. The Opera license doesn’t permit redistribution without permission. Some distros will seek that permission, others won’t bother. It’s the Opera license that’s the hang-up here.
http://www.answers.com/audit?cat=biz-fin
In principle the same as, but less formal than, this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_audit_review
… or like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_review
… or like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_inspection
The ability to audit/verify/inspect the software. Not that a simple user can do this, but the simple user can be assured that it is possible to do (with open source) and that experts (software programmers) do actually do it, and they also end up using the software themselves.
Firefox has that. The exact same software that is offered to you, the simple user, has been poured over by experts (software programmers) who did not write the code, but who do understand the code, and who are in the same position as the said simple user … they have an interest to run the code themselves.
IE does not have this feature where simple users of the software can be assured it has been audited by parties with the same self-interest as they have. Opera does not have this. Firefox does have this. It is a priceless feature … it means you can be assured that there is nothing in the code (such as for example hidden spyware) that is not in your interest as a simple user … becuase if there were those people who can audit the software would not be using it themselves.
The Opera browser belongs to Opera software (the company), who have the right to distribute it. Linux distributions do not automatically have permission to distribute it.
Linux distributions do in fact have permission to distribute GPL software … they are in fact licensed to do so … the license is the GPL itself.
A favourite catchcry of certain members of the F/OSS fraternity is about Microsoft’s FUDslinging.
And yet here we have that selfsame FUD being thrown around about Opera. It’s not open source so *Whisper and looking over shoulder* there could be hidden spyware in there.
What absolute rot.
Well, after all, Opera did start out life as adware.
What sane person would want an adware application? It just annoys you, and what is worse it uses your bandwidth and your equipment to promote the interests of some commercial companies somewhere. Obviously not in your own best interests.
This observation alone tells us two things for absolute certain … it tells us that the Opera browser is written with the interests of Opera Software in mind … and that the interests of Opera Software do not necessarily align with the best interests of the users of the Opera browser.
Ergo … not rot at all … even conceding that Opera have long since ditched the adware … they still do not reveal to end users exactly what is in their browser.
And FUD again…
Please tell, when Opera wasn’t very upfront about ads in early versions of Opera?
And don’t forget that Opera is the only product of Opera the company, if there was even slightest doubt about their motives they would go under instantly (I don’t know…perhaps also something about Scandinavian work ethic that you’re not familiar with?)
And most hilarious/saddest thing: I suspect (hope?) you’re not doing it, however…many “but Firefox is FOSS” advocates use…Windows. Where’s the logic in that?
PS. And about interests of software companies…I wonder how you’ll explain abandoning (in practise) of Seamonkey/Thunderbird…
Adware while annoying is entirely different to malware or spyware. It was up front with the mechanism used and what was sent where and when.
Of course at the time I remember the great big pile of FUD spread about them then too by F/OSS supporters and it’s just ridiculous to see it still going.
Because it had ads who knows what else is going on there?
Program Evangelising by Chicken Littlism. Ridiculous.
Sigh. It is very, very simple.
On the one hand, you have several browsers which are clearly written in the interests of their authors, and which pointedly are not prepared to let you see how they work and what functions they contain. Some of these browsers still, to this day, actively spy on you and actively try to lock you in to a particular platform by including non-standard bits, and others apparently don’t do that now … but have been known to do something similar (that is in their interest, not yours) in the past.
On the other hand, you have one browser that performs better (or at least as good as) any of the others, and its internal workings are entirely open to anyone’s scrutiny.
Common sense alone would indicate that you opt for the one which is unequivocably being honest with you.
If you are gullible and trusting enough that you are prepared to opt for one of the others that keep their functioning closed from you, that is of course your perogative … but your choice of doing that in no way invalidates the choice of others who are not so trusting of profit-seeking corporate interests.
Trust is a two-way street. If a corporate body software vendor is not prepared to disclose every function of their product to independent audit by end-users representatives, then why exactly should end-users trust them? What is in this one-way-only deal for the end user?
Nice to see the review mention Opera’s sidebar. In my opinion it’s easily one of the best things about Opera.
I find the Links and Windows panels particularly useful, yet they’re features that often get ignored.
You can lock the Links panel on a site listing links to documents, allowing it to be used as a convenient index. The Links panel also makes it really quick and easy to download a bunch of split files with a couple of clicks.
The Windows panel has totally replaced the tab toolbar in my copy of Opera. It can display a much larger number of pages than a single line tab bar, without cutting of the page titles. It displays all the pages open in all windows, allowing them to be easily dragged between windows. It allows multiple pages to be selected and reloaded or closed together. It can also be filtered with a keyword, so that it only displays particular pages.
Then there’s Opera’s MDI window management, allowing pages to be placed side by side in one windows. It also allows popup windows to open at their correct size within a browser window. This opens up all kinds of browsing options that otherwise aren’t possible. So much more versatile and powerful than tabs!
That kind of practical improvement to my browsing experience is much more important to me than issues of closed vs open source.
Opera won me over a long time ago with “rocker navigation.” I know there are plugins for Firefox that does the same, but I guess I’m too lazy to search for it
By the way, they should learn to write for the Web. Just as it is explained here: http://www.scriptol.com/design/web-reading.php
Choosing where to save a bookmark is a tortuous process of scrolling down to the relevant folder, which should at least be highlighted. FF does it much better. Still my most used browser though.
I have been enjoying using Opera 9.5 for the past few weeks, It works much better then Firefox 3 on the older machine I use at work (Pentium 3, 192MB of Ram, W2K). Firefox 3 is my preferred browser now on mac os 10.5, Dispute a few minor conformity bugs.
Ok, first of all, i did not read through all 3 pages of comments, so if i am echoing some one else, then it must mean that i am not the only one.
Ok, you CAN adblock in opera, i did a 1 minute Google in Vista yesterday, found out that it is one .ini file that you download and place in a folder, and BAM! done. then you can even get a CSS add on that helps block ugly/mean CSS elements. again, 1 minute google.
I am a die-hard FireFox fan, allways have benn. But FireFox 3 crashes in both XP and Vista for me, WAY to much, like atleast once EVERY hour. So i am evaluating Opera.
works good, is responsive, nice. I think i have a main stream Alt to the Fox, if it keeps on being un-useable, i have found a firefox replacement.
One thing that many people seem to forget is that many of Firefox’ praised features are available half a year earlier in Opera.
Tabbed browsing? That was Opera.
Mouse gestures? That was Opera.
Keeping tabs open? That was Opera (and it was my main reason to love Opera).
Making your own searches? That was Opera.
Zoom function? That was Opera.
Additionally, there are lots of more features that Firefox has yet left to copy. For example, the search directly in the address bar (I’m always nearly laughing when people tell me how cool the search box in Firefox is), this is one of my most used features and it always pisses me off when I have to use Firefox.
Also, you can control the whole browser via the keyboard. You can easily navigate through links (not with TAB, that’s akward, no, with Shift + Cursor Keys) and through tabs, etc.
One thing that always annoys me in Firefox is when I close a tab, he jumps directly to the next tab on the left. In Opera, he jumps to the tab that was open before. That’s so much more intuitive, and everytime I have to use Firefox, I nearly get mad about this.
One more thing that is very cool in Opera: I can put my tab bars on the right side. That is much better than having it on the top, because you have a lot more space. I can’t do that in Firefox. Soon, everyone will have a Widescreen, then this will be even more useful.
But it’s only a matter of time (~ half a year
until Firefox has those features as well…
Edited 2008-06-25 05:53 UTC
It’s the Opera license that’s the hang-up here.
Seeing some distros (for ex., Debian) created their own version of Firefox which basically just had a different name/logo, just because the “Firefox” logo has been deposed tend to prove this is not a problem
They *are* close minded… and that’s the problem…
Getting a permission from Opera to include Opera wouldn’t be a problem. Only Amiga refuses to distribute their own software… Other companies are not that stupid
A lot has already been said about opera so some of my text is repetition, sorry about that. I just want to share my thoughts on this matter (yes, i am a ‘opera fanboy’).
I started using opera back in windows ’95 days when we only had ie, netscape and opera. Then it was lightyears ahead of the ‘competition’ features, performance and stability wise NOT marketshare wise. This probably was because of the fact that you had to pay for it back then (or you used the ad-version). I guess this is what a lot of people who have actually used opera and don’t like it remembers.
They released better and better versions of opera and (i think) was gaining some more ground from ie (especially after netscape died). Then along came Firefox, and all of a sudden every kid on the block knew what ff was. It became the cool thing to have. Even though *imo* ff then was barely usable compared to opera.
Opera continued to push the technology and innovations to us users (now for sometime free and no ads, a thing most people totally missed). So now we had the users who were devoted to opera and maybe felt bitter that no-one used their best browser in the world and the firefox users, who i guess were cool kids using windows and fsf people enjoying their open-source best browser in the world.
And to conclude this bit of history (in my version, of course) i think this division will not change BECAUSE they are both great browsers. Most opera users don’t feel the need to switch to ff and vice versa because the competition is not that different.
I love the fact that i can install opera on a new computer (and new OS) and within a single package have everything i need (and more).
And to the open-sourcesness thing, i don’t see what exactly opera is missing being closed source except some FSF adcovates’ approval. They have a track record (better than Firefox, last i checked) of fixing found security faults. Opera supports a lot of platforms, all popular ones plus some. It is memory efficient, non-leaking, fast and very customizable.
But of course opera is not perfect, i use it on linux and everything related to Flash is a pain in the ass. But that imo is all because adobe’s piece of shite software.
And i think at least Firefox users should acknowledge opera’s importance setting the bar for good browsing and promoting standards-compliance… As I respect Firefox for converting people from IE to a good browser and developing good ideas that are implemented to Opera.
As a long term lover of Opera.. I really really like the new features in 9.5. Adore the new skin, love the speed, but positively hate the excessive memory usage.
Currently I have Firefox 3 open with 22 tabs (don’t normally have that many open at once, usually maybe 10 or so) Memory usage 141Mb
Close firefox, open Opera 9.5.. open 9 tabs, memory usage, 398mb..
in all other ways Opera is lovely… but the memory issue means I’m using Firefox exclusively right now
Either way, they’re both great browsers and both FREE.
I couldn’t care less if one were Open source or not.