Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 24th Jun 2008 11:07 UTC
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!"
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Member since:
2007-10-26
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.