Stop using Opera Browser and Opera GX

corbin@infosec.pub to Technology@lemmy.ml – 266 points –
Stop using Opera Browser and Opera GX
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That'll be easy considering I've been using Firefox for the better part of 2 decades

If you're like me and can remember using netscape before that you should schedule a colonoscopy.

I started on Lynx and remember NCSA Mosaic being the big new thing. My colon has seen better days.

Take care of yourself out there, friend. Gotta keep the memories of the forgotten times alive.

I just need someone to implement dragging tags out immediately into windows, with my tiling window manager (fancyzones) I have to pull out the Firefox tab, let go so it’ll spawn the actual window, the drag it again to where I want it.

I tried getting into the weeds of the code, but there’s a lot there, it’s buried behind like 2/3 other standing issues that no one is working on…. For like 10 years

Edit: excuse me, 14 years

I used Opera until they bailed on Presto in 2013. I then switched back to Firefox and I've been using it since.

Just use Firefox or one of its derivatives if you care about the open web. It has real ad blocking (uBlock Origin extension), is fast, and basically all the features you'd expect from a browser. Give it a whirl, you'll probably like it.

Everyone should be on Firefox/Mullvad browser IMO

And Firefox/Mull (no relation to Mullvad) on Android. On iOS, Safari is fine because it's all Safari on iOS under the hood anyway.

On Android there's also Firefox Focus, a cutdown version that's like "private" browsing all the time and clears your browsing history.

As soon as Opera was acquired by the Chinese company, I told everybody to dump it ASAP.

Reddit said I was ignorant and racist because I had “no proof” that the new company was doing something wrong

I mean, yeah, just leaving it at “china bad” is still xenophobia. Tech companies in the US and other countries can be just as shady.

"Chinese bad" is xenophobia

"China = surveillance state" is the most basic of common sense

lol it was obvious when a random Chinese company purchased what was going to happen.

Yeah it's very easy to misinterpret that as sinophobia and not a repeat behavior of chinese capitalists buying stuff out then sucking them dry. Especially when you put it next to actually sinophobic shit like what happens with discussions of Tencent and DikDok being evil spyware. It's reddit; people are just going to assume you're racist unless you show otherwise, because that's usually a safe bet.

Are you claiming that Tiktok isn't evil spyware?

It's no worse than other social media which is also evil spyware. Did you notice how all the hysteria went away the instant the US managed to broker a deal that would allow them access to the data they were harvesting? It was always about sinophobia, not privacy.

That's a bit reductionist and too overgeneralised. I don't use either TikTok or Facebook (or the like) because they send data to governments, none of which I trust, not the US, China, or any others. Also, disliking/being scared of the government of a country is not the same as disliking the people in that country, being against the CCP is not sinophobic.

disliking/being scared of the government of a country is not the same as disliking the people in that country, being against the CCP is not sinophobic.

A lot of reddit racists do say that as a cover I hope you're aware. If something absolves you of racism and costs nothing to do, racists are going to do it to so that they can get away with more overt racism. I can tell you're full of shit because you used the wrong acronym. CCP is the dogwhistle one.

disliking/being scared of the government of a country is not the same as disliking the people in that country, being against the CCP is not sinophobic.

A lot of reddit racists do say that as a cover I hope you're aware.

Are you claiming that I'm racist because I said something you admit isn't actually racist?

No i'm calling you a racist because you are. Ugh I should have checked which instance you're on.... Piss off, ee pedofash.

Why are you making these unsubstantiated claims? In formal logic, please explain why you think I'm

A) racist
B) a pedophile

Of course you would be pro China, you're from lemmy.ml. Marxist Leninism, when there is a leader in 'Communism' is no different from a dictatorship. I am in favour or more anarchic style socialism where there is a decentralised effort to provide for everyone. China - specifically the Chinese 'Communist' Party - is not that.

dumped it for the same reason. it was never my main browser. firefox+ublock+vpn=awesome

why are they promoting Vivaldi alongside Firefox?

Why is Vivaldi a good browser?

It’s made by a lot of the original Opera team, including the founder. They have some nifty features that either require an addon in Firefox or are unavailable. Tab tiling is the one that I miss almost daily when I’m using Firefox.

They are an innovative group that often pioneers features that eventually trickle down to other browsers. Although it’s based on chromium, it’s an excellent browser that offers better privacy than Chrome. They have done a great job building a browser that caters to power users but can also be configured to use a simplified UI similar to Chrome.

If they had container tabs like Firefox it would be my favorite browser hands down. They have profiles like Chrome that work much better than Firefox profiles, but each profile is a separate window whereas container tabs can be mixed in a single window.

And Vivaldi for Android is also great. It has an actual tab bar with tabs you can move around, stack on each other etc. (among other things). Totally recommend.

I remember back in high school, this was the browser to have on your flash drive. So many built-in tools that were normally entire separate programs. It had an email client, BitTorrent, download manager, FTP client… all sorts of tools so you didn’t have to keep them all updated and portable separately.

It was a sad day when all of that started getting stripped out just to end up like every other Chromium copy on the market.

Been on Firefox ever since they took away my grid home screen.

Goodbye, my once good friend.🫡

It still seems to be the only browser on my phone that will reflow the text after I zoom a page. To whoever is about to tell me what I should have already known about that also does that, thank you!

Opera has had this functionality for 10+ years on their mobile browser, and I would argue that it has always been their best feature by far as it has always worked beautifully. I just don't understand how no other browser has implemented this feature.

👌👌👌 Always liked text reflow after zoom very much! !!!

Like it was responsive before responsive was a thing. Behaviour only native to epub afaik.

AFAIK Opera has some kind of patent for this, so other browsers cannit implement it so easily.

I don’t trust anything but Firefox or Safari anymore. Every other browser vendor has an ulterior motive to steal your data or serve you ads.

Why are you including Safari in this? It's such a bad browser, doesn't even allow you to hard reload or get debug info on iOS.

Sure it does, you just open the dev console on your computer.

The criteria for the original comment was not “which is the best browser” but rather “which browsers aren’t adware”. As Apple doesn’t monetise user data the way Google and Microsoft do, it belongs on the short list with Firefox. Is Firefox better? Yes.

If my computer is an Apple Mac, sure. It isn't, so I can't inspect it. Unlike Firefox, where I can inspect it by connecting it to any computer with adb installed.

The decline of Opera has prompted von Tetzchner, after a monumental anger, to create Vivaldi, to continue with the original philosophy of ancient Opera. For lovers of the old Opera, the other alternative is the Otter Browser, which also tries to recreate it.

I used it for a while but then one update it completely reset not only all my (many) open tabs, but also my history, so I couldn't restore them. Not used it since..

I tried using opera years ago before they switched to the blink engine. I uninstalled it right after installing it and finding out that it made itself the default browser without asking me.

I had the same. I installed it and realised that it had imported my Chrome bookmarks. I didn't purposely choose that, so was pretty annoyed, but thought that maybe I'd missed a check box. When I realised that it had made itself my default too, I uninstalled it.

I reinstalled it a while back to try again and to test a website I was making, and after one update I launched it and it played a really loud sound. It was late at night and my kid was in bed in the room above me. Because I wasn't expecting any sound, never mind anything that loud, I panicked and didn't turn the volume down in time.

After I got my kid back to sleep I uninstalled Opera permanently.

Sounds like the controversial choice they made for Eric Andre to scream “Opera GX!” as it loaded.