Thoughts on Opera GX?

[CPotter]

Our team has received a few offers to be sponsored by Opera GX over the past year or so, and we've always said "no" because of the general shadiness that clouds Opera and their parent company. 

 

However, I've had a tough time pointing to any single thing I've seen them do in recent years, and I see TONS of positive reviews from users so I'm wondering if anyone here can educate myself and the team on why Opera GX sucks or doesn't suck?

 

 

Here's an editorial video that we did on Opera GX years ago if anyone's interested: 

 

[szalony9szymek]

They advertise a shitty proxy as VPN.

The browser is chromium but unlike chrome it has issues with teams... 

 

Also shows you some "sponsored" links to sites like aliexpress in the menu. Also has the annoying tab with "gamer news" which is hard to disable and dull of clickbaity articles

 

But I think as a sponsor it's much better then most vpn conpanies

 

Also I forgot, idk about GX, but the "standard" version of opera displays popups on the desktop, while browser is not running, popups basically asking you to open it... It's worse then edge

[Lord Szechenyi]

Other than for Privacy, why would anyone use anything else than Chrome?

 

 

[Arika]

unsure about the GX browser specifically, but opera has really fallen off a cliff in recent years and i don't think there's a lot of good sentiment out there for them like there used to be

[Ultraforce]

5 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Other than for Privacy, why would anyone use anything else than Chrome?

 

 

Personally I'm just not a fan of the style or the icon outside of just not wanting to be overly connected to the google ecosystem which isn't even a full on privacy thing just a personal preference to not be 100% reliant on one player. Also just growing up I used firefox. Personally I kind of feel like it's weirder for people to try and be doing privacy stuff within the chromium ecosystem.

[Lord Szechenyi]

13 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

Personally I kind of feel like it's weirder for people to try and be doing privacy stuff within the chromium ecosystem.

I know, which is why I get if people use DuckDuckGo

[GhostRoadieBL]

I tried it for about a month. VPN was the slowest I've ever used, "sponsored" content was intrusive (they advertise ALOT on the home page and side tabs)

 

unless you really want their included features like discord integration (it was nice) or don't mind tonnes of data scrapes (the browser definitely auto accepts cookies or is sending data to everyone they can based on how hard I locked everything down for privacy and was still getting targeted ads from my browsing)

 

Their crypto browser is being pushed hard right now which makes me wary of the motivation behind it and why something like it need to exist.

 

2 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Other than for Privacy, why would anyone use anything else than Chrome?

there's a lot to unpack with this,

 

it's not the privacy for everyone who switches away, many people switch because of the targeting and narrowing of their information sources being presented.

Even on the less obvious things like looking up research papers or getting news sources are vastly different depending on the browser and how it's being used. So even using duckduckgo, and an ad blocker, and a vpn while using chrome you will still get pushed around to content on sites we use everyday Instagram, YouTube (the primary news source for countless people), Twitter, even Facebook who competes with Google for ads will use data from them to tailor the feed to specific topics and sources.

 

This isn't a privacy problem anymore but controlling the ease you can get non-filtered content. Unless you are willing to dig through pages of products or specifically research local businesses or different news outlets etc, they will push the information they want you to see to push your opinion on subjects to one side or the other. There is a reason the world is more polarized than ever and it's not because people are any more opinionated or unreasonable, it's because they are being re-enforced on their opinion or the opinion of the group willing to spend the most for the content to show up. Some people don't mind having psychology and message conditioning being done on them, they SHOULD have a problem with it, and companies hiding behind "it's the algorithm's fault" to glass over everyone's eyes with math jargon instead of stating it like it is.

[Lord Szechenyi]

20 minutes ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

So even using duckduckgo, and an ad blocker, and a vpn while using chrome you will still get pushed around to content on sites we use everyday Instagram, YouTube (the primary news source for countless people), Twitter, even Facebook who competes with Google for ads will use data from them to tailor the feed to specific topics and sources.

I'm unsure if using DuckDuckGo + Privacy Badger really won't give you something neutral

 

Hell, I use Yandex when I need something google won't give me, and it works fine (I do this in Chrome).

 

Google the search engine and Chrome the web browser is not the same, and that people won't use Google I'm not surprised by it, but using a different web browser than Chrome (or Chromium, not Chromium based, I mean Chromium specifically) is something I still don't get.

[GhostRoadieBL]

9 minutes ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Google the search engine and Chrome the web browser is not the same

it's feeding info to the same company with the same motivation, you will get unfiltered search results with both DDG and other non-filtering search engines but that's not what I said,

35 minutes ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

you will still get pushed around to content on sites we use everyday Instagram, YouTube (the primary news source for countless people), Twitter, even Facebook who competes with Google for ads will use data from them to tailor the feed to specific topics and sources.

it's the sites that do filter which use the browsing habits and collected info to push you into categories and groups narrowing the field of information you will be exposed to outside of specific searches.

[sub68]

3 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Other than for Privacy, why would anyone use anything else than Chrome?

uhh because I am used to firefox. and it hasnt bricked

[williamcll]

Opera is the polar opposite of most other brands that aim for simplicity and integration. I myself don't have much use of it but my brother does.

Also speaking of chrome I suggest either chromium or edge.

 

 

Oh how I miss the old opera browser for the HTC HD2 years ago.

[aidanhasaknife]

9 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Other than for Privacy, why would anyone use anything else than Chrome?

 

 

the firefox fox is adorable, dammit!

[Lightwreather JfromN]

51 minutes ago, aidanhasaknife said:

the firefox fox is adorable, dammit!

Especially when he was doge for a bit in april

 

[Lord Szechenyi]

10 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

it's the sites that do filter which use the browsing habits and collected info to push you into categories and groups narrowing the field of information you will be exposed to outside of specific searches.

Twitter and Facebook are not very private, does it actually matter what browser you use?

Won't they still tailor your feed to what you search (on their website)?

[Lord Szechenyi]

6 hours ago, williamcll said:

Oh how I miss the old opera browser for the HTC HD2 years ago.

I miss IE6 and IE7

[Needfuldoer]

I haven't used Opera in over a decade. The image compression proxy was a lifesaver on a 1.5 meg DSL connection, but that's not really relevant anymore.

 

Now it sounds like their browser is just Chromium with a bunch of unnecessary gimmicks piled on top.

[GhostRoadieBL]

2 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Twitter and Facebook are not very private, does it actually matter what browser you use?

Won't they still tailor your feed to what you search (on their website)?

Within their own site, yes. Depending on the cookie handling that also extends to building a profile from the rest of your off site use.

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

I tried it once, anyone with a semi-decent computer doesnt need the cpu or ram limiters because chromium is already supposed to put tabs to sleep...at least edge does. Rather than coming up with a limiter, make it use less in the first place.

 

Other than that i have had friends use it only because of the gamery theme is has, but i dont care

 

also i have this bug with firefox and opera gx where it will create 5 million clones of itself inside the volume mixer which annoyed me to all hell

 

I thought to myself, whats left for me? A really shady company...tbh i dont care THAT much about that...but the browser doesnt really give me that much for me to justify keeping it

 

I actually just uninstalled it when it would REFUSE to load my 3 servers remote management pages, 2 dell servers, so that would be iDRAC, and an HP server, so that would be iLO.

[Stahlmann]

16 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Other than for Privacy, why would anyone use anything else than Chrome?

Features. Most chromium based browsers offer everything Chrome does with some features on top.

 

Edge for example supports much higher bitrates with streamings services, more privacy options, better cookie management and HDR. Last i used chrome none of these features were there. I switched to Edge after the chromium version was released and it's been my main browser since.

[Lord Szechenyi]

44 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Edge for example supports much higher bitrates with streamings services

Not sure about that but I can believe it

Quote

more privacy options, better cookie management

Just use Privacy Badger

Quote

and HDR.

As far as I know Chrome supports HDR, I've watched videos in HDR without any problem.

[RockSolid1106]

17 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Other than for Privacy, why would anyone use anything else than Chrome?

1. I use FF for its customization features. You can add the "Colors" addon from Firefox, and you can change the colors of most elements of the browser.

Can't do this with Chrome, can you?:

Spoiler

 

2. I like how it syncs between my devices. I can switch to another device and get a full list of the tabs I had open on my desktop. Also for some reason send to device doesn't work for me on Chrome, so another reason why I use FF.

 

3. I like making websites and Inspect tools on Firefox is a lot better than Chrome IMO.

 

 

While we're at it, things I hate FF for:

- No tab grouping

- Pretty bad memory management.

[EphraimK]

All I can say is Opera is what the Wii (RIP) had.

 

I use Chrome and Firefox though.

[Lord Szechenyi]

1 hour ago, RockSolid1106 said:

1. I use FF for its customization features. You can add the "Colors" addon from Firefox, and you can change the colors of most elements of the browser.

Can't do this with Chrome, can you?:

  Hide contents

Not sure what you mean exactly, I'm certain Chrome can also do Dark Mode

Quote

I like making websites and Inspect tools on Firefox is a lot better than Chrome

Absolutely, I won't lie that is indeed one reason to use Firefox over Chrome

[Lightwreather JfromN]

11 minutes ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Not sure what you mean exactly, I'm certain Chrome can also do Dark Mode

NOt that, you might wanna zoom into the image there,

Examples:

Patterned background:

Custom colours for URL and UI elements:

[Stahlmann]

3 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

As far as I know Chrome supports HDR, I've watched videos in HDR without any problem.

Then they only added it recently. When i left Chrome behind missing HDR support was one of my key reasons.

 

3 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Not sure about that but I can believe it

I'm just gonna quote THIS article. A quick google search will convince you.

Quote

So, Netflix limits the playback resolution to 720p (1,280 x 720 pixels) for both Chrome and Firefox on Windows, Mac and Linux computers. On Chromebooks, where a slightly different system is used, you can get Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) using Chrome.

 

3 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Just use Privacy Badger

I prefer these things baked into the application rather than relying on third party addons.