Firefox Or Opera???

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I have used Firefox for a very long time, but lately they have done a couple of updates over the last year that completely change the looks and how it works.... which has made it a bit confusing. The Phone app is even weirder now since the update. I have tried Opera on my desktop and it's really fast and a breeze to use it. Donno how hack proof it is nor if it really matters, but I was interested in every one else's opinion of these two browsers. Which one and why?

Thanks!

Mark

[Frank Cox]

I've used Firefox on Linux for as long as there's been a Firefox to run on Linux. Prior to that, I used Netscape Navigator and prior to that... I wasn't using the Internet. (I did run a FidoNet BBS for quite a few years, though.)

I started using Firefox because it was pretty much the only choice for a Linux user (stuff like konquerer and galeon exist/existed, but they were never really mainstream if that word even applies to Linux.) I've never really used any other web browser, though I am occasionally (relatively rarely) forced to use Google Chrome to access websites that simply won't work with anything other than Google Chrome. (Thanks, Google!)

What makes Firefox worthwhile is the extensions that you can install to make it reasonably secure, or at least as secure as a web browser that's accessing random websites can be.

I personally use Adblock Plus, Cookie Autodelete, Custom User Agent String, Noscript, Rotate and Zoom Image, Smart Referer and Zoom Page WE on my desktop browser.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Opera has a market share of almost zero and to be honest, I don't trust them. It's a for-profit company, offering a free product, so they probably make money by selling something you don't want to be sold.

Granted, the market share of Firefox has seen better days, but I still consider it the last remaining open choice left there.

I've been using Firefox ever since the first "Firebird" beta came out and I largely stuck to it. There were bad times and worse times, but browsers changing their layout is something that happens to all of those popular browsers.

I was about to ditch Firefox about a year and a half ago, because of general slowness, but then they updated their rendering and Javascript engines and ever since, I'm mostly happy with it.

[Steve Guttag]

I gave up on Firefox, myself. It was WAY too slow and getting worse. The fact that it is the preferred/included browser of Linux was another turn-off...but I digress. I used Opera a lot in the before-times (WinXP era) up until it got a Chrome look. So I stuck with Opera 12 for a long time (still use it some). For a while, it would keep you safe because things didn't run on it. So if the site wouldn't load, it probably wasn't a site I needed to be on! I'll admit, I've moved to Chrome with all of its evil empire implications. For the most part, I like it and its apps but not everything, for sure. IE and Edge are only there for those people that somehow have web pages that ONLY those apps load...including some A/V imbedded web pages.

[Dave Macaulay]

I've been using Opera for pretty much forever. I also use Chrome and FF for stuff that needs it - Dolby says use Chrome for CP850/950, and at last try Firefox would still let me run flash or Java or something the others just refuse... I had to jump through hoops but FF would do it... probably changed in the current versions. This was mostly for the old Promise V-Trak units and Tripplite UPS that have Java (I think) interfaces.
I got attached to the Opera mouse gestures (yes there are plugins for FF but I just never liked FF) and the ability for fine control over cookies, sadly that's missing in the Android version.
It displays well on every site I have tried, it used to (when the used their own rendering engine) do some funky layouts on sites designed for IE, the Chrome rendering engine has not had that problem for me.

[Scott Norwood]

I have been using Firefox (and, previously, Firebird, Phoenix, Mozilla, and Netscape) for decades. I don't love it. It's bloated and memory-leaky and can be slow. I also hate the forced auto-updates that they have imposed upon users in the last year or so. I know that there are ways around this, but then it becomes difficult to actually upgrade the browser when I want to do that. There are also a dozen or so default configuration options that I find irritating and need to change after a fresh installation. It is sort of maddening.

I haven't used Opera in years. Is it free now, or is it still a paid thing?

I have Chrome installed now since it is needed for Amazon Chime web conferencing and a couple of other web sites that, for some reason, seem to not work with Firefox.

What keeps me using FF (the ESR branch, not the regular one) as my default browser now is partly inertia and partly the effectiveness of some of the plugins, as mentioned above. I use Adblock Plus, Block Javascript, and Bypass Paywalls and would have a very difficult time without these. I also block auto-playing audio and video and animated GIFs (all of which are annoying). All of this runs fine on both Windows and Linux (and, presumably, MacOS, though I don't use that regularly).

I have zero interest in Edge, especially since it now uses the Chromium engine. Which, as it happens, is enough reason to want to keep FF alive (to keep web sites honest about being browser-neutral, rather than having a bunch of sites that only work with Chromium-based browsers).

I really wish that the open-source community would come up with a better browser, but that hasn't happened yet.

[Gordon McLeod]

i am using Opera on several machines but Have Brave on several as well and quite like it

[Marcel Birgelen]

I gave up on Firefox, myself. It was WAY too slow and getting worse.

Maybe you should give it another try. It's not like it's perfect, but then again, what browser is perfect? Many of those modern websites those days are of the extremely bloated kind and use a lot of resources no matter what browser you're using.

But just when I was about to give up on it, Firefox essentially swapped out their innards about a year and a half ago and ever since, I don't really see any performance difference between Chrome or other Webkit based browsers. Of all the bigger browser players out there, Firefox is still the least evil and comes with quite some nice anti-tracking features right out of the box those days.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Decided I am switching to Opera. Its way less hassle and runs a lot faster. On the new Android version of Firefox the address window is now at the bottom of the page. How stupid is that? Then when you hit enter it moves to the top...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Ok, switched over this morning to Opera and it's sooooo much better than Firefaux was and way way faster. I signed up for an account so my bookmarks and passwords could be imported and all in all it took longer to delete Firefox of the desktop than it did to get Opera going with all my data. Now for the phone....

[Leo Enticknap]

...Firefox is still the least evil and comes with quite some nice anti-tracking features right out of the box those days.

+1, especially the NoScript, Trocker, and Facebook Container plugins, and the ability to use Startpage as the default search engine built into the browser.

I've stuck with Firefox, because (a) it's the only major browser that isn't bought and paid for by one of the personal data-vacuuming tech giants, (b) it prioritizes privacy and security, and (c) in my work and personal computing, I use Windows and Ubuntu interchangeably, and a browser that looks and works the same on both (e.g. I can transfer bookmark files between Windows and Ubuntu installations) is an advantage.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Leo, I don't think it matters which browser you use as far as vacuuming your data. Everyone pretty much does that,If you accept cookies from a given site. It's not like they know your personal data and bank balance. they know what you;re looking at. At any rate Opera runs rings around the current gestation of Firefox in almost all aspects. It's not like they know your personal data and bank balances because of sites you may frequent.

[Leo Enticknap]

They're not going to be able to find out your bank balance, but they will be able to accumulate a list of all the sites you visit and the links you click. And Java scripts are a bigger threat than cookies, these days. If you install the NoScript plugin for Firefox, and then just take a look at all the third party scripts that a given site is trying to run, you'd be surprised at how many sites try to run scripts from Facebook and Google, for example.

It is widely believed that IE/Edge "phones home" your browsing history to Microsoft, Chrome to Google, and Safari to Apple; and people have done analyses by Wiresharking all outbound packets from a PC running these browsers that have produced convincing evidence of this. Mostly this data is just used to target ads at you, but if they have it, the risk exists that it could be used for more sinister purposes. Would you be OK with a prospective employer being able to pay Microsoft, Google, or Apple for a report on your political or religious beliefs based on your browsing history, for example?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

They will find the sites I go to be pretty boring....