Why I've switched to Opera

[Peter King]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 12:13:06AM -0500, Walter Dnes wrote:

> installed.  Gentoo generally downloads source tarballs, except for a few
> binaries.  Here's what I get when doing "emerge -pv" (a "pretend"
> install in verbose mode) with *MINIMAL* dependancies for each of the
> browsers...
> 
> Opera Total: 5 packages: 12,154 kB
> Firefox Total: 19 packages: 114,170 kB
> Chromium Total: 37 packages: 229,649 kB
> 
>   No, the Opera download number is *NOT* missing a digit <G>.  See below
> for the gory details.

I believe opera comes as binary package for gentoo -- statically linked for the
most part and just wrapped up in a ebuild with a few added dependencies that can
be expected on a typical system -- so comparing the number of dependencies it has
to those of other browsers is somewhat misleading, especially in the case of
chromium where a lot of special-purpose libraries etc. have to be installed. 

But there is no question that opera is faster and more reponsive than firefox 
in almost all respects: quicker to load initially, faster to load websites, and
a cleaner and snappier interface all-round. Though if I recall correctly it had
much the same RAM footprint and system-resource usage as firefox. I only ditched
opera for another browser in order to get more control from the keyboard. For
what it's worth, after trying uzbl, surf, jumanji, etc. I finally opted for
firefox + pentadacyl (the successor to vimperator), though I too think firefox
is largely bloatware. Nothing else comes close to it. Without pentadactyl, I'd
go back to opera; the other lightweight browsers can't cope with the variety of
websites I need to access professionally.

When I can, I just use links.

-- 
Peter King			 	peter.king-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
Department of Philosophy
170 St. George Street #521
The University of Toronto		    (416)-978-4951 ofc
Toronto, ON  M5R 2M8
       CANADA

http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/

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