Opera browser in CrunchBang? (Page 1 of 2)

I've used Opera in the past and was quite pleased, but the latest browser benchmarks that I've seen on a variety of internet sites (some scientifically conducted, others, not so much) typically show Firefox 3.5 using LESS memory/consuming FEWER resources than Opera 10, but only by a small margin. Opera does, however, cold start slightly faster, whereas Firefox 3.5 edges out in warm starts. As far as javascript performance, they're usually neck and neck, though Opera seems slightly ahead here as well.

That being said, if the case would be made to include Opera by default because it's a little more "lightweight", then we would have to clearly define the term. By lightweight do you mean utilizing fewer system resources, occupying less drive space, and so forth?

At any rate, it seems that the speed and resource divide between the two is not so great as to make much difference on most systems. And factor in that some sites don't fully support Opera, it's lack of extensions (widgets hardly impress me), etc., and I see Firefox remaining as the distro's best choice for default browser. Honestly, in time, I think Chrome/Chromium has a better chance of usurping the default browser throne. It's not quite ready for primetime, but I'm sure that by the time of Google OS's release next year, we should see a lot of improvement, especially in proving wider plugin support (java, for instance).

Some people (including me) cannot live without the firefox add-ons !! Also i always believed that a distro should have one application for each task , and if possible one application for more than one tasks (FireFox and FireFTP ftw)

That being said i believe with should stick with firefox and if anyone wants to add Opera .. it is a free world

My comment was not very scientific; it was only based on startup speed and the assumption that Opera is a smaller application than Firefox.  The information you supplied suggests that I was wrong on a few counts.  I am planning to stick with Opera for now, in part because of my joint use of the lxpanel, with Opera showing a real icon and Firefox showing a stupid-looking box with an "X" in it.  There is probably a way to customize the icon in lxpanel, but I haven't looked into that.

For light-weight, Id rather have Arora or Midori. Webkit is very fast and the browser aesthetics are better

Do you mean lxpanel? See here:

http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … e-toolbar/

While I'm not convinced that Midori is ready for everyday use (I have a lot of problems with commonly used pages, Gmail being one of them AND for some reason Firefox typically runs much, much faster on my machine), I find Arora to be a nice up-and-comer. And it has become the defacto KDE 4.3.x browser. That's the great thing about the state of browsers in Linux at the moment, so many choices! And with these choices has come competition, above and beyond the OS specific IE/Firefox war, allowing more progress and innovation into the realm of the opensource community.

As as far as features are concerned, Opera 10 is impressive. I've always enjoyed their implementation of a mail component (tried it out last night and it worked well with Gmail -- autodetected imap settings, didn't wreak havoc with my folders, etc.), and the Wand, well, why can't other browsers include this feature? Such a timesaver!

My heads spinning with all these options. I'm just going back to Links and Mutt!

Thanks, anonymous; that solved the problem!

Regarding Midori (which I like a lot and which is very fast) and also Kazehakase, I found that both regularly crashed before you could say Jack Robinson. This leads me to wonder why they are made available in the repositories if they are broken or in a state of heavy development. One of the alternative browsers (but not these mentioned) which I tried couldn't cope with flash which renders them pretty useless.

Firefox seems very stable and works fine on my setup. I use very few add ons which I suspect keeps it up to speed. And then of course being open source scores in my books extra brownie points and badges.

Opera is nice for mobile phones.

When I used it on a desktop computer, I couldn't work out how to put on an adblocker or a flashblocker.

I think someone already mentioned it, but addons make Firefox an awesome multipurpose application:
Web browser, ftp, mail client, download manager all in one.

This discussion can easily become a browser-fans war. While it's hard to say which browser is the best (some would use Chrome (especially on netbooks) which takes not so much vertical space and is fast; some would use Opera - everything well integrated; some just like Firefox...), I think the decision should include popularity of browsers in community of Crunchbang users.

I've used Opera in the past and occasionally had issue where the website was only designed to work with Firefox or IE, however I usually use Seamonkey and have never had such an issue. In fact seamonkey seems to be smaller, faster and works with every Mozilla add-on I use. The only annoyance is that tabs don't have X buttons on them.

Though truth be told, I have Google Chrome, Firefox, Seamonkey, and Opera installed currently as I always like options.

Opera does look better though doesn't it?

If it is included, it certainly cannot be to the exception of either Firefox, Iceweasel, or Seamonkey as people cannot seem to live without the Mozilla foundation doing their primary browser these days.

****Edit this post got me playing around with FF again, and it doesn't preview tabs like Seamonkey?? Is this an option in FF I didn't see that I need to turn on or what? I am even using a rather old version of seamonkey too (1.1.17)

Last edited by Val_B (2010-01-26 04:47:30)

I'll Show you,
This is what FireFox does:

Note the yellow text box.

This is what Seamonkey does (tab preview):

This happens when you hover on a tab.