Opera vs Firefox . . . seeking info and opinions

The title of my post says it all. I have been tinkering with the idea of using both Opera and Firefox (currently only use Firefox) and wanted to know what others thought of it.

It appears that one can download Opera for free from their website. Does that mean it is open source? I always thought it was not open source.

Anyways, I look forward to your replies!

u can download from opera site. its free.

...as in beer ... It is NOT open source.

I actually paid for Opera when it first came out. Used it on Windows for quite a while. I started dabbling in Linux about the time Firefox started getting a lot of attention. When Opera came out with the Linux version, I was all happy ... until I looked at it. The Linux version was way behind Windows. Dumped it and never looked back. Dunno how it compares to the Windows version now.

Opera seems to work ok now. A little faster launching than Firefox, loads pages faster I think. Doesn't seem to handle frames as well as firefox sometimes. It also seems to be calling home every now and then. I don't like the tabs being above the address bar, can't change it. It isn't bad it is a little different than Firefox and takes a little getting used to. I am glad there is another good full featured browser for *nix. Mozilla, Seamonkey, Firefox, Opera, they all work. If you want a fast little browser then try Dillo. It's basic but fast.

But I am facing problem with unicode characters with Opera, which can be perfectly viewed from Firefox.

I use both Opera and Firefox in Ubuntu. Opera is my browser of choice but it really doesn't measure up either to the Windows version or to Firefox in Linux. There are not separate plugins for either flash or java so Opera piggybacks on firefox plugins; and even these have to be manually added. It's a pain. Youtube videos, for instance, did not play in Opera on Linux until I realized that for some reason when Opera installed it had included plugins for Netscape and Mozilla too. As soon as removed them, it was fine again but it was two weeks before I figured out why java and flash didn't work properly. Why the need for such machinations? The Linux interface is just plain ugly and also requires a bit of font tinkering. It's a shame really because in every other way Opera is a superior browser. For all the stuff you require extensions, Opera has.

I used the windows version of opera recently and in no way does it compare to the osx one, everything is smooth and looks even better. I havent seen if there is a ppc linux version yet, i guess not like most other proprietary software

What I am hearing so far is. . .Opera is great. . .for Windows. Is that a fair generalization?

Obviously, that doesn't mean much to Linux users.

i think its safer to say that opera is great on all systems, linuxformat did an article recently about how it had pioneered so many browser technologys , things like tabs where first seen in opera. Try it and see if you like it itss the only real way to judge a piece of software.

I prefer Opera Im faithfull, its nice to cus you can even save your password file (wand.dat), so if you crash u can restore your bookmarks and still have all your passwords. Not to mention they have nice skins and the Content blocker is EXCELLENT for site with banners and ads

Its all a matter of personal opinion, kinda like asking which distro is best.

My favorite browser is Firefox, with the various extensions it does much more than Opera.

I find no speed difference between the two or Seamonkey for that matter. Operas plugin handling could be a little better, I have yet to use it where I didnt have to manual point it to Java.