When using windows, it does not matter, FLash and media players, codecs and all work great. In Linux I am coming to the conclusion that Firefox is better as it is more inclined to work with Flash and Mplayer plugins so streaming audio/video is a better experience. There are sites with streaming windows media that I can get firefox to play with Mplayer but I can't get Opera to work with the sites.

Your take? What you know to be true vs. my Johnny-come-lately opinions...

Thanks,

B.

Oh, that brings me to another question: are Sea Monkey and Firefox essentially the same under the hood? Should one be any better than the other for stability, plugins, etc...?

Firefox will have better support for existing and future plugins and whatnot in Linux because of it being open source as opposed to Opera, which is not open source. The only people who can make anything work right in Opera ar the Opera developers. Anyone can work on Firefox, if they want to. As for SeaMonkey, I'm not sure. I've not gotten around to investigating it that much. I believe that the code base is the same.

SeaMonkey is bloated...
Opera is a really good browser, but firefox has better support in plugins and is open-source.

But firefox is memory hungry,
is not so?

I like Opera and use it over Firefox. That said, I would have to agree Firefox works better then Opera in Linux.

I am a die-hard Opera user as well. The reason that I prefer it over Firefox is that in Firefox I have to install a zillion plug-ins to get basic functionality, like tabbed browsing (now included by default I think), re-open pages at start-up, GIF animation blocker, plug-in blocker etc.

For a one time installation this is no problem, but I administer 5 or 6 desktop machines, and I have not found a way for automatic installation of those plugins.

jlinkels