I have been using Opera as my main browser for around two years now. It has always been my favorite. Even when I tried many other browsers, I always came back to Opera. It is great that it is free now.
Originally posted by: rh71
try and get IE to do this
Point is FF has memory issues. In practical use (open/close some more pages), FF will reveal itself as a pig. It has problems releasing used memory. IE in practical use has no such problems and is quite often under 100MB while FF is quite often over. Of course it has to do with Windows, but that's beside the point, literally.
could that usage be related to the file you are downloading? I don't know how ff works, but I think it uses it's cache when downloading a file, therefore inflating memory usage stats. I'm curious to know how big that file was.
Why can't you simply say that you prefer open source, rather than try to redefine every word in the English dictionary? If someone (say your grandma) gives you a free chocolate bar, would you demand that the recipe be made publically available before you consume it?
Ironically, if someone hands you only the source code, it would require you to compile the source code prior to usage. I.e. you'd waste your own time, your CPU's time and possibly disk space for the compiler (assuming you're not a developer) to get the thing running. Time is money (and so is disk space), hence the "free" source comes with strings of its own.
Don't get me wrong, having the source is a big plus, but the rest of the world refer to this as "having the source". It has no bearing on the definition of 'free'.
That said, Nothinman mentioned QT and didn't seem to like it much. Why? I ask because Borland makes one of the best IDEs on this planet (Kylix/Delphi), yet seemingly failed to sell many licenses for Linux. I know Borland relied heavily upon QT for their Linux version, and I wonder if that has something to do with the lack of success? (or is it just because people using Linux are so cheap that they can't be bothered to pay for a good product?)
I've been using Opera for some time and love it. Now I can tell all my FF fanboy friends that Opera is the way to go (don't have to hear "OMG BUT FF IS TEH FREE!!11ONE" anymore 
). Thanks!
). Thanks! 
Nothinman
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I'm probably wrong, but wasn't free used in reference to freedom before it was used to mean without charge? And obviously there are different levels of freedom with regards to different products. And in this case you're given very little freedom. You're not even allowed to redistribute the thing without contacting Opera first.
Costs of some manner are incurred no matter what. The difference is the amount of freedom you're given with that source code or software and in this case Opera has given you very little freedom in what you do with their software.
If by 'rest of the world' you mean the US, then you're probably right. But the real rest of the world is much more concerned about their freedom and having the source code to software is important in a lot of places. Most of those places are driven that way becaue they don't want to be at the mercy of a US corporation, but who can blame them =)
I just don't like the look and feel of QT compared to GTK. And the fact that it's a C++ library causes additional issues that C libraries don't have. For instance, with gcc 4.x there was a major C++ ABI change which meant that every distribution moving to 4.x had to migrate all of their C++ software to the new ABI and since big things like KDE and QT are written in C++ the transition took a good amount of time just to recompile everything. That's more of a problem with the GNU/gcc people than with QT or C++ itself, but it's still a problem that C doesn't have since it's been around so much longer.
That and QT is only available under the GPL so closed source software can't be linked against it without paying Trolltech for a different license. Since the GTK libraries are LGPL closed source binaries can use them without paying any fees to anyone.
The problem is probably their target user base. Most Linux developers are already comfortable with emacs/vim, gcc, gdb, etc so why pay for a RAD environment? I'm sure GTK and libglade aren't as comprehensive as Kylix, but what Kylix offered wasn't enough to pull people away from what they know. I'm kinda surprised the KDE people didn't pick it up, but that's probably because they already had KDevelop.
rh71
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no what happened was I opened a bunch of tabs (something like 20) in the background containing jpgs, saved and closed them all leaving the 1 page again... and that's what happened. Memory problem. After my downloads finished it was still consuming a lot of memory and it never got released until I closed/reopened FF. Memory problem.Originally posted by: rmrf
Originally posted by: rh71
try and get IE to do this
Point is FF has memory issues. In practical use (open/close some more pages), FF will reveal itself as a pig. It has problems releasing used memory. IE in practical use has no such problems and is quite often under 100MB while FF is quite often over. Of course it has to do with Windows, but that's beside the point, literally.
could that usage be related to the file you are downloading? I don't know how ff works, but I think it uses it's cache when downloading a file, therefore inflating memory usage stats. I'm curious to know how big that file was.
And as a general response to this thread... the other part of my complaint against FF is that it's a friggin pig. Shades of Netscape (no surprise of course) despite claiming to be merely a shell of mozilla. Even Opera opens up faster and Opera is the one that's got all that "weight" built-in. Why should I stick with FF ? Cause it's open source and I can proclaim myself to be part of a cult ? Please. Cause you like the ability to add extensions ? Fine, just not necessary for me. Indeed, given the givens, I elected to use FF over IE [before Opera came into the picture].
From my vantage point, some particular people are holding onto something, nitpicking on every detail and definition trying to justify why they should still feel special. Party animals, you must be in real life. Get down.
Why are you such an ass about this? Get raped by a gnu or something?
Choke on a dick. Freedom has a pretty well known definition. I am not free to redistribute the Opera software. I am not free to modify the opera software. I am not free to make it work on my computers. That doesn't sound like freedom to me. It's simple, and the simple people still aren't getting it.
I'm not an elitist, I just have some minor usage requirements that Opera cannot fill. Hell, Mozilla and friends can't even fill them.
All browsers suck.
You think the average person wants to modify the source code to Opera? Honestly, who gives a crap? They actually seal up their holes by themselves. Besides, by having your source code out there, the hackers can find the exploits easy as pie. They either decide to be nice and fix it, or it just makes it more open to holes. There's living proof of it:
Opera 8.x: 0 out of 8 holes unpatched. http://secunia.com/product/4932/
Firefox 1.x: 3 out of 23 holes unpatched. http://secunia.com/product/4227/
Opera's holes also seemed less severe.
Opera 8.x: 0 out of 8 holes unpatched. http://secunia.com/product/4932/
Firefox 1.x: 3 out of 23 holes unpatched. http://secunia.com/product/4227/
Opera's holes also seemed less severe.
Nothinman
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No, but the average person doesn't want to pay $50 for a web browser either. Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut just because you don't want to do any labor on it yourself?
Those of us with the knowledge to alter the source code.
That's proof of nothing. "hackers" will find exploits in anything whether the code is open or not, just ask MS.
Yeah, because Microsoft's closed source security track record is flawless. :roll:
Compare IIS and Apache. Apache is open source, has a larger installation base, and less major security issues.
And I don't care about the average person, I'm not average.
The source code to it was leaked quite a while ago too. We all know Microsoft's products are a security disaster.
Your analogy seems unrealistic. You don't have to pay $50 for Opera. It turns out more people try to fix their cars than the source code of their PC's web browser. A web browser is software. It doesn't wear out like a car. If Opera can handle the holes theirself (they have proven it), then I don't need or even want access to the code. Especially if the addons provide exceptional flexibility. It's not like I'm against open source hence my avatar and the fact I use Linux quite a bit. Most of the time it's not needed to provide a good experience for the end-user. I'd rather have a very good interfacing capability (between Opera and a library that provides extra functionality). The source code is messy, and you can only have one modification at one time. What if someone wanted person X's ad blocking mod and person Y's interface mod? Unless they combined their source code mods, they couldn't have both. If Opera Software fixes their holes and addon flexibility is damn good, I see no reason for it to be open source.
I didn't call you average. You can continue to use open-source FF for all I care. I just find Opera to be a much better all-around deal than FF. My question is, if all the holes are fixed, what are you going to do with the source anyway? Have you modified Firefox? If so, what did you do and did you make it public? Anyway, you and I wouldn't have many spyware using IE anyway. But the average user would, so that's why they want to target the average user.
I don't remember who was talking about OpenBSD support, but can you use FF on OpenBSD without a lot of trouble? I'm surprised Opera has a mobile version at all.
I haven't, but people have. The Mozilla foundation doesn't like many open source projects, so they ignore things like OpenBSD. But various users and developers and port maintainers have made it work on OpenBSD.
I can use FF on OpenBSD (alpha, sparc, sparc64, MacPPC, i386, and amd64 (IIRC)) without issue. I haven't found a browser that sucks less than most others and works on all of the platforms I use.
Nothinman
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The source that was leaked was a few years old and wasn't even the full tree, IIRC. And I think only 1 exploit came out of it and it only worked with IE5 on Win2K pre-SP2 IIRC.
I don't know what the cost was, but if you wanted rid of the ads you did have to pay for it.
And that makes it right to be able to hide the source from you? Just because you can't read it doesn't mean it can't be beneficial to you.
It's not all about security problems, you could very easily have someone make custom changes for your business.
If the code is messy that's their fault and is another reason to promote open source, when you know millions of people can see your code you're more conscience about how it looks. And there's no rule saying you can only have one patch at a time, if the patches overlap in functionality sure you shouldn't run both at the same time. But if you really wanted to, you could probably munge the patches to work together.
I look at it from the opposite perspective, there's no reason for it not to be open source.
kamper
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I always had the impression that their target user base was the commercial sector, largely the same group that uses Delphi. Targetting gpl developers with a system like that is silly; they've rebuilt an entire platform to have something free, why would they take a commercial ide?
Anyways, wouldn't the ability to keep Kylix and Delphi in sync have died when Borland moved into .NET? Do they actually still produce it? I think it'd be cool if Borland took a serious interest in mono though. And on a side note, I saw a while ago, that some people are trying to do a free rad environment for pascal, largely immitating Delphi. Called lazarus or something like that I think.
Nothinman
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That might have been it, but considering the extremely small number of Delphi apps that I see that doesn't seem very smart.
If they wanted to keep producing Kylix for Linux and still use .Net they would pretty much have to support mono in some fashion, as to whether they are or not, I have no idea.
Yea, it looks like an exact rip of Delphi.
rh71
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heh sure sure it's as simple as that.
You've always been a stickler for open source this and that no matter what the product - we've had a disagreement over it before.
Someone says: here's a free browser for you - you don't have to pay money for it and instantly you're saying "where's the source code" ? I think it's quite clear what your position is - it's just not necessary to argue if it's actually "free" to the degree that you are. How many times have people said "who cares" ? Nobody but you and the rest of the (aforementioned linked word). That's where the problem lies. I see "free" speech is on your side though... have at it if you actually care that much about a web browser.
When they release a version that runs on my PDA, or even half of my computers, I'll stop asking. Hell, at that point I'll consider using it, Free or not.
rh71
No Lifer
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^ not that I am looking for yet another argument but a thought crosses my mind. You created the incompatibility (or unavailability) problems for yourself when you chose not to use the easiest (most common) products - referring to "half your computers". Conforming just seems so incredibly hard for you... any particular reason for that ?
Windows makes no sense to me, *nix does. OpenBSD "feels right." My career is very *nix oriented.
Sun hardware is nice, so I've got a bunch of it. x86 hardware doesn't compare in some areas.
The Zaurus C3000 is frickin' cool. Best computer I could ever get that fits in my pocket.
To me, OpenBSD on whatever hardware is easier for me, even if it isn't what's popular these days.
Nothinman
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So you wouldn't have a problem if roads became segregrated? It would be perfectly fine for someone to tell you that you need to buy a Ford car in order to drive on this particular road? And if you don't have a Ford you have to find another way.
Sure the example is extreme, but I'm virtually in the same situation that n0c is in, Of the 5 machines that I own 3 of them are not x86 or even AMD64. I don't browse the web on those machines, except for the rare w3m session, so I'm not directly affected by the Opera crap but if it was something like a mail daemon that I wanted to use but couldn't, I would be annoyed that I had to look for alternatives because of one group of people's shortsightedness.
And now that Opera is completely, monetarily, free what's the point in keeping the source closed?
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