FOSS+Opera=Hypocritical?

[moore.bryan]

just throwing this out there... in my search for the mother-of-all browsers, particularly in the speed department, i've had copious numbers of ubuntu-ers profess undying love and admiration for opera. now, if in one breath we are championing the fulfillment of foss, how can one also use opera?

[Xanatos Craven]

Easily. Opera is a free, standards-compliant and good browser with only around 1% marketshare, last time I checked. And good open-source alternatives with more or the same amount of users exist.

You're not exactly stepping on any toes by using Opera. IMO, the only real enemy is Internet Explorer.

[Adamant1988]

just throwing this out there... in my search for the mother-of-all browsers, particularly in the speed department, i've had copious numbers of ubuntu-ers profess undying love and admiration for opera. now, if in one breath we are championing the fulfillment of foss, how can one also use opera?
True FOSS believers or supporters of Open Source will not touch Opera. These are the people you and I can safely refer to as 'zealots' many times. Normally it just doesn't matter...

[juxtaposed]

Opera is great, I just don't like that it doesn't look great in xfce and gnome, and I can't get it working with flash.

They seem to support linux well - they have packages for most versions of most of the major distros.

[Hex_Mandos]

There are plenty of FLOSS alternatives that suit me fine. I choose my browser depending on the circumstance at hand: FF is my workhorse, but I use Kazehakase and Konqueror when I need something different. Why do I need Opera if I have those? I don't mind using proprietary applications sometimes, but I prefer not to. And I don't see the need for Opera.

[starcraft.man]

True FOSS believers or supporters of Open Source will not touch Opera. These are the people you and I can safely refer to as 'zealots' many times. Normally it just doesn't matter...

HEY!!! Who you calling a Zealot, eh? :p And who said its safe to call me that? *glares with extended energy blades*

As for the topic at hand, I'm not really a zealot, I mean if I was I wouldn't use nvidia proprietary drivers, or vmware as my virtual machine solution, not to mention a lot of other programs. Being one hundred percent open source is really hard, and somewhat painful, I think at least. I do agree above, IE is the only real enemy when it comes to browsers we need to stamp out. Opera has yet time to open-source itself as other companies have. We have to do it one step at a time.

I am a firefox user though, I love my extensions (some of which just don't exist in opera) and I love my theme (no one can be Noia 2.0 Extreme, its old and yet still cool :) ). Go FIrefox.

[Sammi]

Opera is not FOSS, but it is FOSS friendly, because it adheres very strictly to standards. And it is really a very well engineered piece of software. Both fast and functional. Indeed it's much faster than both IE and Firefox.

I guess it all comes down to this question: can open and closed source software live together in harmony?

I guess most people say yes, and zealots say no.

[FuturePilot]

Well certain closed source programs can exist along with open source in harmony I think. Certain things like JAVA which is going to be GPL'd. And it seems that Opera is very nice when it comes to Linux because they provide .debs for every version of Ubuntu as well as many other distros.

[aysiu]

Only about 5% of forum members run completely free Ubuntu systems. The rest have some non-free codecs or software installed.

[DoctorMO]

True FOSS believers or supporters of Open Source will not touch Opera. These are the people you and I can safely refer to as 'zealots' many times. Normally it just doesn't matter...

Quite wrong, just because someone doesn't want to use something that they can't know what it contains doesn't mean their a zealot, principled perhaps but not zealot. I thought your scorn is more directed towards mindless following rather than principled following?

Or is it you that are the middle ground zealot?

[Adamant1988]

Quite wrong, just because someone doesn't want to use something that they can't know what it contains doesn't mean their a zealot, principled perhaps but not zealot. I thought your scorn is more directed towards mindless following rather than principled following?

Or is it you that are the middle ground zealot?

I said, and I quote, 'many times'. I have no problem at ALL with people who are principled and believe firmly in open source ideals. I have a problem with people like deanlinkous (you remember him right?) who not only believe it, but wish to shove those same beliefs down our throats.

I suppose I should have clarified, however, it seems that many times that the zealotic minority seem to be the 'vocal minority' that gives the entire group a bad image. I apologize for any misunderstanding, I should have been more clear.

[zugu]

Only about 5% of forum members run completely free Ubuntu systems. The rest have some non-free codecs or software installed.

Actually, I know that every release of Ubuntu to date includes some binary blobs, deemed as "fundamental blocks" of the OS by Canonical, so one can state that no Ubuntu user is using 100% free software, not even open source software and not even after a fresh install.

Users who want completely free software are already using gNewSense.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Really though opera is good for not being open source, and some of its issues are not opera's fault.
Like flash, that issue more comes from adobe then opera.
Of course I wish there were ways to better intigrate opera into GTK but it does do fine as it is.

[happy-and-lost]

It's only Debian's biggest fans who have such a huge moral issue with Opera, I should imagine ;)

[moore.bryan]

some really good comments, thanks to all. i'm struggling with finding an uber-fast browser that works EXACTLY how i want it to... firefox/swiftfox/iceape/seamonkey/epiphany/kazehakase/iceweasel/etc. and opera are okay, but none do exactly what i want. oh well, my search continues.