Speak to me like I’m 12. I want a simple answer. Everybody gives these convoluted answers like “Opera GX is malware” but there’s nothing that would typically constitute as malware there. They say it installs viruses when from my experience nothing fishy has come up. it doesn’t give me popups. Half of the people I know use it, and the other half call it invasive.
Edit: It’s also using 2GB of ram for some reason? How do I stop this
Opera GX just isn’t as good of a browser as it’s made out to be. It talks about being fast, but it ended up adding so many extra features that it will usually run slower than most other browsers. It comes with a lot of extra features, like a gaming corner you can never turn off.
And every once in a while, it chooses to annoy its users, like that one time the loading screen would frighten people with a screaming man.
Long story short? The browser is all marketing fluff. You can do better.
I’ve never seen people say opera gx is malware
Perhaps you confused with people saying it is Spyware because of its data collecting practices
It’s style over substance, pure marketing garbage.
If you are into that, go for it. If you are even considering it, no way you’re consciously making privacy a serious consideration, so the competition isn’t offering anything you’d fidget over.
It’s a legitimate browser, if you enjoy it then keep using it
Man, I have used Opera since, I don’t know, when Internet Explorer was around, and have continued using through its ups and down, and I have had no issues. People have problem with Opera because its Chinese, and it might be true that they could be selling your personal data, but so is literally everybody else, including your ISP. There is no escaping from it unless you cut yourself off the web.
So, if you do want better online protection, try another browser - I have heard Brave is one such browser that takes privacy seriously. If you don’t care about your privacy and what not, and if Opera works for you, continue using it.
If you want to try a new browser for fun of it, give Zen Browser, Arc Browser, Vivaldi and others a try. I personally use Arc on Mac and loving it.
When people say certain browsers are malware or spyware they usually just mean that they have poor privacy protection, track you all over the web, and sell your data to advertisers. Whether GX does that, I can’t tell you; my guess would be yes, but I suggest you look that up yourself.
GX isn’t actual malware though, and it won’t install viruses on your computer. You may use it to install viruses, if you’re not careful, but that’s not the browser’s fault.
Should you get a different browser? Well, do you like using GX? If you like using it, keep using it. It’s a fine browser, it’s totally fine. 2GB of RAM is also fine, by the way. A bit high if you don’t have many tabs open but it’s nothing crazy.
I’m a Firefox aficionado so I will recommend Firefox to you, specifically hardened Firefox (look up Betterfox for more information), but I want to make it clear that GX is fine. It’s probably invasive and whoring your data out for cash, but it won’t be hitting you over the head with a bat any time soon.
The resource limiters rarely work, the VPN is actually bad because it’s only a proxy and it definitely logs your history when you use it, and it just feels like a worse Brave to me.
IMO Opera is only good at mobile browsers nowadays.
Switch to Vivaldi if you like Opera.
There’s a reason it’s called Opera Great Xi_Jinping
Not malware, but edge is better
I used it for about a year. Good looking UI, loved the picture in picture mode that worked nicely, and those mods/shaders things are… ok I guess?
But other than that, it’s very laggy and full of bloatware. And also, a great way for China to collect your data
Just for context, I made the switch to Brave around 3 months ago, and I’ve been pretty happy with it. Out of all the Chromium-based browsers I’ve tried, it’s definitely my favorite compared to GX and Chrome, which I used as my main browsers for quite a while. At some point, I’ll probably switch to a Firefox fork like Zen or LW, but for now, Brave is working well for me.
2gb of ram is not that big of a consumption.
to stop it using 2 gb of ram, close the browser.
https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/18sup16/is_the_hate_of_opera_justified_a_little_breakdown
Read over some if these if you want a better understanding. It’s your choice whether you want to use opera or not, qust depends on your values. Do you prioritise features over all else? Are you okay with just one more company selling your data? JUST DONT USE THE VPN
Google Chrome is best
Vivaldi on mobile probably has the best mobile UI by a million miles.
they refer to something like firefox that sends endless types of information about your activity on the browser
What kind of data? Send some links so I can read about it, please. Looking online yields nothing that can’t be easily disabled with user.js, unfortunately. If there’s something I don’t know about, I’d like to find out!