The title is err, not correct because the top 2 alternatives Opera and Arc are based on Chromium engine. I have seen tons of people swear by Arc, but I am seriously asking (since as a Linux user I can’t use it), how much good can a browser be in this day and age if ultimately it’s ad blocking breaks and it will since Manifest v2 will go soon(unless Arc folks have a solution for it)
The rest alternatives are Firefox, Zen (FF fork but honestly Atleast this was something new I learned from this article) and Tor (which is weird since it is not meant for normal web browsing and using it will not only be slow but put additional strain on the nodes, correct me if I am wrong).
I beg to differ, when Opera had its own engine and wasn’t Chinese owned - back in the early '00s.
Yeah I was 100% Opera on desktop and mobile until they switched to chromium and broke everything from before. Still pissed about that, lost all my bookmarks and notes at one point.
Opera was so good. Disable images, force custom CSS, gestures! Stuff no one else had at the time.
And the ability to switch browser engines on the fly. That was a great feature.
User agent spoofing, tabs back when nobody had them, sidebar…
Opera Corp. is Norvegian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(company)
The browser was sold to Chinese investors though.
this era of the internet was such a fun time.
I suspect that we may be looking back with rose tinted glasses, but the main stream internet is pretty crap atm
Opera also was a good alternative on Symbian phones right or whatever OS Nokia used before they switched to Windows Phone, I think.
Opera mini was also great when I had very little MBs of internet traffic in my plan. Nowadays I have pretty much infinite traffic, so I haven’t used it in ages
I think I remember Opera Mini’s layout though I didn’t much use it. It was a great alternative especially on mobile more than a decade back.
But yes especially after changing ownership, switching browser engines and years down the line; things have changed.
I think I gave their desktop variant a try sometime ago but didn’t find it compelling enough. I haven’t even used their Android fork. I keep using a Firefox fork only :p.