First Look at Opera 10: Can it Make a Dent in the Desktop?

[Caleb_IX]

First Look at Opera 10: Can it Make a Dent in the Desktop? | Linux Magazine

"Speed, and Does it Matter?

Opera 10 adds “Opera Turbo” for the browser, so you can speed up browsing on slower networks. According to the site, Opera “uses Opera proxy servers to compress the traffic before it reaches the Opera browser on the client’s computer.

In my experience, turning on “Turbo” means fuzzy graphics and slightly faster load times. I tested the build for openSUSE, so I can’t say for sure if this is true across all platforms. Maybe there’s something wonky with Opera interacting with a graphics library on openSUSE, or who knows what. But the Turbo didn’t seem to make a huge difference when using broadband, anyway, so I turned it off pretty quickly. For the poor souls stuck on dial-up, a little fuzziness might be acceptable if it means not waiting 30 minutes for a Web page to load.

Overall, page rendering in Opera 10 beta 1 seems slightly faster overall than in Firefox 3.5 beta 4. But, the difference is marginal, and unless you’re really impatient, the speed differential probably isn’t going to make a major difference."

[srschifano]

Turbo is designed specifically for people on either dial-up or slow networks. It compresses the information requested and sent, so less data is needed to load the page, and caches it on a server so the process is done faster. Many of the remaining dial-up ISPs have similar technologies already in place.

Indeed, a broadband user isn't going to notice much of a difference or see much of a benefit. I've read a few people that even say it hurts people with broadband connections. But Turbo is a really nice addition to the browser, if I do say so myself.

[Knurpht]

I've been running snapshots on my laptop for a couple of weeks already, beta since it's out. Used firefox and Arora a lot too, but I'm completely back at Opera with this one.
On my laptop Opera crashed a few times on myspace.com, once it opened myspace.com it was OK. Didn't crash afterwards.
I cannot test the Turbo feature, I'm on 16 Mb cable-broadband.
From history (running Opera since Opera 4) I know that the Opera team can add and remove features, even make layout changes, in the beta stage, but this is a good indication of what Opera 10 is going to be: A fast browser and IMHO the best mailclient ever.

[Caleb_IX]

I'm using opera 9...its a smart bowser, really fast! Only the integation of yast(1-click installation) and the plug-in support can be better...

[Prexy]

I've been using Opera 10 and my only complaint is with this forum! I used the "wand" to remember my password. But, it enters the password, the forum doesn't accept it and it loads the Forums index page with the "Register/Login" link at the top right. Clicking that link reloads the page and I can never log in.

I'm posting from Firefox. For everything else, its great.

[Siminin]

Does anyone know if there is a qt4 build of opera 10? I remember the alfa had one. Now when i go to the dowload page it only gives me qt3.

[Knurpht]

OK, you're touching the only grudge I have. I'm running 64-bit systems since they appeared in the market, KDE4 since it's early stages, and there has never been a qt4 version for me. Don't know if they are going to build new ones, not for which architectures.

But, I did install a qt4 32-bit version some months ago, to see what the difference would be, and I couldn't see any. Then again that might just be the case in my situation with everything being 64-bit.

Used Opera 10 beta for hours through the night, it definitely is fast and gives a "less beta" impression than Firefox. More polished, smooth running.

[Siminin]

Installed, tried, love it It's so much better than 9.64 or the alpha. Faster - in loading sites and startup. Even had time to customize it a little

[Caleb_IX]

Originally Posted by Siminin

Installed, tried, love it It's so much better than 9.64 or the alpha. Faster - in loading sites and startup. Even had time to customize it a little

Oh yes! Its great...i tried it to! It's my favorite browser now! So fast...

[allstar1960]

I believe Opera 10 is much better.

However, I am having a small issue. When I try to run either 9.64 or 10, compiz stops working. Happens everytime.

I have a NV GF4 card, 2gb memory and amd 3700+ 64-bit processor.

Using Suse 11.1