Firefox Vs Opera Vs Chrome Vs Chromium

[Brahim Salem]

Hi guys! I have a slow EDGE connection and I want to know which browser is best for me. I kinda like Firefox but Firefox 18 is a snail and I want something faster! Does anyone know the difference between Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Chromium

[xenion]

You have a slow computer? I can't give you exact details, but I can tell you what I know from experience. Chrome is semi-fast, built in flash, etc etc. In other words, its alright. If your looking to develop or design, go with chromium, its open source and you'll really be able to do what you want with it. I use firefox just because it comes default with my mint 14 distro. The browser I truly recommend though, is Midori, as my friend was able to run it on a terrible school computer that had 1.4GHz processor with 512 RAM~without installation. Midori is good, I guess just do a "sudo apt-get install Midori" in your terminal and it will give you the standard browser and the private browsing instance of it; enjoy whichever you pick! And if there is an inaccuracy please feel free to correct

[Brahim Salem]

You have a slow computer? I can't give you exact details, but I can tell you what I know from experience. Chrome is semi-fast, built in flash, etc etc. In other words, its alright. If your looking to develop or design, go with chromium, its open source and you'll really be able to do what you want with it. I use firefox just because it comes default with my mint 14 distro. The browser I truly recommend though, is Midori, as my friend was able to run it on a terrible school computer that had 1.4GHz processor with 512 RAM~without installation. Midori is good, I guess just do a "sudo apt-get install Midori" in your terminal and it will give you the standard browser and the private browsing instance of it; enjoy whichever you pick! And if there is an inaccuracy please feel free to correct

Sorry but I'm runnig Firefox on a dell inspiron i3 with 4 GB RAM and so I guess I have enough resources . The problem is with Firefox 18. It's slow to load websites. I have just installed Opera and the difference is dramatic. Opera is twice as fast

[ultraviolet]

i would like to only use Opera, but, for now it just doesn't cut it speed wise. perhaps when they implement the webkit engine things might change.

i've found that sometimes FireFox completely crashes when playing 1080p youtube videos and i can't have that.

as i'm not a fan on google, so Chrome is out of the question, so i'm just in the process of migrateing all of my bookmarks to Chromium. although i'm well aware that on a smaller system with tight resources it can be a memory beast

[raymerjacque]

Opera for Pure speed and Comfort level. Of the 3 its most customizable, comes with most of the daily used addons built in and its by far the fastest of the lot.

[Brahim Salem]

Opera for Pure speed and Comfort level. Of the 3 its most customizable, comes with most of the daily used addons built in and its by far the fastest of the lot.

I totally agree!! Opera an out-of-the-box browser! It is the fastest and most elegant browser I have ever tried! I realized when writing this article that it even has a spell checker preinstalled

[bigj231]

FYI, Chrome has a pre-installed spellchecker, as does Firefox. I do agree about opera though. It is a great browser that seems really unappreciated. I don't use it since I never really got into it. I tried it but never set it as my default, so I always migrated back to Firefox.
EDIT: Opera mini does some amazing stuff on mobile devices. If there's away to port it to Linux, it would definitely be the fastest.

[bazarov]

Opera is a beautiful browser and imo is fast and smooth. The turbo function is really great if you've a slower connection. It raises some privacy concerns but I'd trust the loveable Norwegians at Opera not to snoop.

[bigj231]

All of the secure stuff (https) doesn't go through opera's server at all. So there really isn't too much to be worried about (unless you use the same password for everything, which is stupid anyway.)
Anyway after trying opera again for a night, I remember why I don't set it as my default. It's a little too quirky for me. The autologin does weird stuff sometimes, and the entire feel just isn't "right." I do agree that it is nice and smooth, but I still don't care for it. No idea why. I'll keep using it, maybe it'll grow on me.

[excollier]

If I try to use Opera for YouTube on LM13 Mate, the Shockwave Flash plug in crashes, so I'm sticking with Firefox.

[xenion]

You have a slow computer? I can't give you exact details, but I can tell you what I know from experience. Chrome is semi-fast, built in flash, etc etc. In other words, its alright. If your looking to develop or design, go with chromium, its open source and you'll really be able to do what you want with it. I use firefox just because it comes default with my mint 14 distro. The browser I truly recommend though, is Midori, as my friend was able to run it on a terrible school computer that had 1.4GHz processor with 512 RAM~without installation. Midori is good, I guess just do a "sudo apt-get install Midori" in your terminal and it will give you the standard browser and the private browsing instance of it; enjoy whichever you pick! And if there is an inaccuracy please feel free to correct

Sorry but I'm runnig Firefox on a dell inspiron i3 with 4 GB RAM and so I guess I have enough resources . The problem is with Firefox 18. It's slow to load websites. I have just installed Opera and the difference is dramatic. Opera is twice as fast

Opera uses compression techniques to make a difference in speed. Opera is a good recommendation. I completely forgot about this, thank you Brahim

[DrHu]

For low resources the fastest browser would be a text based one; but you would definately have to get used to a different way of operating (text style, vs GUI/desktop style)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8148
http://www.my-guides.net/en/guides/linu ... b-browsers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_we ... ng_systems

• Other than that, it is purely a matter of choice
  --although I have always found firefox slow to start and a bit slow to grab pages..

I use Opera and find it the most customizable and pretty fast

If I did use google browser, I would probably pick Chromium, which is the OSS version of Chrome..

[raymerjacque]

For low resources the fastest browser would be a text based one; but you would definately have to get used to a different way of operating (text style, vs GUI/desktop style)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8148
http://www.my-guides.net/en/guides/linu ... b-browsers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_we ... ng_systems

• Other than that, it is purely a matter of choice
  --although I have always found firefox slow to start and a bit slow to grab pages..

I use Opera and find it the most customizable and pretty fast

If I did use google browser, I would probably pick Chromium, which is the OSS version of Chrome..

Chrome in windows is pretty nice, in linux it sux tho. Opera is best choice if you looking for speed and customisability.

[grizzler]

Hi guys! I have a slow EDGE connection and I want to know which browser is best for me. I kinda like Firefox but Firefox 18 is a snail and I want something faster!

Whatever you do, take Firefox 18 out of the equasion. It had a serious bug which has been fixed in 19. Try that before you decide.

Before the problems with FF18 were acknowledged, I looked around for a replacement as well. The only one that would have made a chance would have been Opera, if I had been able to get it to stop ignoring my font settings. I'm not sure I like the current direction Opera's development is taking, though.
Anyway, I'm sticking with Firefox, as 19 doesn't have the speed problems 18 had.

[ben2talk]

I sadly dumped Opera for a while. Opera 27.0 is different - but you need to download it (repos are out of date).

Since a sketchy start with Netscape in the late 90's I moved to Bangkok and started using Windows '98 in netshops.

My early discoveries of tabbed browsers led me to carry installers.

Firefox was wonderful, as was Opera. Opera took over as the easiest and best to use quite quickly.

Annoyingly (as I wanted to tout Opera as being the best thing since sliced bread...) the mouse gestures available in Opera soon found albeit less capable options in Firefox.

If you don't have 'Easystroke' installed, then you are effectively crippled. In addition to all of the usual methods/shortcuts etc, my entire desktop responds to mouse gestures. I can manage very happily with my Logitech k400r (decent trackpad, enough media keys to make it work as my remote control when I'm cooking/outside smoking) - but when my mouse comes into reach I can do a lot more magic.

Still I remember they originated with Opera browser. After the startup and rapid rise of Google Chrome I found sadly that Opera was lacking. Opting for a dark theme (BlackMATE - even on Cinnamon desktop - is by far the best dark theme for controls IMO) Opera couldn't display fonts!!! White on white url bar.... so I didn't even install it with Cinnamon 17.1 until last week.

Chrome is nice - but has severe issues. Google has very good reasons (and states that it does indeed LOOK at data) to use your data. For this reason I'd choose Chromium over Chrome. In benchmarks (fair ones) Chromium browsers are maybe 5% faster (basically the same - feels fast) and certainly not like the old Bentley Firefox (cruising internet rather than surfing... with your lovely Downloadhelper essential to throw Youtube video's into a nice download folder in .mp4 720p or better for viewing on the HDTV later).

The point I'm trying to make is that you should NOT really choose. The loss of any browser is a loss to the whole community. I try to support Chromium, Opera, and Firefox equally.

Firefox is my weapon of choice for:
1. Plex Media Manager. I haven't tried it with Opera, but I know it has an issue in Chromium - adjust settings, press save and see 'Error Saving Preferences' appear. Who cares why, just use Firefox.

2. Browsing and downloading. Downloadhelper - wow, go to a page with links and images and you can leech a few hundred images into a folder of your choice. Of course, at times, other Firefox plugins make it invaluable... but sometimes they make it remind me of Windows. Start it up and it wants you to wait while it checks it's plugins and update stuff... and then other times the plugins have brought it to a standstill in the past.

3. I had an issue with tab switching (Chromium lets you mouseover and roll the mousewheel, Opera does not... but Cinnamon gives us CTRL-TAB and CTRL-SH-TAB for this... Easystroke lets me map this to Right Mouse Button + mousewheel Up and Down - removing any advantage in that department. Thanks to Chromium for that idea - now my entire desktop works that way.

Easystroke is a great equaliser... L closes tabs, draw the L from the bottom and the tabs come back... draw a lightning stroke and windows minimise, draw an inverted 7 and they maximise, arrows make them tile into corners/halves. Write number 1/2 to go to that workspace... and mapping CTRL and ALT to my buttons 7 and 8 means I can do lots of extra window manager jobs (resize, zoom in window, zoom desktop etc) without having to use mouse + keyboard.

Now my advice is to keep Firefox for doing what you need to do (when you aren't sure how to do it in Opera or Chromium), and for using it's add-ons, and because it is historically a pig/great browser/vital.

Use Chromium and Opera. Learn how they work. Read about their shortcuts. Use Easystroke to make them all work the same way under your mouse.

I find myself using Opera more than Chromium right now for 'browsing'. Though for regular browsing I launch from 'application shortcuts' in a Docky dock bar which is hidden on my left side of the screen... so I use Chromium for those.

Interestingly, Lastpass installs nicely on all three browsers - so I can at any time click the icon and directly open and log in to them (with lovely obscure passwords like 'wYRi8nEsBPAxCSsY399OmGoW').

Truly there is less and less reason to eliminate any one of these three. There has always been a good reason to support all three.