Yesterday, following the announcement that the folks behind the Opera web browser were giving away registration keys (the FREE part is implied) in celebration of their 10th anniversary, I too took the time to download a Linux version to see what the big deal was.

Opera is yet another web browser that is freely available for several different operating systems (Linux and Windows included) with a small caviat: The un-registered version has a toolbar-like banner displaying adds while you browse. I never really gave it a chance and completely gave up on it… maybe the banner had something to do with it… You see, I don’t mind paying for software that I like! I have actually bought packaged Slackware and Red Hat CDs after the fact that I had been using them for quite some time… It was my way of thanking all the developers behind their respective distributions for all their time and effort. I have also paid for my dad’s Zone Alarm Pro! But I am very happy with Mozilla Firefox and figured it made no sense to buy something for something else at the time.

Shortly after I arrived home from work I checked my email with the registration key (they sent me one for pretty much all operating systems supported) and proceeded to install it. Within literally seconds I was off browsing the web. So far I don’t have any feelings toward it and haven’t seen any differences besides the UI. Some people have claimed it to be much faster than Firefox but I’m yet to see this performance. I’ll make a concious effort to use Opera for 1 week to give it a proper chance and maybe will post back here what my finds were.