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Comment by zkirill | Hacker News Reader

The reason why I originally switched from Firefox to Chrome was because Chrome was minimalistic and very, very fast - a chrome for the web.

Now I'm seeing Chrome become bloated, and slow. On top of this, it's now trying very hard to identify me by asking me to sign in with my Google account.

I want my next browser to make me forget that I'm using a browser in the first place, and also to not care about my identity.

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Why not Opera? The new Opera is Chromium with what I think is a better design[1] that respects your OS[2]. You don't have to sign in to sync, but you can if you want. It's not open, but they're not an ad company. And finally, it's said to be faster than Chrome.

[1] I prefer Firefox so I use the FxOpera theme

[2] Well, it tries its best on Linux (unlike Chrome), but it's near perfect on Windows and Mac OS

>but they're not an ad company

I got bad news for you

TIL: http://operamediaworks.com/

But still, I don't think they track searches and history like Chrome.

Personally I don't use Opera because it doesn't let you customize mouse gestures. They consider it too geeky a feature :) http://i.imgur.com/fDSjYZq.png

Trying Opera now, turned off after 5sec b/c it uses an 'installer' in OS X instead of drag&drop to apps.

Weird, I have an iWork DVD with an installer. Should I just throw it up after discovering it doesn't use drag&drop, without even trying the app?

Many programs do that, even Apple ones: iLife, Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, etc.

Yes, because it manipulates the system in some way beyond copying the app to app, it's often hard to deinstall without traces, hard to keep two versions side by side etc.

So if the pain of the installer is larger than the added benefit of using Opera vs. Chrome, then yes.

Really? An app can still freely write to ~/Library and cause all the problems you just said. The installer is the wrong thing to object to...

The installer is a strong indication of this behavior.

Sounds like you might want to give Firefox a try again then – it’s much better now than in the 4.x days. Or if you’re on a Mac Safari is pretty slim (although slightly lagging in JS abilities).

Thanks, I will give it a try again. :)

Anonymity should be a choice, especially at the browser level.

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