Is opera the new "minimal"?

inknoir · 2011-02-18 11:18:01

First of all: i am not a native englishspeaker and therefore i am sorry in case of causing missunderstandings.

Last week I tried to put together a set of "minimal" software with strong keyboardsupport which could suffice all the daily tasks I have.

After consolidation of the wiki and the awesome LnF-list the set contained:

de:           none
wm:           dwm
web:          firefox with pentadactyl
editor:       vim
mail:         mutt
irc:          irssi
feeds:        newsbeuter
filemanager:  vifm
terminal:     rxvt
pics:         feh
music:        moc
powermgmt:    laptop-mode-tools
taskmgmt:     htop
networkmgmt:  netcfg
and so on...

I am not an expert, it took me quite some time to adapt a terminal-/keyboardbased workingstyle and to tweak the software to my liking, but I was really happy so far. The only flaw was firefox, which pulled many dependencies like the xserver and gtk. In addition it felt sluggish, even more, after the installation of a few addons like pentadactyl and noscript.

While searching for an alternative for it I stumbled upon the newly revived opera-package. Imagine how surprised I was, that opera had almost no dependencies and was just about 30,46 MB after installation because of its "static" packaging. With this single package I was able to replace mutt, irssi, newsbeuter, firefox and feh (minff) at once. There was no gtk-dependency anymore, yay! I did a fresh installation with base and base-devel, xorg-server, xorg-xinit, xf86-video-intel and xf86-input-synaptics.
Then I did pacman -S mutt, irssi, firefox, feh > minff.txt and pacman -S opera > minff.txt. The result (shortened and formated)

Targets (62): [minff+dependencies] Total Installed Size:   191.05 MB
Targets (1) : [opera]              Total Installed Size:    30.46 MB

By switching I could save 61 packages and more than 160 MB!!

True, opera needs a lot more ram than for example mutt or newsbeuter when they are invoked solely. But isn't a constantly running webbrowser the general usecase for many of us? And opera is feeling faster than firefox alone and way faster/snappier when minff is invoked completely.
After a fresh installation I opened vanilla firefox with one tab at google. I started urxvtd and invoked with urxvtc mutt, newsbeuter and irssi (connected to freenode) and measured memory-usage via htop in tty2.
Then I rebooted and opened opera, one tab in the web, one tab in the mails which also coveres the feeds, and one tab connected to freenode and measured again via htop in tty2. Both tests were made in dwm.
Minff are using about 114 MB ram, while opera uses 59 MB. Of course htop isn't exact with ram-usage, but the tendency is clear, I think. And while I was testing opera further it seemed, that it frees ram more constantly and faster than firefox.
As another sideffect I was able to change my drives from relatime to noatime, because of dropping mutt.

So is opera a more "minimal" approach in an arguably ordinary desktop-arrangement than the softwareset statet above?
Many of my arguments would also fit to the googleos (yuck!) and almost every point becomes invalid, considering a ssh- or serverscenario. Opera doesn't fit in the unix-philosophy 'do one thing and do it well', doesn't support noscript and it isn't as customizable as minff. And it is closedsource. After considering the last point I choose not to use it, only out of ethically reasons.

But still, if someone else was looking for a fast os with some "minimal" software I would at least have to recommend opera over of minff in terms of minimality? It felt bad somehow to go back to minff with all its "bloat" on my desktop-pc. That seems a rather sad result. Please help me to correct my point of view. Or at least tell me how the softwareset could be changed.

ink

PS.: Maybe I will have to repeat this with firefox 4.0, but I have used the repo of heftig (thanks for the efforts btw) and the results weren't much better. But its beta, so this shouldn't count anyways.

Murray_B · 2011-02-18 12:10:48

Hm, I think you are comparing apples and pears.You should compare opera with seamonkey, not with "minff". Firefox is called "Fatfox" sometimes, so maybe it is more interesting to use chrome or chromium instead. I don't know If I will like Firefox 4 so I'll try opera and seamonkey this weekend. By the way, I compared a xfce-desktop with a lightweight one (openbox, tint2, volwheel, gmailcheck). It didn't start faster than xfce and used nearly the same ammount of memory.Very interesting, uh?

karol · 2011-02-18 14:27:10

Many people prefer to use the software they like, firefox has many nice plugins, vimperator / pentadactyl eases things even further.
160 MB in the age of terabyte-sized hard drives is not much and RAM is really really cheap too.

Last time I checked, firefox run pretty slow with some websites, opera and chromium were noticeably faster. I found lighter alternatives to most of those sites and overall firefox isn't that bad, my computer is idling often enough so I don't feel like switching browsers.

Have you tried e.g. jumanji?

ber_t · 2011-02-18 14:40:23

Huh? You came to mutt, newsbeuter, irssi and the like because of the "strong keyboardsupport" and now you want to replace them all with opera?

lagagnon · 2011-02-18 14:49:59

ber_t wrote:

Huh? You came to mutt, newsbeuter, irssi and the like because of the "strong keyboardsupport" and now you want to replace them all with opera?

Well there is actually a "vimperator" for Opera which is quite nice: http://my.opera.com/Blazeix/blog/vimperator-for-opera

ber_t · 2011-02-18 14:57:55

lagagnon wrote:

Well there is actually a "vimperator" for Opera which is quite nice: http://my.opera.com/Blazeix/blog/vimperator-for-opera

I know, but I doubt it is comparable to a dwm-mutt-newsbeuter-irssi-... workflow. From my understanding the OPs point isn't about comparing firefox/pentadactyl and opera/blazeix, or am I wrong, inknoir?

Murray_B · 2011-02-18 17:17:14

Okay, as I told some lines above I was going to do some tests, so I did. I compared the Firefox/Thunderbird, Seamonkey, Opera and Chromium/Thunderbird as Browser and Mailprogram. Well the Firefox/Thunderbird-Combo needs nearly the same memory as Seamonkey. Opera and Chromium took less memory while starting with a blank page, but needed more memory the Mozillas browsers if you load a lot of pages! In peticular opera really took a lot of memory. Chromium needs less memory than others on youtube pages, don't know why - wasn't there a built in flashplayer or was it just in chrome? You can save some memory if you take claws-mail or sylpheed instead of Thunderbird and yes, mutt is even smaller, but personally I feel really crippled if I use mutt. But I think the memory really should'nt matter, there was a maximum difference of 50 MB in my hardest test, that's nothing today. In normale usage those combination will maybe differ about 20 MB...

So where are the differences? Some browsers render faster than others. But let's face it, all browsers render faster than I am able to read a webpage, so in my opinion the render speed is really irrelevant. If firefox 4 is released there will only be some measurable differences I think. Nothing important for normal browsing...

Hm, still the question: Where are the differnces? Features and handling. I would advise against Seamonkey, cause there is nearly no difference in comparison to Firefox/Thunderbird, but some addons doesn't work with Seamonkey. Apart from that: Take what you want/what you like. I regret that Firefox 4 gets a similar lean view like chromium, opera and even IE. I prefer if there are differences in the look and feel of the browsers, because I would like to have a real coice there.

inknoir · 2011-02-18 17:31:25

Murray_B:
I was comparing a widely advised set of minimal/lightweight/suckles software with some so called bloated software - so comparing seamonkey with opera is not interesting to me. But you are right, I could have tried chromium instead of firefox. Sadly, chromium is not really tweakable at the moment and the vromiumplugin (vimperator-surrogate) is rather bad. Your experience with the xfce-desktop is interesting though.

karol:
The test was not about absolute numbers: if minff is advised as lightweight in the wiki, the forum and LnF-list, one would expect it to need less resources than some "fat" internetsuite like opera. And on my 4 GB sd card 160 MB more or less are important. I think jumanji, or even better surf will be the longterm solution but I am not sure if I will be able to achive the skill to make them safe enough for onlinebanking and the like.

ber_t & lagagnon:
It was scary how deep I could customize opera and its keybindings without any experience. Right now I guess opera can be completely keyboarddriven. So my comparison is more of a philosophical one (therefore in Arch Discussion). It feels like the minimal/suckless-philosophy let me down on this one. The workflow with opera can be almost the same like the dwm-mutt-newsbeuter-irss-...one but with less resources needed. That feels so stupid.
Its like the dwm-mimicry with compiz, some people did here in the forum. They accomplished to tweak compiz so that it behaved and looked exactly like dwm. Now imagine compiz would need less space AND ram resembling dwm. Thats what happened to me with minff and opera and that is whats frustrating me.

My impression is, that the results were deeply influenced by the special packaging of opera. Maybe I should wait for stali to come out and then compare again. Static linking seems at least sometimes the better choice.

jasonwryan · 2011-02-27 01:23:27

Moving to GNU/Linux as it is not strictly Arch related (even philosophically )...

inknoir the setup you describe is hardly "bloated" with perhaps the exception of Firefox... And there are many more advantages to using each of those individual programmes than just their size: configurability and speed, for example.

Check out Vimprobable: that will lighten your load somewhat.

orlandu63 · 2011-02-27 01:56:06

jasonwryan wrote:

Moving to GNU/Linux as it is not strictly Arch related (even philosophically )...
inknoir the setup you describe is hardly "bloated" with perhaps the exception of Firefox... And there are many more advantages to using each of those individual programmes than just their size: configurability and speed, for example.
Check out Vimprobable: that will lighten your load somewhat.

Or jumanji, luakit, uzbl (all of which can be found in the Community Contributions section of the forums)

upsidaisium · 2011-02-27 02:08:12

These days I'm thinking the best thing to do is use Opera, as they do a really good job of packaging their browser. I can download the latest version of Opera from their site, untar it, and I'm ready to -- no installation required, no dependencies to be worried about, etc. I don't have qt, gtk, webkit, or anything other junk installed and I can still happily browse the web in a decent browser.

jasonwryan wrote:

Check out Vimprobable: that will lighten your load somewhat.

I used to think that using one of these minimal webkit browsers (there are quite a few of them now) would be better, but it just turned out to be frustrating. Might as well just install Chromium and be happy (But, like I said, now Opera seems like the better solution)

Last edited by upsidaisium (2011-02-27 02:09:41)

inknoir · 2011-02-28 14:45:28

@jasonwryan:
Thanks for moving, your are right. It fits better in GNU/Linux discussion.

Vimprobable is no alternative in terms of minimalism or lightweightness, neither are all the other libwebkitbased ones (which covers the community contribution section as well). I would still need to install mutt, newsbeuter, irssi, rtorrent, feh and so on, which would pull 60+ dependencies and clutter my disk.
Its not about an alternative to firefox, it is about an alternative to opera!
I hardly doubt having a libwebkitbrowser an instance of mutt, irssi, newsbeuter, feh and rtorrent running at the same time uses less ram than using opera alone. As I said, opera only needs 59 MB ram right after the start.
You said my old softwareset has great configurability and speed. But are these attributes a matter of minimalism or lightweightness? This is exactly what I thought before and what I question today.
Minimalism/leightweightness is about finding the smallest solution in terms of storageusage and ram for solving certain tasks without loosing too much comfort. And in this case it would be plain wrong to look at the single task without considering the whole worksetting.

Inxsible · 2011-02-28 14:50:24

My definition of minimalism is a bit different. An application that helps me do my job (work or play) without getting in the way is minimal for me.

Therefore I think, minimalism differs from person to person. I find that chromium is best suited for me when I am casually browsing and don't want to keep hitting key strokes in jumanji. At other times, I find jumanji to be a better fit for the very same reason that I can hit a keystroke instead of moving my hands from the keyboard to the mouse.

karabaja4 · 2011-02-28 15:46:39

Inxsible wrote:

My definition of minimalism is a bit different. An application that helps me do my job (work or play) without getting in the way is minimal for me.
Therefore I think, minimalism differs from person to person. I find that chromium is best suited for me when I am casually browsing and don't want to keep hitting key strokes in jumanji. At other times, I find jumanji to be a better fit for the very same reason that I can hit a keystroke instead of moving my hands from the keyboard to the mouse.

Agreed on this, plus I'd like to add that my definition of minimalism includes simple (preferably sane! irssi I'm looking at you) configuration. I hate using apps that describe themselves as 'minimal' but require such an extensive configuration after which I feel incredibly exhausted, makes me wonder sometimes is it worth it...

anonymous_user · 2011-02-28 17:57:24

inknoir wrote:

And in this case it would be plain wrong to look at the single task without considering the whole worksetting.

I think this is important. If you only use one or two apps at once, then comparing applications 1 on 1 is enough. This is probably what most people do and why mutt, irssi, newsbeuter, etc are all considered minimal. However if you use many applications simultaneously, then it may be better to compare their total resource usage such as you do.

natostanco · 2011-05-03 15:29:26

no one uses vimium with chromium?

mhertz · 2011-05-03 22:52:47

natostanco wrote:

no one uses vimium with chromium?

Yup, I do, whenever Im away from home and forced to use windows, I run a portable version of that! At home, then I always use jumanji and cli apps for everything else!

As per the definition of minimalism, then I strongly share the same opinion as stated previously by Inxsible! e.g. there's a big usability difference in comparing m2(opera's mail client) to mutt, and the same goes for e.g. opera's built-in bittorrent client vs rtorrent etc. etc.

Last edited by mhertz (2011-05-04 15:20:07)

Rupp · 2011-05-03 22:58:49

lagagnon wrote:

ber_t wrote:
Huh? You came to mutt, newsbeuter, irssi and the like because of the "strong keyboardsupport" and now you want to replace them all with opera?
Well there is actually a "vimperator" for Opera which is quite nice: http://my.opera.com/Blazeix/blog/vimperator-for-opera

Not a real vim fan. I just took the hint key from that, and added it to my hotkeys I have in opera. I like that everyone of them can be customized. Which I've done to a lot.

teh · 2011-05-04 15:26:56

Despite the many (overloaded) features Opera suite include, the lack of interest in the FOSS philosophy (¿?), the terrible flash-html5 support...
[In my experience]
I'm using it as a "standalone" browser (running with -noargb -nolirc -nomail -nomaillinks arguments) because the great speed it offers in the loading process (compared to G...Chrome|Chromium)...
I'm using Opera because the low memory-usage (compared to Phyrephox)...
I'm using Opera because the reasonable resources are needed when a lot of tabs are open (compard to any webkit based browser)...
I'm using Opera because the great customization options in appearance aspect.
I'm using Opera because they care about "this" community; the GNU/Linux version is not worst than the Win version.
I'm using Opera because they care about Open Standards.
I'm using Opera because their sense of humor is unbeatable

Vimperopera = Epic Win.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-02-18 11:18:01

Is opera the new "minimal"?

#2 2011-02-18 12:10:48

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#3 2011-02-18 14:27:10

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#4 2011-02-18 14:40:23

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#5 2011-02-18 14:49:59

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#6 2011-02-18 14:57:55

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#7 2011-02-18 17:17:14

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#8 2011-02-18 17:31:25

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#9 2011-02-27 01:23:27

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#10 2011-02-27 01:56:06

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#11 2011-02-27 02:08:12

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#12 2011-02-28 14:45:28

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#13 2011-02-28 14:50:24

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#14 2011-02-28 15:46:39

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#15 2011-02-28 17:57:24

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#16 2011-05-03 15:29:26

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#17 2011-05-03 22:52:47

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#18 2011-05-03 22:58:49

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

#19 2011-05-04 15:26:56

Re: Is opera the new "minimal"?

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