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I've tried multiple times. Basically, you get an absolutely bloated interface (or should I say OS-replacement?), containing a word processor and minigames. All

I've tried multiple times. Basically, you get an absolutely bloated interface (or should I say OS-replacement?), containing a word processor and minigames. All things work, but none of them work good. Also, absolutely no tracking protection by default, I've found nothing about how their sync protocol works (is it e2ee?), so I take their argument of "vivaldy is better for your privacy than Chrome" with a grain of salt.

alpaca128 6y ago
Same here. I've tried it at least once a year and it still has the same issues it had on day one. The UI is incredibly slow and has an input delay on most mouse inputs. I gave up on it when they introduced Philips Hue remote controls instead of fixing the overall user experience or adding features like bookmark & settings sync(Light controls don't have a place in a web browser, ever, unless it's an opt-in addon). The vast number of settings and features is great, but that's meaningless if the everyday browsing feels like using a bloated website on a Raspberry Pi.
- merlinscholz 6y ago
  I've read in another comment that they introduced mail and calendar tools and already was dumbfounded. But Philips Hue integration? At some point you just probably can replace gnome/kde/... With this "browser"
  - alpaca128 6y ago
    Yes, Vivaldi has this feature where the window borders change color based on the active website's color scheme. Then one day they decided to let the browser also connect to Hue lights so they can also change color in sync with the browser window. Now of course the devs can do what they want, but if they aim to compete with other browsers they have astounding priorities.
matthiaswh 6y ago
I've been using it as a daily driver for two years and don't understand what you're talking about. > bloated interface It looks almost exactly like Chrome to me. I have them side by side and the difference is barely noticeable. > word processor I assume you mean its note feature, which I know exists but has never once been used by me nor has it ever gotten in my way. > minigames If there are minigames I had no idea they existed. I'm fairly certain Chrome has some though. > All things work, but none of them work good. This isn't clear enough to be worth arguing against, but the only thing I'll point out that doesn't "work good" for me is the tab switching interface is sometimes slow and gets "caught" on the tab switching screen. Everything else is business as usual. > absolutely no tracking protection by default I'm not sure if they have ever claimed this, nor do I recall if it is enabled by default, but Vivaldi has a built in ad blocker, and you can still install Chrome extensions for additional protection. > I've found nothing about how their sync protocol works A quick search for "Vivaldi sync" turned up this: "You also need to pick an encryption password that is used for encrypting your data. Your encryption password is used locally on your computer for encrypting the data you’re about to send to our servers and to decrypt the received data. Your encryption password is never sent to us or any other third party, which ensures that we cannot decrypt your data." [0] (Also linked from the article you're commenting on.) Maybe that isn't the technical detail you're looking for but it's not "nothing." [0] https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tools/sync/ https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tools/sync/
- Daho0n 6y ago
  Calender, mail and notes does not belong in a browser by default. It's bloat and attack vectors.
  - notatrumper 6y ago
    It doesn't have calendar or mail at the moment. Note taking is probably very simple. I am not sure if it lets you take notes per web site, or just in general. I'm not fully sold on "doesn't belong in browser" - arguably, it the browser is almost like an OS, it is not far fetched to ask for such features. I guess that is also what ChromeOS does.
  - 6y ago
lucideer 6y ago
> you get an absolutely bloated interface (or should I say OS-replacement?) This is basically the old Opera approach. Vivaldi was created by the Opera founders, is made up of ex-Opera staff, and has the goal of recreating an Opera 12-esque browser experience on top of the Chromium engine. If you liked Opera 12, you'll like their "bloated / OS-replacement" (also highly customisable, almost everything is removable) UI approach. If you didn't like Opera 12, you likely won't. If you haven't tried the latest snapshots you're in for a treat: the UI now bundles a full calendar and mail client :D I use Firefox as my daily driver today, but I was an Opera 12 user: the UI was bloated-by-default out of the box but the two important caveats were: (1) 100% customisability allowing you to streamline it easily, and (2) bloat never impacted performance at all (in fact Opera was the most performant browser back then for heavy tab use, even while the integrated mail client was indexing hundreds of incoming mails). I can see perf. being a bigger challenge for Vivaldi though since they have less control over the Chromium foundations... Curious to see how they get on with this. > I've found nothing about how their sync protocol works As far as I've seen they haven't released the source of their sync server[0] or protocol, but the mechanism seems similar enough to Chrome that they've likely stuck to using a similar protocol, just with their own server endpoint(s). It prompts me to use macOS keychain for sync encryption, as Chrome does, so this seems to strongly imply e2e. The internals UI[1] also gives some nice data for the curious. It shows e2e as being enabled for me, but it looks like it isn't always (possibly only newer versions of Vivaldi support e2e and they need some kind of backward compat.) [0] https://bifrost.vivaldi.com/ https://bifrost.vivaldi.com/ [1] vivaldi://sync-internals
- mobilio 6y ago
  I still love Opera12
  - samoa42 6y ago
    same same "it's never quite the same as the first time you fall in love"
- 32gbsd 6y ago
  Opera 12 is pretty good
wnnzl 6y ago
In one of my projects we used Google Hangouts as our main tool for video calls. I was using Vivaldi back then, it used to freeze whole browser once or twice a week, which was unacepptable when I was doing ie. demo of new version. Such freeze took few minutes to recover from, and the whole call was 30 min of length. After switching back to Safari problem was gone. So for me Vivaldi is big NO.
veidr 6y ago
My take on this is there are two common meanings of 'bloated'. One means 'too many features' (without impact on performance of other features). Maybe it makes things harder to figure out (though not necessarily). But it doesn't impact speed of execution, away from the bloat. The other is like a fat bloated human who just got finished eating way too much. Their belly distended, they find it hard to run or lift something heavy. They are slowed down. Vivaldi seems bloated in the first way, sure. It's like, a "wall of features". But it doesn't seem to me to be slow as a result. It seems faster than Chrome, Safari, or Firefox on my (macOS) main computer. True, I don't need most of the features. (But I love a few of them, such as the OmniWeb-style thumbnail tabs.) But I am not disadvantaged by them at all. I generally have 5-6 browsers open, and Vivaldi recently is usually among them. If it had in-built tracking protection (like Safari), or no-effort ad blocking (like Brave), it would probably be one of my "main" browsers.

alpaca128 6y ago

Same here. I've tried it at least once a year and it still has the same issues it had on day one. The UI is incredibly slow and has an input delay on most mouse inputs. I gave up on it when they introduced Philips Hue remote controls instead of fixing the overall user experience or adding features like bookmark & settings sync(Light controls don't have a place in a web browser, ever, unless it's an opt-in addon). The vast number of settings and features is great, but that's meaningless if the everyday browsing feels like using a bloated website on a Raspberry Pi.

merlinscholz 6y ago
I've read in another comment that they introduced mail and calendar tools and already was dumbfounded. But Philips Hue integration? At some point you just probably can replace gnome/kde/... With this "browser"
- alpaca128 6y ago
  Yes, Vivaldi has this feature where the window borders change color based on the active website's color scheme. Then one day they decided to let the browser also connect to Hue lights so they can also change color in sync with the browser window. Now of course the devs can do what they want, but if they aim to compete with other browsers they have astounding priorities.

matthiaswh 6y ago

I've been using it as a daily driver for two years and don't understand what you're talking about. > bloated interface It looks almost exactly like Chrome to me. I have them side by side and the difference is barely noticeable. > word processor I assume you mean its note feature, which I know exists but has never once been used by me nor has it ever gotten in my way. > minigames If there are minigames I had no idea they existed. I'm fairly certain Chrome has some though. > All things work, but none of them work good. This isn't clear enough to be worth arguing against, but the only thing I'll point out that doesn't "work good" for me is the tab switching interface is sometimes slow and gets "caught" on the tab switching screen. Everything else is business as usual. > absolutely no tracking protection by default I'm not sure if they have ever claimed this, nor do I recall if it is enabled by default, but Vivaldi has a built in ad blocker, and you can still install Chrome extensions for additional protection. > I've found nothing about how their sync protocol works A quick search for "Vivaldi sync" turned up this: "You also need to pick an encryption password that is used for encrypting your data. Your encryption password is used locally on your computer for encrypting the data you’re about to send to our servers and to decrypt the received data. Your encryption password is never sent to us or any other third party, which ensures that we cannot decrypt your data." [0] (Also linked from the article you're commenting on.) Maybe that isn't the technical detail you're looking for but it's not "nothing." [0] https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tools/sync/ https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tools/sync/

Daho0n 6y ago
Calender, mail and notes does not belong in a browser by default. It's bloat and attack vectors.
- notatrumper 6y ago
  It doesn't have calendar or mail at the moment. Note taking is probably very simple. I am not sure if it lets you take notes per web site, or just in general. I'm not fully sold on "doesn't belong in browser" - arguably, it the browser is almost like an OS, it is not far fetched to ask for such features. I guess that is also what ChromeOS does.
- 6y ago

lucideer 6y ago

> you get an absolutely bloated interface (or should I say OS-replacement?) This is basically the old Opera approach. Vivaldi was created by the Opera founders, is made up of ex-Opera staff, and has the goal of recreating an Opera 12-esque browser experience on top of the Chromium engine. If you liked Opera 12, you'll like their "bloated / OS-replacement" (also highly customisable, almost everything is removable) UI approach. If you didn't like Opera 12, you likely won't. If you haven't tried the latest snapshots you're in for a treat: the UI now bundles a full calendar and mail client :D I use Firefox as my daily driver today, but I was an Opera 12 user: the UI was bloated-by-default out of the box but the two important caveats were: (1) 100% customisability allowing you to streamline it easily, and (2) bloat never impacted performance at all (in fact Opera was the most performant browser back then for heavy tab use, even while the integrated mail client was indexing hundreds of incoming mails). I can see perf. being a bigger challenge for Vivaldi though since they have less control over the Chromium foundations... Curious to see how they get on with this. > I've found nothing about how their sync protocol works As far as I've seen they haven't released the source of their sync server[0] or protocol, but the mechanism seems similar enough to Chrome that they've likely stuck to using a similar protocol, just with their own server endpoint(s). It prompts me to use macOS keychain for sync encryption, as Chrome does, so this seems to strongly imply e2e. The internals UI[1] also gives some nice data for the curious. It shows e2e as being enabled for me, but it looks like it isn't always (possibly only newer versions of Vivaldi support e2e and they need some kind of backward compat.) [0] https://bifrost.vivaldi.com/ https://bifrost.vivaldi.com/ [1] vivaldi://sync-internals

mobilio 6y ago
I still love Opera12
- samoa42 6y ago
  same same "it's never quite the same as the first time you fall in love"
32gbsd 6y ago
Opera 12 is pretty good

wnnzl 6y ago

In one of my projects we used Google Hangouts as our main tool for video calls. I was using Vivaldi back then, it used to freeze whole browser once or twice a week, which was unacepptable when I was doing ie. demo of new version. Such freeze took few minutes to recover from, and the whole call was 30 min of length. After switching back to Safari problem was gone. So for me Vivaldi is big NO.

veidr 6y ago

My take on this is there are two common meanings of 'bloated'. One means 'too many features' (without impact on performance of other features). Maybe it makes things harder to figure out (though not necessarily). But it doesn't impact speed of execution, away from the bloat. The other is like a fat bloated human who just got finished eating way too much. Their belly distended, they find it hard to run or lift something heavy. They are slowed down. Vivaldi seems bloated in the first way, sure. It's like, a "wall of features". But it doesn't seem to me to be slow as a result. It seems faster than Chrome, Safari, or Firefox on my (macOS) main computer. True, I don't need most of the features. (But I love a few of them, such as the OmniWeb-style thumbnail tabs.) But I am not disadvantaged by them at all. I generally have 5-6 browsers open, and Vivaldi recently is usually among them. If it had in-built tracking protection (like Safari), or no-effort ad blocking (like Brave), it would probably be one of my "main" browsers.