Tips and Tricks to make Opera lightweight

Tuesday, 16. October 2007, 17:48:28

As seen in here, I'm trying to customize one Opera installation to help me with this scenario:

- Processor: 300 MHz
- Memory: 128MB RAM SDRAM
- Disk: 2GB
- OS: Windows 2000 SP4
- Network: very fast broadband connection.

This is what I have so far:
- Use a native skin;
- Disable thumbnails - opera:config#UserPrefs|UseThumbnailsinTabTooltips and opera:config#UserPrefs|UseThumbnailsinWindowCycle;
- Disable PageIndex opera:config#UserPrefs|MaxVisitedPagesIndexSize;
- Disable Automatic RAM cache opera:config#UserPrefs|AutomaticRAMCache (decreases memory usage);
- Remove or disable unneeded plugins (i.e. Java & Quicktime);
- Disable Smooth Scrolling - opera:config#UserPrefs|SmoothScrolling;
- Disable Favicons - opera:config#Multimedia|Alwaysloadfavicon;
- Disable Speed dial (state=3) - opera:config#UserPrefs|SpeedDialState;
- Disable Wand - opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableWand;
- Disable fraud protection.

Some other people such as Lamarca provided even more tips for my scenario.
- Disable javascript;
- Empty cache on exit.

I've seen several people complaining (specially Fearphage) about something called "Opera Lite". The devs often say it's not necessary and I agree with them. If you customize Opera in a certain way, you can actually make it faster. Basically, it's our full Opera with all the features listed above disabled by default. I just wish this "Opera Lite" setup could be downloaded directly from the website.

Updating all the skins for KestrelGame Show

Comments

You should probably tune, max connections, as well. Two settings under network. And probably also the "redraw after" setting.

- ØØ -

By NoteMe, # 16. October 2007, 18:01:57

Very good blog!! It's very interesting

By Pattty, # 24. October 2007, 20:58:16

Thanks

By Cyro, # 24. October 2007, 22:04:24

but if you disable ramcache - doesn't that slow down the running of opera - all goes on disk??

Ruben

By tosbsas, # 26. October 2007, 12:44:05

Good point Ruben

By Cyro, # 26. October 2007, 16:11:36

I tried something else

ram cache - auto
diskcache 100MB

Thats what the guys at info-opera.de recommend

Ruben

By tosbsas, # 26. October 2007, 19:09:03

Thanks for tips !

By Hypezor, # 18. February 2008, 17:57:29

Anonymous writes:

I'm new to Opera.

I'm running Opera 9.5 beta 2 with a Pentium II / 266 Mhz / 48 Mb RAM / Windows 2000 SP4.

Almost everything is turned on and it works fine. A little slow, but most of the time it works fine for me. Of course your recommendations are usefull to improve performance. I just flush cache every 2 days.

- Use WinVista skin;
- Enabled thumbnails
- Enabled PageIndex
- Enabled Automatic RAM cache
- Disabled ALL plugins and JAVA
- Enabled Smooth Scrolling
- Enabled Favicons
- Enabled Speed dial
- Enabled Wand
- Enabled SpellChecking
- Disable fraud protection.

And I also have running a firewall.

Firefox 1.5, 2.x, 3.0 beta 5 are more resource demanding and just to slow on my machine.

Opera rocks!

Hasta la WinVista y saludos desde Mexico.