I think you guys are right - Opera used to be ground breaking, now it is notchy, hogs resources long after you have closed it down, and ignores settings with thing like the Bookmark bar appearing even though you have swiiched it off.
There was a time when developers responded to reports of such bugs, but now they appear to have moved on to other things and they lie unresolved.
I think that now is the time to follow their lead. Computer Active Magazine recently had it in their list of apps you should replace, suggesting Vivaldi, (created by Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, one of the Opera co-founders, in the days before it was sold to the Chinese and started its long decline).
I'm becoming increasingly impressed with this alternative and gradually switching over.
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I really loved Opera and the ethos behind it. Sadly, when issues go unfixed they can only be lived with for so long.
Thanks for all of you who tried to help - I've now moved to Vivaldi, which has a similar, innovative that attracted me to Opera in the old day.

Stopped working about a month ago. Always gets error - "Error signing in to your account: Could not connect to server". I've sent notice of this to Pushbullet and got zero response. Clearly they're not interested. Looking at leaving Opera for a better served browser.

I think you guys are right - Opera used to be ground breaking, now it is notchy, hogs resources long after you have closed it down, and ignores settings with thing like the Bookmark bar appearing even though you have swiiched it off.
There was a time when developers responded to reports of such bugs, but now they appear to have moved on to other things and they lie unresolved.
I think that now is the time to follow their lead. Computer Active Magazine recently had it in their list of apps you should replace, suggesting Vivaldi, (created by Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, one of the Opera co-founders, in the days before it was sold to the Chinese and started its long decline).
I'm becoming increasingly impressed with this alternative and gradually switching over.
.

I cannot believe how slow Opera now is. I started using it because it was faster than firefox - now forget it.
I've persisted with it but I'm now giving up. Minutes after starting up for pages to appear on 100M link.
GAME OVER