I have exactly the same problem. My new Opera is currently 30 while my old Opera (12.17) does not have this problem.

This is the way Opera will work from now on, with small and silent updates.

Silent: yes, minor: yes, but not small! The updates need to be configurable from within Opera. e.g:

• Auto updates On/Off
• Notify about a newer version and ask user whether they want to download it (à la FileZilla)
• Download updates automatically but don't install without user permission (à la Windows Updates)

I don't get a huge amount of data on my internet plan and frequent updates by Opera could be enough to push me over the limit, so my free software could end up costing me money! So far in August 2014 there have been three updates, roughly once a week:

• 23.0.1522.72 – 2014-08-06
• 23.0.1522.75 – 2014-08-12
• 23.0.1522.77 – 2014-08-19

I don't want to completely disable auto updates, just not update quite as often as Opera releases minor versions.