early days for Opera Chromium…
…but Opera 16 sort of works
Opera 16.0.1196.73 is stable enough for simple testing in the wild, and no immediately apparent bugs in how it handles and renders web pages. I am not impressed by how Opera 16 handles anything, but what it does it does reasonably well – more or less in line with other major browsers and definitely a bit faster than some.
Being “just as good” as any other browser does not count for much in my book when the subject is Opera, but it is early days yet. Browser development takes time and I am not expecting much beyond basic operation at this stage.
I have written quite a bit about Opera in the past – for the most part positive things, and it will be interesting to see if Opera will be worth writing about in the future.
not very user‐friendly – yet
Opera 16's User Interface is way too simple and weak, but for now that's OK – Opera 12 is still around. Hopefully, one day in the not too distant future, Opera Chromium will become as user‐friendly as Opera 12 is now, and then it will be of less interest to me what engine Opera runs on.
The functional User Interface and ease of customization have been major factors that have put Opera above all other browsers in my day‐to‐day work and leisure time up until now. I will be really disappointed if Opera ends up having the same UI limitations as most other browsers.
carry on
I appreciate the fact that the competition is tough across browser‐land, and I find the change from the in‐house developed Presto to the open source WebKit / Chromium engines quite OK in and of itself. What matters to me is that the redeveloped browser lets me operate in ways I find practical and logical.
So just carry on developing Opera with real user options, like at least providing a proper bookmark column in Opera 12 style instead of only the extremely‐slow‐to‐use “speed dial”. I'll check in later to see if Opera is evolving into something useful.
sincerely 
Hageland 09.sep.2013
last rev: 09.sep.2013
side notes.
nothing seriously wrong with Presto
The former engine behind Opera – Presto – wasn't perfect, but it didn't really fail. It adhered closely to common standards, and was instrumental in driving same standards forward.
That many web sites are designed and coded to work properly only in specific browser engines, instead of in accordance with standards that will make them work in all standard compliant browsers, is the real problem and main cause for Presto's fall.
Don't need much insight into human nature to see that such bad practices will continue to spread until no browser engine can be expected to handle much of anything that isn't specifically tailored to it. We have been there before.
closed websites
Personally, as web surfer, I don't see such bad practices as much of a problem, as what doesn't come up and/or works right in my browser of choice at any given time can simply be ignored. Most found on the web can be ignored right away anyway for a number of reasons even if it works, so that some sites choose to make themselves “exclusive” isn't such a big deal.
Of course, not all web surfers see things my way, so web sites that more or less deliberately or out of stupidity are made to exclude one or more browser engines, will continue to cause irritation and create problems for some users.
open source software
The advantages of using open source software are many. Mainly spread contribution, and that open source software can't be locked down by any single party.
Time will tell if Opera Software have made the right choices, and are able to rebuild their browser fully on the new engines.