The total includes all editions in all languages, said Opera in a statement. No surprise, but the English version garnered the most downloads -- 1.3 million -- with the German edition in second place at 400,000.
Mozilla, meanwhile, recently tooted the download horn as it broke the 50 million mark for its open-source Firefox, which went final in November 2004.
Download tallies have come to be used by vendors issuing rivals to Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser as a marker of popularity, although download numbers often don't equate to users.
In the most recent statistics from Amsterdam-based Web metrics firm OneStat, however, Firefox accounted for 8.7 percent of all browsers used, while Opera trailed badly at just 1 percent. Internet Explorer, meanwhile, remained the overwhelming champ, with 86.6 percent.
Another recent study pegged Firefox use by business professionals at the 10 percent mark.
Opera 8 runs on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. (The Macintosh version is still in beta test.) The ad-supported browser can be downloaded from the Opera site.