Opening Opera as user

[RW]

On Tue, 01 Feb 2011 18:17:43 -0800
Rem P Roberti <remegius at comcast.net> wrote:

> I installed linux-opera, and I guess I made a mistake by opening it
> the first time as root, when I should have opened as user.  At any
> rate, I can now only open the browser as root, and when I do I get
> this message:
> 
> opera: $HOME set to /root. Use -personaldir if you do not want to use 
> /root/.opera/
>

Don't focus on this because you shouldn't be running it as root at all.
What actually happens when you try to run it as an normal user?