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The Internet

Linux Opera Beta Released 111

Posted by Hemos from the releasing-it-unto-the-world dept.
Mal_ writes "The first alpha version of Opera for Linux has been released. There are still a number of key features missing, but rendering of HTML 3.2 and 4.0, and CSS is apparently working. The release is binary only, and requires GLIBC 2.1 and kernel 2.2.*, although the team are working on several other Unix ports. You can get more info and download the binary at the Opera Web Site. " Update: 01/05 03:00 by N : Reports are coming in that this beta also works under FreeBSD's Linux ABI. Chris Piazza has made this screenshot available.
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Linux Opera Beta Released More

Linux Opera Beta Released

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  • Written it Qt. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As the Linux X11 porth of Opera is written using the Qt toolkit and Qt is also available for Windows development why don't opera use a cross platform codebase for their front end code which'll work in both X11 and Windows and just keep any platform specific networking code that needs be between the platforms. This would help keep the Windows and Linux versions of the code in parity as only the networking code would be platform specific.
    --
    This message posted using Mozilla M12 [mozilla.org]
  • secondly, i went to the opera site and the future supported archs list has "G3/G4" listed. this is just nitpicking, but if you compile something to run on a "G3/G4" it'll run on any ppc, so i don't know why they list it as "G3/G4".

    Translating corp-speak to geek-speak: What a statement like this invariably means is they're going to compile and test it on at least one G3 and at least one G4. If it also turns out that it happens to work on other things, fine, but they won't be supporting it.

    --

  • You not crazy. See here. [slashdot.org]

    Regards, Ralph.

  • They call it an alpha release themself :)

  • Re:W3M (Score:1)

    by mdxi ( 3387 )
    I agree, w3m rocks *very* hard.


    I have used w3m for all my serious browsing (slashdot, freshmeat, CNN, the onion, etc.) for the past several months, starting a graphical browser only when I want to see a certain page fully rendered.


    I'd say that it was as full-featured as Lynx with respect to browsing, though Lynx does handle images much better at the moment.


    I got an email from Ito-sensei (he's a professor in the engineering dept. of Yamagata University) yesterday saying "Happy New Year" and that a new version would be out this week with some new fixes and features, so these things are being worked on.


    I used to use Lynx all the time but w3m's superior layout capabilities made me switch.

    Just my ni en

    --

  • Umm....Toll Tech, the makers of qt, did the port of Opera to X. I guess you should mail them can tell them it's "inconsiderate" for them to use their own toolkit.

    Qt is probably the best designed toolkit for X. Go look at the qt source, then the motif source, then the CDE source (I realize the second two don't generally let you see the source for them, and let me tell you there's a reason for that), then come back.
  • The WINE project was going on when I first started using linux about 4 years ago. Opera for linux development started last year. The fact that the two are even comparable gives the edge to Opera.
  • It amazes me that this version is the christmas gift Opera send us at around 24th december and noone else here at /. noticed it until now (i tried this version shortly after christmas). It was statically linked to the QT2.1 library, so it was way big but reasonable fast. Most of the menu entries are disabled and almost _no_ preferences could be saved at that time.

    The only _really discovery_ about opera is the fact, that it tries to emulate the MDI of the winblows world where each of the document windows don't get decorated by your widowmanager but by opera. They try to emulate KDE look which is annoying if you use FVWM2 (like me).
  • Yes, amazingly this is the christmas gift which Opera gaves us and noone here at /. may have noticed (i got the pre-alpha shortly after christmas).

    Most of the menu entries were disabled or not working properly. What most annoyed me was the fact that it builds its own MDI window hierarchy so that the actual website windows don't get decorated by your windowmanager but by opera (so decoration will most always look different from your own WM configuration -> THIS IS BAD!)
  • At the moment maybe. But since Mozilla can do far more than Opera currently does its hardly a fair comparison. I don't know how cross platform the Opera code is either, since the mozilla stuff is running on a fair number of platforms already.

    "Some smegger's filled in this 'Have You Got A Good Memory?' quiz!"
  • Just looked at the screenshot [freebsd.org] - anyone
    else notice that the KPanel reports the time to be 2:09 PM, but Opera reckons
    it's 2:08 PM? Opera don't mention any time problems on their (admittedly small)
    FAQ.

  • I'm beta-testing Opera v4, Windows version. It's hit 99% CSS1 compliancy. The half-dozen or so minor render errors revealed by the W3C test pages have been reported and will be fixed. I fully expect v4 to be the first browser with 100% CSS1 compliance.

    Opera's HTML rendering has always had very high compliance, and I expect that the HTMLv3.2 non-compliancy issues will be fully resolved in v4, and expect HTML v4 support to have near 100% compliancy.
  • Opera 3.61 on Windows has basically all these features - as per industry convention, 'alpha' means that not all features are in there yet. The only features in your list not in 3.61 are SDI, proper font handling (whatever that means, it does support font face tags) and TIFF support (I don't think many pages use TIFF so I'm not sure if this is a problem - PNG is better as a lossless format IMO).

    So basically you are saying 'this alpha is indeed an alpha'. Very useful - come back when it is beta...
  • There is absolutely no other reason for MDI. There was no precedent in any user interface existing before it, or in previous versions of Windows (which tried to do CMU-style tiled windows to solve the problem).

    I don't believe this is true. I know the KDevelop guys have drawn heavy fire from all sides for using MDI style. They have defended their position in several posts on the kde-dev lists, and cited several practical advantages of MDI.

    One interesting statement made in the discussion is that emacs has a kind of MDI interface for splitting windows.
  • I wish that companies distributing binaries would not require linking against libstdc++. Or if they really must, then why can't they indicate which version is required on the download page?

    I have just downloaded the opera beta, and found that it will not run because libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 cannot be resolved. The closest I have is libstdc++-libc6.1-2.so.3!

  • And... "Embracing non-free software solutions is a dead end"???

    While this may be the popular dogma around here, it isn't actually all that true. Microsoft embraces them all the time, and they seem to be doing quite well. As do most software companies that actually make money in the real world.

    "they seem to be doing quite well" at what? oh, right, making money by exploiting and contributing to the ignorance of the general population. Yeah, that's the real world. I can't help thinking that you're one of the people that thinks people bash Microsoft because we're jealous of Bill Gates' wealth--when the real truth is that it's because of his wealth that you fawn over him, and so you think that our actions must be motivated by the same factor.

    In the real real world, there are lots more important things than money. Not that you would get that impression from popular culture, I understand, but you should try to think harder than the characters on Friends, etc.

    And as for the question of whether closed source projects are a dead end, well, they often are. There are exceptions--I have used Eudora Light and BBEdit Lite for years. They always served me admirably, and I never paid a dime for them. On the other hand, you have the way Sun yanks the Java community around. It seemed like everything was going to be nice and free at first, but then you realized that they could yank the entire thing out from under you.

    There is always a risk with closed source, or open but not free source. Always. And there is always the risk with an open source project that it will fragment or never get the attention/funding it would have if you had made people pay for it.

    But to return to what I was really trying to say with this, you are extremely naïve if you don't see that there is a lot of truth or potentional truth in the poster's comment. Look around.

  • Did you even bother to check out some of the option under the preferences menu? There isn't another browser out there that gives you the kind of controDid you even bother to check out some of the option under the preferences menu? There isn't another browser out there that gives you the kind of control like how often to check the modify for documents and images seperately in incraments of days/hours/and minutes or control of the number of connections to open to a server.

    Most importantly, when I hit tab, I can start typing in the location bar!!!!!!!!!! Let's see Mozilla do that :)

  • It's sure a lot faster than Mozilla. This is important to those of us who can't afford to buy a new computer every six months :-)
  • >Yes! When Opera is finished, it at the very least should have an easily accessable control (not buried under 4 hierarchical
    >menu levels) to disable animated .gifs.

    >Mozilla needs this too.

    Indeed. But what I'd really like to see in moz is
    a checkbox that lets me completely disable pop-ups.
    Not disable javascript entirely, just make it so that
    it can't spawn ad windows from hell. Pop-ups have to
    be one of the most useless/annoying 'features' of
    current browsers. Ick.

    --Kevin

    =-=-=-=-=-=
    "HELLO SMALL CHILD! WHO IS BACK! I HAVE THE RENEGADE MASTER WITH ME!"
  • You might wanna try w3m. It's an OSS text-only browser
    that renders tables and (psuedo)frames.

    IMHO, it beats Lynx hands-down in page rendering,
    but I'm not sure if it's as full-featured...

    http://ei5nazha.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/~aito/w3m/en g/

    --Kevin

    =-=-=-=-=-=
    "HELLO SMALL CHILD! WHO IS BACK! I HAVE THE RENEGADE MASTER WITH ME!"
  • I find it a bit interesting that they've released the v4.0 alpha for Linux before they've even hinted at releasing a v4 beta for Windows. Opera software will probably wait until the code is more functional before releasing Windows betas - their Windows userbase is used to a program that works, while Linux users are more used to seeing "works in progress".

    I updated to SuSE 6.3 to get glibc 2.1 so I could run Mozilla and Opera - Opera is much faster than Mozilla, but less functional. So far. In the opera.linux [opera.no] newsgroup, one of the developers hints that a lot of the missing functionality is already in the binary, just turned off because it doesn't work right. When they get Opera working in Linux, it will be worth paying for.

  • The page does quite clearly state that this is an alpha release. As such, you can't really expect it to be a fully functioning, feature-rich web browser, now can you?

    Give them time, I'm sure they'll have everything implemented eventually. As for whether it'll be worth the wait, only time will tell.

    Tim
  • I haven't done extensive stress testing of the two, but in my experience, Opera for Windows is much more stable than this release...to the point that I must wonder which will be 'finished' first, Opera for Linux or Wine? Wine is alpha, but, in a way, it runs a better Opera than Opera for Linux.
    Ah well.
  • OK, I run netscape on my linux box at home, and have the big three (Netscape, Opera, and IE) on my windows system at home, as well)

    I periodically download mozilla and attempt to run it, but it rarely lasts for more than a few minutes. Even with the cable modem, it takes longer to download that it runs, and since it takes windows with it, I'm not too interested in running it.

    Given that, Here's what I have to say about Opera. It supports the standards. It doesn't try to do mail or news (and fail, like the other two). It's lightweight, and *works*.

    When they get a Linux version of it, I'll probably even buy it. Sure, I'd run an OpenSource option that was as good as Opera, but there isn't one yet. If mozilla works by then, I'll use it. But I don't think it will be.

  • ahh.... "coming along nicely"... I love it. It's the mantra of the Linux community.
    You guys use your half-assed, half-done software that's "coming along nicely". I'll use what works well and gets the job done. Like Opera.



  • It's alpha. Proof? Straight from the Opera web-page [opera.com]:

    First:
    "As noted by the version number, this is still an Alpha release."
    And then:
    "...this is a technology preview, and not a beta..."
    I'd say that's pretty conclusive...
    --
    - Sean
  • Interesting... I've also noticed problems with the Dilbert page. It doesn't crash on me (thankfully), but it does slow down like a b*tch, and wreak havok with all the other windows I have open (I generally use about 5-10 at any given time).

    So it's interesting to note that this seems to be a generic problem, and not just me. What version do you use, BTW? I'm 3.60...
    --
    - Sean
  • I downloaded the "first beta" on Christmas Eve. Don't know if it's the same release, though. It was buggy as hell. But then, it's only a tech preview. They still have a long way to go in both improving stability and implementing features.
  • How is the web interface supposed to speed up your connection? Unless there is some silly FTP filter ing at a proxy or firewall, they should be fairly equal, with FTP having the advantage.

    Conventional Wisdom has it that FTP is faster than HTTP, because of the way that the protocols are handled (http starts slow, and speeds up the connection until it the other end can't handle the pipe).
  • Use http [unc.edu] instead!

  • Uhmmm.. You're absolutely right!

    Somebody, please moderate previous posting up...
  • I wonder if Rob and the guys are still slashed, er sloshed from New Years. This is a very unthoughtful mistake. (beta/alpha, previously posted)

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • the process grew to 112MB in size.


    no it didn't. top especially gtop treats threads like processes. so when you have four threads(as mozilla does) and gtop or some other top program reports 112MB it realy means 28Mb. Don't talk about what you don't know. 112MB is ridiculous. A web browser would never use that much.
  • "I confirmed that netscape had absolutely no problems loading the exact same URL. I was able to duplicate this enough times to be convinced that something was Seriously Wrong. " Isn't that what an alpha (or prealpha, from what I've read) is pretty much all about? Finding out what's Seriously Wrong and then fixing it? Netscape is a finished product (well... as finished as it ever is, I suppose), the Opera snapshot isn't. Of course it's going to have serious bugs.

  • I tried downloading the Opera snapshot, and I wasn't impressed. It puts multiple windows inside a "Desktop" area, perpetuating the Star Office mistake. (I like top-level windows, d*mn it!).

    More seriously, it seemed to have fundamental network I/O problems. When I tried to get it to load pages where I knew the web server had no problems, it would more often than not hang, or fail to be able to laod the entire image file correctly. Running netscape in another window simultaneously, I confirmed that netscape had absolutely no problems loading the exact same URL. I was able to duplicate this enough times to be convinced that something was Seriously Wrong.

    Cool features like better user control over web page rendering are all very well and good, but if it can't do http well, what's the point?

  • There are those who won't use a piece of software if it's not "free"... I'm not one of those. I'll pay any amount for good software that works properly and suits my need. I tried this snapshot some time ago and found it entirely unsuitable, but my distaste for Netscape is going to make me try it again when they actually hit Beta level. Yes, I like Mozilla (when it's actually ready I'm SURE I'll use it).

    I just think we in the community need to keep our standards high and always use the BEST, no matter what the source. It prompts competition and brings up the standard.

    For the record, the only non-free software I have is OSS, by the way. And even THAT was included in my latest SuSE distribution...
  • Thanks for the pointer, I'll be sure to check it out. Lynx worked pretty well (once I got used to the controls, of course :) but I do admit the frame handling is annoying as all getout.
  • Ya know, I used Lynx quite a bit just recently... and I've lately been thinking very seriously about installing it again. Netscape, though it has the graphics and stuff, loads slooooooowly. Of course, that preference is probably related to the fact that my current Linux box is an old 486/75 laptop - just about anything I want loads reasonably fast on it, but Netscape takes roughly 15 minutes...
  • Not displaying animated gifs is a FEATURE, not a bug.

    Yes! When Opera is finished, it at the very least should have an easily accessable control (not buried under 4 hierarchical menu levels) to disable animated .gifs.

    Mozilla needs this too.

  • first of all, i'd like to whine about hemos not mentioning that it's only available for x86.

    secondly, i went to the opera site and the future supported archs list has "G3/G4" listed. this is just nitpicking, but if you compile something to run on a "G3/G4" it'll run on any ppc, so i don't know why they list it as "G3/G4".
  • The browser is advertised as lightweight and simple as opposed to the two leading contenders. A long running netscape will grow to tens of megabytes in memory and consume an ever growing amount of swap space.

    Opera starts off lighter, 3 Mb vs. 6Mb as seen by top, but can grow to a comparable size after some browsing.

    If they can keep it simple and get the bug count down, I'd buy it. I can't stand how available browsers consume all of a machine's resources when I'm just reading documentation while working.

    DK
  • And I quote:

    Does Opera for Linux have command line options?

    Yes, but for the moment the only one we'll mention is -page which is used to set the page which Opera displays on start up. For example:

    opera -page='www.slashdot.org'

    though you would think they would throw in a http://
    --mark

  • Unfortunately, those aren't solutions for me. Why... simple, opera opens near-instantaneously on my computer ( amd-450, 128Megs). Mozilla, and Netscape take hours(or so it feels like) to open and hog mucho-memory. Lynx isn't an alternative to me because I like graphics.

    I don't care if it's free, I want it ot work well, and fast.
  • Most (all?) of this is for the tech. preview only. The features are certainly coming in futurue previews and in the finished version.

  • It's not your computer ... it's Netscape. It loads slowly because it's a complete pile of crap. Hopefully someday we'll have a decent browser under Linux.


    ---

  • Will Open Source projects fill certain needs? Undoubtably. But it's open to debate whether it will fulfill all needs for all people. Unfortunately, you've bought into the "movement" and have stopped applying critical thought.

    Example: Why does Linux have such an atrocious printing subsystem that is centuries behind Windows? Answer: Because a printing subsystem is boring, and no one wants to work on it.

    Q: Will we ever have an Open Source accounting system to rival SAP? A: Probably not, because a) too boring, b) too small a market (giant corporations)


    ---

  • I wouldn't recommend running Mozilla on Windows, but it never takes down the OS under Linux. And running into Mozilla crashes in Linux is a good thing! If there aren't many people using it and running into the bugs, it would take them much longer to shake them out. M12 includes a program that sends them information about the nature of the crashes when they occur, so all you have to do is describe what happened.

    If we want a dependable, full-featured (not to be confused with feature-bloated) browser for Linux, I think we should be responsible to help out those who want to write one. Finding bugs is half the problem.

    If a browser is ever to beat IE, it will be Mozilla or nothing. If we believe in Open Source, then we should get behind important projects like this as often as we can.

  • Heh. That's because they integrated the damn thing right into the OS. If you actually had to load it seperately, it would run like shit just like Netscape. Using IE is not worth booting to Windows.

    And even if it were, I would never knowingly aid their agenda in close-sourcing the Internet and polluting the standards.

  • I've only been using Linux exclusively for several months, and I've seen it advance at a dizzying rate. The installation process went from being a pain in the ass to being easier than Windows; the GUI went from being passable to being excellent; device support has skyrocketed; there's too many examples to put here. Fact is, while Windows may look more collected and better at first glance, the guts of it are a mess. Linux looks unfinished in many areas because Linux hackers are more concerned about the guts of the system (the actually important stuff) rather than the front-end. I'd sacrifice a little ease-of-use for rock hard stability.

    Windows 98 is a service pack for a 32-bit patch to a 16-bit fix to an 8-bit operating system. With every iteration, the Gordian's Knot of a codebase gets more and more complex and intertwined.

  • You obviously do not grok Open Source. Go read The Cathedral and the Bazaar [tuxedo.org] before you criticize.

  • Ahhh, the great MDI vs SDI debate. Put in your two cents in the Opera for Linux [opera.no] NG.

  • It is more advanced. You're looking at a work in progress.

    Opera 3.6 has the best CSS1 support of any production release browser. I can't say what the 4.0 codebase is like in that regard, but it's going to support a good bit of CSS2 as well. It also supports HTML 3.2 in a compliant fashion, something nothing else was doing, except maybe Lynx. The 4.0 codebase is supposed to be HTML 4.0 compliant.

    I don't work for Opera, but I (like the rest of you) like choice. I like it even better when the choice is worth making. A standards-compliant browser is worth it, IMO. So I'll plug Opera, as well as Mozilla. To look at alpha software and say it's a 5 y.o. browser is unfair.

  • Mozilla is a _free_ browser, open source and all. Why would they even consider basing it on a very non-free toolkit? There's no way.

    I realize that you may like CDE (I use XFCE myself), and yes it's sort of inconsiderate to write apps based on QT (though from what I hear, it's also very easy and enjoyable). But GTK is not exactly an obscure/massive toolkit, and it's one that fits more with the spirit of Mozilla than QT, and much more than Motif.



  • It's true that I'm not much of a coder right now, though someday I hope to be. So, no, I can't do all that much with the source code for the kernel, or Mozilla, or sendmail. But, OTHER PEOPLE CAN, people who are probably many times better coders that I'll ever be (I have more fun as an admin), and if they have the code, then they can fix security holes, broken features, bugs, etc. Which, as an admin, is VERY important to me. If you subscribe to BUGTRAQ, you'll clearly see the difference demonstrated in the length of time Linux fixes arrive after a problem is posted compared to Microsoft ones.

  • Please give it a try. I think the major point in favor of Opera is performance and user-friendlyness.
    Examples ?
    • The repainting of a /. big heavy page is fluent with Opera when you play resizing continuously.
    • Opera begins downloading a page while you are choosing a name and location for storing it
    • You can zoom a page from 10 to 1000%, rendering and resizing is still really good
    • ...
  • Too big to download? Yes, the source code might be large but the end executable is small compared to most other browsers. The current binary tarball is about 5-6mb or so on Linux and maybe 30% of that is debugging junk that will go from the final distro. Opera might be smaller but then Mozilla is so much more complete and more standards compliant. Just run some CSS compliance tests to see how dismal Opera is at following modern standards.

    Even Mozilla's source code doesn't stand out as being any larger than say, XFree86 or Gnome - and yes Mozilla is a project easily as complex as either of them. You say it's no use but you've obviously never examined the enormous wealth of code it contains. Want a PNG/JPG/GIF reader? It's there. Want a Javascript engine? Want an HTML/XML/CSS parser? Want a cross-platform set of Internet libraries? It's all there plus much, much more.

    In other words, Mozilla not just a browser but an extremely rich source of code. Speedwise, perhaps it's slow, but then it's in alpha at the moment. It's better to get the layout and functionality correct in the first place before worrying about ways to optimise it.

    On the other hand, Opera is just a closed-source commercial browser, lacking badly in standards compliance. You'll be lucky to get any source code at all, let alone be able to freely modify and distribute it too.

  • This browser is crap. It can't handle colours properly, it uses MDI, it's buggy, and it lacks key features. The whole paradigm is messed up. Not to mention the fact that as a CDE user I am perturbed because it uses a non-standard toolkit that doesn't fit into my desktop.

    Unfortunately, I won't want to use Mozilla either, for the same reason. I happen to like the look and feel of Motif (and also how good it is on the network compared to the more "pretty" toolkits). I like Netscape, except for the fact that it's a bit buggy. It fits in with my desktop, including drag and drop. It works well. I wish Mozilla used Motif and CDE (most importantly ToolTalk!), but I will be using Netscape for a long time.

    If only there were a web browser based on ToolTalk (a CDE technology) that used Motif as the toolkit...
  • Charityware n. Free software distributed together with the source code, where other developers are encourage to improve its performance. Example: Linux, Apache

    Payware n. Software that one has to pay for the usage, and distributed only as binary files, i.e, the source code is not available. Only the original author(s) may improve upon the product. Example: MS Windows, MS Office

    Now if one were to consider the relative merits and demerits of Windows and Linux, or Apache and any commercial web server, one would come to the realisation that All good things in life are free

    By the way, this is the real world.

  • Barely anyone actually USES either of those "free" alternative you suggest. (lynx, indeed) Most people use Netscape and most people don't have a problem w/ the fact that it's "not free". Basically most users of Linux don't give a damn about all that political crap. They just want software that doesn't crash and that they can get cheap.

    And... "Embracing non-free software solutions is a dead end"???

    While this may be the popular dogma around here, it isn't actually all that true. Microsoft embraces them all the time, and they seem to be doing quite well. As do most software companies that actually make money in the real world.

    Only in the wacky world of slashdot would this drivel be considered insightful.
  • It's not merely 28MB when the system eats into swap to the tune of 50MB, after I've killed off other processes.

    Yes, it's a problem to perfectly reconcile the amount of memory in use.

    But when the system slows to a literal crawl, I can simultaneously hear the disk running continually, and swap space starts disappearing in large quantities, that's a clear sign of either memory leakage, or some other intense usage of RAM.

  • Can it possibly have as many memory leaks as Mozilla?

    I was running M12 last week, and whilst writing a Slashdot article, the process grew to 112MB in size. I only have 96MB of RAM, so you can imagine what happened to system performance.

    Mozilla may be fairly featureful, but:

    • It's still quite buggy. Needs to be Purified or something of the sort.
    • It's getting faster, but is certainly not fast.
    • RAM pig. Big time.
    Opera may only be at the "pre-alpha" stage, but they have code base out there to support the things that don't work yet on Linux, so it seems reasonable to expect this to come in time.

    And it can't conceivably consume as much RAM as Mozilla. Urk...

  • Try a nightly build of mozilla. It won't support SSL, and some of the bugs are irritating, but it's currently my main browser as of the M13pre releases. I won't go back to Netscape (except when I need authentication or SSL) now.

  • It's very simple. :)

    As everyone knows, pre-alpha software has bugs. So, since calling it "beta" is incorrect (and therefore a bug), it is, in fact, correct. :)

    Also, pre-alpha software is often feature-incomplete. So, as missing the pre- makes the title incomplete, this is also correct. :)

  • "MDI" was designed for Windows 3.1 (or earlier) as a technique to avoid swapping in inactive applications. This was because the user could move around the "documents" and resize or iconize them, and no exposure events would be sent to anything other than other documents belonging to the same program, or the base mdi window. This was vitally important to get around the very slow swap-the-entire-task-to-disk multitasking used by Windows 3.1 (required by back compatability with MSDOS). Of course resizing or moving the "mdi" window caused swapping, this was discouraged by having it come up maximized initially (this behavior disappeared with Windows 95).

    There is absolutely no other reason for MDI. There was no precedent in any user interface existing before it, or in previous versions of Windows (which tried to do CMU-style tiled windows to solve the problem).

  • Opera is small and fast, Mozilla is too big to download and too slow to use.

    It may be small and fast now, but what happens when they put the other 75% of the features in? It'll have to grow. As for Mozilla, yes the source is big. You can hardly avoid that. I'd imagine that the Opera code isn't exactly teeny either. Anyway, its not neccessary to use the source. You can always just download the binaries. And yes, its still a little slow in places. But its improving very quickly, and is far closer to being stable than Opera appears to be.

    "Some smegger's filled in this 'Have You Got A Good Memory?' quiz!"
  • >. It puts multiple windows inside a "Desktop" area, perpetuating the Star Office mistake

    Isn't this the age old MDI vs SDI argument?

    Some people (myself not included) prefer to have all the windows related to a given application within a parent application desktop, presumably so you can do things like minimize/restore all of them at the same time. (most of these people seem to still like Windows 3.1, though ;-) I prefer top level windows, but the best compromise, IMO, is to allow the user to select this as a preference.

    Lotus Notes used to be my least favorite tool on my work machine (NT, yeuck!) until version 4.5 came along with the option to run each new window as a separate process. I like this. Now I can actually use this as God intended with separate windows for databases, mail, phone book, etc.

    Seems like Opera could offer this and have it both ways.

  • From the page:
    ====
    Why does Opera Tech Preview seem to freeze as much as it does?

    Actually, the sad but true answer to this question is that GLIBC 2.1 has a serious problem closing certain file and socket handles. We have seen nothing short of unexplainable anomalies related to the close() function in GLIBC 2.1.

    Currently because of this, we're considering releasing a statically linked libc5 version until this has been brought under control in GLIBC.
    ==

    Is this just a lame excuse or is there really a problem here? If so what is it and why has it not shown up before?

  • They mentioned making it available for download without notice, it's on the page about the Linux version:
    "Initially we released this version to the public without any notice or formal press. We appologize for this. We wanted to first see the feedback we received from the public users likely to find this program on their own. We learned about many issues we need to address on this page."
  • Do they have a new version that doesn't segfault as often? Last time I tried it, I could only use it on Slashdot when I didn't have moderator points, or else the forms would overload it.
    --
  • This article seems very familiar... like maybe it was posted a week or two ago.

    Call me crazy.

    An article similar to this one was posted a few weeks ago, although there was nothing on Opera's web site acknowedging the existance of a Beta for Linux yet. The File was at metalab, so it is unknown how official it was. You can download that version here [unc.edu]

  • Whose Bugs Are These? (Score:3)

    by Christopher B. Brown ( 1267 ) <cbbrowne@gmail.com> on Wednesday January 05, 2000 @07:52AM (#1402907) Homepage
    Heh. You noticed the same thing I did.

    This really ought to get directed to Ulrich Drepper; [mailto] that could provide a straighter answer as to whether the problem represents:

    1. A serious problem with GLIBC 2.1
    2. A serious problem with an interaction between GLIBC 2.1 and Linux
    3. A serious problem with the understanding that the developers have of POSIX and/or ANSI C that causes these "unexplainable anomalies" to be "unexplainable."

      (In other words, they might be misusing file pointers or close() and the anomalies would thus be their fault.)

    After the number of other misunderstandings that I've seen of versions of LIBC, I somewhat suspect the third option, although there's not enough evidence to strongly support any position. Best to contact Ulrich with a test case.

  • Looks a little lame (Score:3)

    by Psiren ( 6145 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2000 @04:49AM (#1402909)
    No offence to the Opera guys, but I gave the page a quick glance and from what I can tell it's way behind what Mozilla can do right now. And Mozilla is improving fast. And its open source. My question is, what exactly is the market place for Opera. Yes, I know choice is good. But in this case I can't see that it would be a sensible choice.

    "Some smegger's filled in this 'Have You Got A Good Memory?' quiz!"

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2000 @05:31AM (#1402910)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • A) It's not a beta, it isn't even really an alpha, it's more or less a snapshot.
    B} Opera don't want any feedback from this release, the Opera coders have more than enough to be getting on with. When they run out of bugs, they'll release a beta, then we can help.
    C)If you do need some help or have some generic feedback (SDI, cough cough), try the Opera.linux newsgroups [opera.no].
    D) The previous /. story on this is here [slashdot.org].

  • I'm all for nostalgia, but... (Score:3)

    by Phizzy ( 56929 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2000 @04:52AM (#1402912)
    I think I would like to use a browser that's more advanced than the version of netscape that I used in 1994. I bet that browser would run about as fast on modern hardware as opera does.


    Opera For Linux 4.0a Can't:
    Communicate via SSL or TLS
    Submit forms other than through ecma script
    Display Frames
    Display Animated GIFS
    Display PNG or TIFF images
    Proxy Settings
    Preferences only 20% working
    Cookies
    Local Files
    No Plugin Support yet
    Transfer window
    HTTP Authorization
    Proper Font Handling
    Screen refresh
    SDI
    Asynchronous DNS


    //Phizzy

  • not a beta (Score:3)

    by ChristTrekker ( 91442 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2000 @04:48AM (#1402913)

    This is only a technology preview. This might even be considered pre-alpha software. I follow Opera very closely (I'm alpha/beta testing for the Mac port when it's ready). If it was beta-level I'd have let you all know 10 days ago, when I first heard about this. :)

  • Not Free (Score:4)

    by eGabriel ( 5707 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2000 @05:24AM (#1402914)
    There are 'more free' solutions available, like
    Mozilla, and indeed, lynx. The browser in KDE is
    coming along nicely, and there are many browser
    projects in need of some support.

    Embracing non-free software solutions is a dead end.

  • the same version from December (Score:5)

    by tuffy ( 10202 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2000 @06:32AM (#1402915) Homepage Journal
    I'm pretty sure /. posted an article about the Opera release late last month, which is why I downloaded it and tried it out. Wasn't bad then, a bit on the early alpha side, but it felt good and didn't hog lots of memory.

    But this is the same release, not a newer release. The binaries are byte-for-byte the same. So if you've already downloaded it once, there's no need to re-download it.

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