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4th 'Technology Preview' Of Opera For Linux 127

Posted by Hemos from the leaving-the-leaker dept.
drnomad writes "Finally after months of waiting, the Norwegian company Opera has announced their 4th technology preview of Opera for linux available for download. " They've got a good list of what's going on - as well as a Deb of the preview.
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4th "Technology Preview" of Opera for Linux More

4th "Technology Preview" of Opera for Linux

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  • I'm still waiting for Mozilla to kill anything...well, except itself. It's good at that.
  • ...and it crahsed. It wouldn't let me log in to /. either. These are things that will have to fixed before I can use it regularly...

    I do like the product, though. I like it a lot better than Mozilla, in fact. I find it much more accessible, for one thing. I like the interface better, and hey, if the pre-release is going to crash, at least I didn't have to waste a lot of time or disk space mucking about with it. Can't say that about Mozilla. It crashes all the time, even when I sacrifice all those megabytes to it.

    I had hoped that when Netscape went open source it would get leaned down to something usable, but I don't see that happening. After 3 years, there's still no usable version. I have small hope that it will ever be anything but a development resource for kiosk manufacturers.

    Opera, on the other has a lot of potential for actual users. I just wish they'd focus more on their Linux market. I would certainly pay money for a good quality Linux browser, since none currently exists.

    I actually think this whole Open Source thing is getting in the way of development of good software for the platform. Nobody wants to commit resources to develop for a market that won't pay for the goods. If the only way to make money of a product is thru support, where's the incentive to develop a quality product? Hell, that's the M$ business model. Produce buggy software, hype it till it sells, then charge the real bucks to make it usable.

  • Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault

    #0 0x80d9521 in XtRemoveTimeOut ()
    #1 0x0 in ?? ()

    Anyone have an idea?

    I have qt-2.1.0
  • Cuz I'm pulling a massive 158 bytes/sec over my 256K link...

    Is there a mirror anywhere? (Not that the answer's likely to be "yes" or anything).
    --
  • Netscape Navigator 4.08 for windows under wine runs very well. Even does Flash and SSL :) But has some problems with Java. u may need to run as root to get some stuff working.
  • Heh! Opera for Mac was *originally* scheduled to be released sometime in 1997 IIRC. It is years and years behind its initial release date.

    I haven't wanted anything to do with Opera since their first Mac fiasco (and there have been several).

    --
  • It really puzzles the mind how Mozilla advocates can be so sanguine about its future performance despite all available data. Data: nightly builds are about 3X slower and 2X bigger than Netscape on my machine. Let's face it: there is absolutely no proof that Mozilla will be anything but bloated and slow. There is no rational reason to believe that Mozilla will be small and fast. Just throwing the magic word "optimize" will not cut it: it is not like Opera will not do their own optimizing. Even in its buggy state, Opera has proven one thing that Mozilla has yet to do: it can be small and fast. That alone will ensure its popularity as it has when it battled Netscape and IE on Windows. In Linux-land, by contrast, the competition is mediocre, as long as you do not count long-unfulfilled promises and wishful "clear opinions".

  • Re:Opera v. Mozilla (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who the hell cares? The first thing I do when I get a browser is find some way of disabling as much of that garbage as possible. Java, Javascript and DHTML (god, I hate that), all go out the window. It prevents annoying and stupid website designers from making your life miserable ("gee, maybe the user *wants* a window to pop up here, even if they don't middle-click"..."hey, rollover highlighting would allow users to actually find the links in the imagemap that I designed so poorly that no one would otherwise find them"..."Our site would benefit from little stars rotating around the mouse cursor!") That's one of the best things about Opera -- you can disable almost every features of the browers on a feature-by-feature basis.

    I freaking wish people would just let HTML be HTML. I *like* reading HTML. It's easy to use, and you can configure the browser so that it looks however the client wants. Instead, we have to deal with a big, ugly morass of disgusting pages that should have been just rendered to PDFs....

    Lynx is going too far, at least for me. But I'd actually much rather have a *less* "full-featured" graphical browser, if it gives the remote designers less control over how I view their web pages. Opera's not open-source, but it *does* do that (or at least it lets me disable enough features to do that).
  • Just install w3-mode.el and you can web browse in emacs.

    One of our real hardcore emacs users wanted it set as his default shell on our unix boxes!

  • Emacs... Is there anything it can't do?
  • You cannot simply bolt DOM support onto your browser as just another feature.

    If you don't support the DOM, then you're simply dealing with static documents that are loaded once and don't change after that. If you want to support the DOM, then you have to deal with dynamic documents that can change in arbitrary ways after they're loaded. That means you need to support *incremental* parsing, styling, layout and rendering (as well as provide all the DOM glue and so on). It means that you get to rewrite your browser engine, basically, and it's a LOT harder than the static case.

    IE and Mozilla have tackled this problem. As far as I know, other browsers have not.
  • Several years ago a bunch of us were playing Tetris on a Nintendo or something, and I commented that the background music was from the opera Carmen, by Bizet. They were disturbed.

    --

  • I used it about three years ago, when I couldn't put linux on my computer at work. IE and netscape were too slow, because the machine was only a 486 running winders (yuck!)

    Opera saved a lot of time for me. It was very simple, small, and ran pretty fast. I even got it for cheap because I'm a poor university student. I have not tried out version 4 yet for linux, but it may have some promise. IMHO, wait for it to mature.

    In the meantime, don't complain because it lacks this or that feature. Opera was designed from the beginning to be very fast and light. If you want all your plugins and special standards, go use your dinosaurs. (that's what I do). I put up with netscape 4.72 on linux, and it's not too slow or instable. I'll wait for netscape 6.

    Or go use Emacs, it does everything.

    Or, screw it, just use lynx. What use are pictures on the web?


  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • come on man... i like trying to get first post too but try and put some substance in it, eh?
    --
    DeCSS source code! [metastudios.com]
    you must amputate to email me.

  • RMS (Score:1)

    by YASD ( 199639 )

    OK, one more time:

    This is rms. [www.gnu.org]

    This is rms on drugs. [The lamer on /.]

    Any questions?

    ------

  • DHTML based on W3C standards (XML, DOM2, CSS2) is incredibly powerful. You can build all kinds of stuff with it: plain Web pages, presentations, interactive Web pages, games, application user interfaces, whatever.

    Of course it can be abused. So what? Indeed, it is useful to have some control over what gets displayed; DHTML browsers can give you that just as Opera can. Mozilla supports user style sheets, for example, in which you can override anything you want.

    > Instead, we have to deal with a big, ugly morass > of disgusting pages that should have been just > rendered to PDFs....

    PDF has almost nothing in common with DHTML. Hint: the D stands for Dynamic.

    DHTML can be abused, but it can also be used for amazingly cool things. You will want a DHTML browser sooner or later.
  • The Seven Stages of Denial

    1) The Yawn (Moz=0%, Opr=0%)
    Mozilla will be released before Opera does. Why would anyone want to use Opera when a Free browser is available?

    2) The Snub (Moz=0%, Opr=0%)
    I've tried Opera and I tell you that M37 beats it to hell and back. Just wait till Mozilla is released in a month or so.

    3) The Announcement (Moz=0%, Opr=2%)
    Okay, Mozilla is released. Everyone can stop using Opera now. Finally we have a Free browser. Did you hear me? You can stop now.

    4) The Promise (Moz=1%, Opr=5%)
    Just wait until 2.0 comes out and Mozilla is only a 5Meg download. In the meantime, we support 57 standards to their meager 54.

    5) The Smuggery (Moz=2%, Opr=7%)
    Our distro doesn't include Opera! Unlike those evil corporate and commercial distributions, we only include Mozilla (and Gnuzilla beta). See how good and pure we are?

    6) The Panic (Moz=2%, Opr=9%)
    Don't use Opera! You are only being dominated and enslaved by the corporate masters. Use Mozilla and be free! Opera is evil, Mozilla is good. We will free you. Don't be fooled by their 100% standards compliance, it's a trick!

    7) The Plea (Moz=3%, Opr=12%)
    Why do you want to trade your freedom and morality for a lightweight, fast and crashproof browser? Sure, our browser is bloated, slow and takes down your entire system on a daily basis, but it will give you freedom, joy and eternal justice. Just try us. Please, before it's too late.

    Epilogue (Moz=2%, Opr=16%)
    Stupid people, they got what they wanted. I hope they're satisfied.
  • Keep in mind, though, that according to rumor [macintouch.com], Microsoft has cancelled all development of IE/Mac, and the development team has been transferred to other projects. Their last effort will be Carbonizing it for Mac OS X, but at the moment the Carbon version is slower and far less stable than the regular version running in Mac OS X's Classic environment.

    --

  • I wish somebody at Opera could please answer me this though: why, oh why use an MDI interface for a web browser?

    I like the MD interface. Instead of minimizing or closing all my netscape windows one at a time, I minimize or closeone window, and it all goes away. This is really nice if you've hit a site with many popup windows, and want to get rid of them all at once. A nice side-effect is that all popup windows have a full set of controls, unlike in Netscape.

    Opera is the browser worth paying for.

  • > Opera will be able to display the most fancy,
    > hyped up pages around..in due time.

    Yeah, once they've rewritten it to support dynamic documents. And then we'll need to reevaluate how fast and light it is.
  • In fact, the open source, standards compliant and free *anythings* that have won dominant marketshare are pretty rare. Apache, Perl, BIND, and that's all that I can think of.

    (I know, I know, don't feed the trolls.)

    Apache. Perl. PHP. Python. BIND. BSD's TCP/IP stack. sendmail. Linux (most popular Internet server OS by host count). Various FTP server programs. XFree. GCC. You get the idea.

    But really, those are just products. Open Source is a process. So how about:

    - HTTP
    - HTML
    - E-Mail
    - The Web
    - The Internet

    To this day, Open Source methods design, run, and maintain the Internet.

    Without Open Source, 95% of the computer users in the world would be stuck with MS Exchange and thinking about how nice it would be if they could send email to people at other companies.

    Get with it.
  • Well,

    I don't. It's got one of the least intuitive user interfaces (UIs) I've seen, if not the worst. As light as it might be, it's a head-twister when you try to figure it out.

    Trian
  • I'm not seeing this--I use WebWasher [webwasher.com] under Win32 and Junkbuster [junkbusters.com] under Linux and just loaded Yahoo. Do you know of any other pages that actually refuse to load with images turned off or ads blocked? I heard of one (in Wired, I think) site that had lame short stories that it wouldn't show the user if s/he blocked the ads, but that's it.

  • A superior product will cover a multitude of sins even being proprietary.

    Ah, but let's examine the problems that come along with proprietary software, shall we? It's more than a philosophical issue.

    You're using the browser. It breaks. You submit a bug report. You wait six months for a fix. You pay for the new version. Sound familiar?

    Or, you're using it, and you really wish the interface looked like this, or the program would do this. Well, I suppose you can ask them to add the feature. Maybe they will. Real soon now.

    And let's not forget that ol' lock-in factor. Maybe they use a proprietary, undocumented format for your bookmark file. And you have hundreds of them. Want to try another browser? Well, you can always type them all in by hand...

    ------

  • Opera will have a problem trying to win against the likes of Mozilla. While Opera is certainly lighter, but I don't see how a closed source and commercial browser can win out against an open source, standards compliant and free browser.

    Like what? (dives under desk)

    Let's see:

    • It can be faster
    • It can be smaller
    • It can have a better user interface
    • It can be more configurable
    • It can crash less

    Will Opera for Linux do any of this? We'll see. Will Mozilla? We'll see. Right now, neither of them is ready for prime time.

    Netscape isn't making many friends with the 4.x series.

  • I try to make it a point to not use 'integrated' apps. I like the idea of having a familiar interface between applications, I don't like applications that 'integrate'. StarOffice is one of the worst for this. Please, just let me open the word processor and not the entire StarOffice beast! Opera people: offer them if you want, but keep them separate! It won't be small and light if it does 200 things that can be done with other apps.
  • ARACHNE [arachne.cz] - the multimedia internet suite for DOS by dedicated Czech software developer Michael Polak, is now available in alpha for Linux.

    Still sounds like a true alpha (he says it is guaranteed to crash, and since you must run the alpha as root, it can cause real problems), so don't try it on a production machine. But once it reaches the functionality of the DOS version you will be very impressed what you can do on a old 386 with 8 Meg of RAM. I expect this could become the OS/Browser combination of choice for a lot of schools and kiosk systems. By the way, the download is only 570k!

    Requires SVGAlib, and kernel 2.12 or higher.

  • Re:why would anyone pay for a browser? (Score:5)

    by Daemonik ( 171801 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @04:55AM (#1006467) Homepage
    People will pay for a browser because it's stable. Because it's standards compliant. Because it's fast. Because it's small and takes up few resources. Because it doesn't automatically shove portals and newsreaders, email programs, media suites, channel content or anything else down your throat. Oh, and because it's features aren't being dictated by a uber-corporation that could give a fick what you really want cause their advertisers/investors want you to have some inane crap that leads you to them. Free does not necessitate better.
  • Did you note the 4.0a. Do you know what a means? Could it be an alpha release? "We at Opera have decided to refer to this version as a technology preview since the term Alpha states by its nature that it has not been released from our local offices. " Wowee who woulda thunk it? In alpha state, you don't try to conquer the competition, you try to get working software. Another note: Yet again more proof that everyone in the world reads slashdot. "opera -page='www.slashdot.org'"
  • Does Opera support Java/SSL/JavaScript/DHTML though?
    JavaScript & DHTML is a field where Opera clearly lacks support. They've componentized the ECMAScript engine, but it currently runs just as slowly as the 3.62 engine (tested on Windows). A definite area where there's much room for improvement.

    http://www.opera.com/new.html [opera.com] lists the improvements in the current beta for Windows (4.0b5), and JavaScript 1.3 and ECMAScript are mentioned. I'm not sure if they mean "Netscape's JavaScript 1.3 object model" when they say JS v1.3 though. Since they separate ECMAScript and JavaScript it wouldn't surprise me if they do.

    Support for the W3C DOM level 1 (and 2) is non-existant in the Windows beta as far as I've been able to tell (from doing simple tests).

    They're aware of the problem though, several Opera users (including myself) are keeping an eye on these features and bug the Opera staff whenever possible.

    Somewhere down the line Opera will have JavaScript/ECMAScript and DOM-support. How far down the line it seems that nobody knows though.

  • As if RMS would ever utter the phrase 'closed source'. Sheesh :-)

  • Why would anyone want to use Opera if Mozilla is available?

    Speaking personally I'm going to drop Netscape/Mozilla like a hot potato as soon as Opera enters Beta. I use it when I can when forced to use Windows and it's far better than anything the other big ones (IE + Moz) can show. I have no real reason to believe that Mozilla will ever deliver what Opera has and fit on a floppy so I can take it on-site with me.

    Even if it didn't fit (compressed) onto a floppy it's ease of use, speed, memory use etc are very good.

    The only thing I'm not happy with in Opera is their insistance that a browser is something that you use to read your email with, but that's an error repeated in all the graphical browsers.

    TWW

  • The compactness also comes from excluding or having only half-baked implementations of some important modern web standards.
  • Two crashes is better than one!
  • That's windows for you.

    Hey, I wrote my lame web page using XEmacs. :)

  • Version 4 is all right, I use it on my Linux and Windows boxes. At least when it crashes, and it does on a regular basis, it does not bring down the whole works like Netscape.
    It has some nice features, like erase cookies on exit, supports all kinds of encryptions, and navigation is much improved.
    However when you toggle it to not load images, the whole page format goes goofy. And an increasing number of sites, such as Yahoo, won't even load if you use any kind of ad/image/ blocker.

  • so perhaps a nerd/geek/similar individual will take those reasons you've mentioned seriously and will then pay for a browser. The other 99% of mankind will just grab the most feature/funnyfunctions/picture/mediacrap filled browser they can get and use it. That's why people will not pay for a browser. And besides that: any decent geek/nerd/similar individual will be able to at least switch off some of the crapfeatures in IE's install. (for example: you don't have to install OE)


    --

  • Java is already in an optional module which is not even included in the default distribution.

    Mail and news are already optional modules that just happen to be bundled in the default distribution. They are never loaded into memory if you don't use them. I agree that someone should produce a Mozilla-browser distribution that includes the minimum modules required for browsing; it would be very easy to do. I'm sure someone will do it sooner or later.

    The entire UI is built out of Javascript and DHTML, so you can't lose those without writing your own native UI. Some people are actually doing that, just using the Gecko browser widget in their own applications (Eazel). You still can't remove DHTML capability from Gecko though (or at least it wouldn't profit you much if you did). The reason is that the big cost of DHTML is supporting "incremental everything" --- on the fly dynamic parsing, re-styling, re-layout and re-rendering as the document changes underneath you. That's not a feature you can just add or remove, that's a fundamental design principle.

    There is a lot of work to be done on reducing Mozilla's footprint. I'm sure it can be made much lighter than it currently is. A lot of people are interested in putting it to work in small devices, so I'm sure this work will be done.
  • > Now, now. You'll never beat Microsoft if that's your attitude. ;-)

    Winky-thing noted; but just because some people might take you seriously I feel the urge to chime in.

    If we're going to beat Microsoft (and who really cares at this point if we do, but that's different flamebait) we won't do it by playing their game; they already own it. Unix-like systems have thrived thus far not on integration between components, but on flexibility that can be made to serve the purpose of integration. Everybody understands i/o redirection, for example, and that's one thing that makes all these command line tools so startlingly powerful in the hands of somebody who has taken the time to learn them well enough to manage their own "integration".

    We need a complete, stable browser _badly_; if Opera can be made embeddable, or if it has good support for some form of IPC (haven't begun to look at it yet myself, my download's stalled at 44%), then so much the better, but the closest competetor right now doesn't have those features and also doesn't work very well.

    Let KDE and GNOME finish up being compatible with each other, and then let's start asking for compatibility from arbitrary applications.

    -m
  • > I want support for the real standard, not the > browser's own personal "new standard"

    With Mozilla, that's exactly what you get: the best support for W3C standards. Check out any of the 3rd party test sites, e.g. http://www.richinstyle.com
    Look at the new stuff that's being added right now: SVG, MNG, XSL, MathML, and more. All true, open, non-Netscape standards. (How many of those are even being worked on for Opera?) And where's Opera's DOM1/DOM2 support?

    > The most recent versions of Mozilla are just
    > about catching up with the early v3.x versions
    > of Opera in terms of funcionality

    In the UI, perhaps. In terms of standards support, however, Mozilla is already far head of any Opera version.
  • heh heh... I'm using it right now. Not as bad
    as I thought it would be... but it's really
    lame that I gotta run it as root.
    Since I can't get into X though (trying to
    install 4.0 right now... w/o success), it's
    nice to have. I just wish they would open the
    source for it. But judging from the
    developers mailing list they are afraid some
    big company is going to steal it if they did
    that. Oh well.
    Much better than opera.
  • why, oh why use an MDI interface for a web browser?

    My boss is rather short and squarish-looking, so when he comes down the hallway from his office to mine he is easily hidden by the 5' tall cubicle walls. I have absolutely no warning that he is coming until his rotund, sweaty face appears (usually angrily) in my doorway. Upon which time I generally find myself frantically clicking x's to close the 6-8 browser windows I have open. Usually I fail miserably, and have to make up some excuse for why I am reading Slashdot when the TPS reports are late.

    If I had only one x to click, I could much more easily maintain the illusion that I actually work, at least some small percentage of the time...

    Rev Neh
  • using XEmacs. :)

    Bastard!

  • One reason is that people are still regularly finding and fixing bugs with comments like "wastes 50-100K on startup".
  • Emacs should stick to being an editor since it's a shit browser. If you want a proper open source browser try Mozilla. It might not be GPL but it's as good as.
  • Here you go [ufies.org] (in case the opera site is still /.ed).

  • Mozilla is a dead duck? Bollocks.

    Mozilla is a kick-ass browser in the making. As it stands it's still memory intensive, but it's fast, skinnable, extensible and standards compliant. The memory and performance issues are a pain, but development has so far focussed on features. Now Mozilla is feature complete (just about), the footprint will be addressed once M16 is out. Expect M17/M18 to have significantly smaller memory requirements.

  • I've been testing Opera's beta4 on WinNT and I can tell you that V4 is a major re-write aimed at improving both standards compliance and portability. In that sense it is comparable to the tranformation from NS4.x to Mozilla.

    Current v4 betas are still very rough. DO NOT DOWNLOAD the Win beta5!! B5 suffers from a licensing SNAFU. They are in the midst of a major restructuring their Java support. Scripting is half baked and unusable after a tear down / rebuild. CSS is very good but not finished. V4 is a work in progress that I'm pretty hopeful about.

    My take on Opera is that they are positioning themselves for non-PC devices and platforms. Linux and EPOC ports, as well as their XML and WAP support are evidence of this strategy. It's an interesting strategy.

  • NS2 worked fine in that environment, at least to the extent that running anything on Win3.1 was fine. Javascript had just emerged, and leaked memory badly enough to crash on the standard scrolling-banner decoration , but otherwise the stuff ran blazingly fast given the 14.4 modem feeding it.
  • I'm tired of the Linux version of Netscape crashing all the time!
  • I pulled down this TP of Opera a few days ago, and was quite impressed by how much better it runs than TP3. I think this is a lot closer to being my everyday browser than is the Mozilla offering, and they've still managed to keep the package under 1MB. This partly stems from the fact that they havent tried to cram an email reader, newsreader and HTML editor into Opera. A wise choice, and I hope they are not thinking of straying from that approach.
  • Just do File:Quit from any Mozilla window. This will close all windows and exit. Also I think the shortcut to close the current window is ALT-W, at least to quit it's ALT-Q. I don't see how that's any more difficult than in Opera..
  • while a lot of new standards are a bit silly (Active-X and about ten different imcompatable implementations of JavaScript come to mind), but Opera 3.x had problems with things Netscape/IE 3 could do. Opera 3.x's idea of CSS implementation was a joke; instead of waiting for their CSS technology to mature, they released the buggiest implementation I've ever seen and, yes, it's even worse than Netscape 4.x's. At least Netscape is smart enough to ignore elements it doesn't understand, leaving the layout readable, but Opera likes to destroy the presented layout. Try specifying proportional table widths in CSS and see how Opera 3.x "interprets" it. Opera 4.x promises to fix these bugs, and the betas I tried were very promising, but how long does it really take to make a stable HTML 4 implementation? I mean the standard's been out for three years (well, since the original 4.0 draft, at least).
  • I've been using the nightly bulids of Mozilla (pre-M16) for a while now and they have been much more stable and fast then Netscape is. This Opera browser seems like a good idea for low-memory systems though, Mozilla takes up 16m+. Does Opera support Java/SSL/JavaScript/DHTML though? These features are important to many people, and if Linux newbies find these to be missing they may have a negative image of the entire OS as being behind the times. Anyways, choice is good, bring on the new browsers!

  • Opera is the browser worth paying for.
    ... but I'm not going to get rid of my keygen for the Win32 version. ;-)

    ---------///----------

  • ... hmmm so you'd rather see some other browser crash all the time? :-)

  • But wait... (Score:3)

    by cowbird ( 49696 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @04:03AM (#1006496)
    The following is Darren Starr's posting to the Opera newsgroup. Among the goals, he states that making Opera friendly with the various window managers is among theirt current tasks:

    --Begin Quote --

    Well, it's been a while since I've talked in the news group. I've really
    preferred to try and keep things as quiet as possible while making the
    "Feature Complete" landmark. We've been doing a whole lot of work on the
    project and we're getting dangerously close to beta 1. Beta 1 will
    sybolize the point in time where we'll ask the users to start slamming
    the bug reporting system so we can work out every little detail in the
    product. In order to reach the Beta 1 point, the goals that need to be
    met by the development team are as follows :
    - Implement 100% of the features to be in the final version
    - Increase stability (as much as possible, but that's really the
    beta test thing)
    - Create packages for all major packaging systems
    - Organize packages or links to packages for Qt 2.1
    - Setup a web server specifically for the "Opera for Linux Project"
    - Make the browser friendly with a few window managers, Gnome and
    KDE then others
    - Get Opera to work with several e-mail packages
    - Port to big endian systems (image decoders are a little rough)
    - Create documentation
    - IMPLEMENT THE DANG OPERA 4.0 FOR LINUX SPLASH SCREEN (about box
    too)

    To make all this happen, we're going to get the Opera for Linxu web
    server up and running over the next week. The page will initially be
    really rough. The reasoning is, it will be handled by the development
    team directly (this cuts down on the need to get one of our web
    developers to assist every time we need a change). The server will be
    named http://linux.opera.no and should be updated very regularly. We
    also will begin to make builds ready within 15 days of each other.
    Possibly more often is possible.

    We're now beginning to implement a rough make system that will generate
    compact executables and packages. Once this system is fully functional,
    we hope to generate files for the following :
    Redhat 6.X RPM & Tarball (x86, Alpha, Sparc)
    Suse 6.X RPM & Tarball (x86)
    Debian 2.1 DEB & Tarball (x86)
    This of course is only a very partial list, but it will grow with time.

    The last point that I've always found fun is, we're going to start
    making .plan files for the developers. In these plans we'll make all
    kinds of crazy remarks and comments and we'll talk about what we're
    working on. Some of the guys aren't interested, but at least the leaders
    on the project will contribute to this. I'm sure that I will.

    I guess for now, it's best to leave what has been said at that and we'll
    say more on the new web site.

    Thanks for being a great group of users and testers!
    Darren

    P.S. - Currently I receive in excess of 400 new e-mails a day (strictly
    from this project) and I work very hard to take care of as many as
    possible, however my primary goal at all times is making this project
    successful. So please do not e-mail me directly unless it is of critical
    importance. We'll have a bug reporting e-mail address in place soon.
    We'll even get a wishlist4.1@linux.opera.no mailing address setup.

    ------------------------------------------------ -------------------------

    Darren R. Starr - Lead Developer of Opera for Linux
    Opera Software A.S.
    dstarr@opera.com

    -- End Qoute --
  • I'm running it just fine from CorelLinux, which is Debian-based. I had a lot of trouble with the .deb that they've posted, and fell back to the tarball. Are your qtlib's the right version (2.1)?
  • I wish somebody at Opera could please answer me this though: why, oh why use an MDI interface for a web browser?

    It has worked well for the Windows version, and since we are first and foremost porting the Windows version, the Linux version gets the same UI. However, there are plans to also provide an SDI interface in the future. But I do not know if this will be completed in time for the 4.0 final release.

    Note: I am an Opera Software employee, but the opinion expressed here are my own

  • Does Opera support Java/SSL/JavaScript/DHTML though?

    The Linux version of Opera supports almost everything that the Windows version does, and that includes SSL version 2 and 3, and TLS version 1 at 128-bit encryption. There are some lacking support of client certificates at the moment.

    Java support is in the works.

    EcmaScript (JavaScript) support is at the same level as the Windows version, which means that it is not 100% complete yet.

    I do not think that we are supporting DHTML, but don't quote me on that (it's not my part of the code). But if the Windows version doesn't support it, neither will the Linux version.

    Note: I am an Opera Software employee, but the opinion expressed here are my own

  • The salient points about Opera are the tiny file size, small memory footprint and speedy operation. Mozilla doesn't yet come close to meeting any of these factors. Although, the open source community being what it is, I would be very surprised if the community didn't produce a "browser only" package to rival Opera. If that were done, it would be very interesting to pit Opera (closed-source, proprietary) browser against the open source developed Mozilla. I reserve judgement as to which I suspect would come out as the leaner, faster, more standards-compliant browser. I wish somebody at Opera could please answer me this though: why, oh why use an MDI interface for a web browser?
  • Will Opera integrate with my desktop?
    In version 4.0, integration into the environments such as KDE, Gnome, CDE, and others will not be a priority.

    Now, now. You'll never beat Microsoft if that's your attitude. ;-)

  • However fast, small, and standards-compliant browser Opera might be, the company still has phenomenal trouble porting (or rather, "rewriting" it) for non-Wintel platforms.

    I was mailed an invitation to beta-test the Macintosh version of Opera. The message is dated December 23, 1999. I've lost my faith and switched to IE 5, which is a surprisingly good browser on the Mac.

    The Linux version also has a long way to go, and this item strikes me as particularly scary:

    • Opera crashes a bit more now than the previous version.

    Egads.

  • Have a look at the relative size of your Mozilla and this so called "bloated browser". The Opera that I downloaded was about 900K. I cant remember how big the last Mozilla nightly build was, but it was no less than 7MB!! It should be harpooned for blubber.
  • it is doomed to be niche product

    Quality software is a niche, I agree.

    As a full fledged desktop browser it will always lag behind Mozilla or IE, in regard to such things as 3rd party support and support of new web standards.

    It led the way in CSS support and HTML4. Opera also doesn't try to engulf and extend the "standard" the way the other two have, and that's fine by me. I want support for the real standard, not the browser's own personal "new standard". 3rd party support on Windoze for Opera is actually quite good, better than 3rd party support for Netscape/Mozilla on Linux.

    In the long run I expect derivatives of Mozilla to kill of Opera once and for all,

    On what planet? Mozilla is a dead duck, kept alive only by the lack of a decent competition. Opera's closed-source nature will keep Mozzy alive but not through any superiority of functionality. Once a decent open-source option comes along it's goodbye, big guy.

    The most recent versions of Mozilla are just about catching up with the early v3.x versions of Opera in terms of funcionality and still with a huge memory footprint as the price.

    Eazel's Nautilus in the long run

    That's a very long run indeed, given the state Nautilus is in (not even given an Alpha release yet).

    TWW

  • I downloaded the previous version of Opera for Linux, which was pretty Stable (at least, it didn't crash too much on me). Too bad though a whole lot of websites are written in a HTML look-a-like. That causes that Opera doesn't always render a page too well. Keep up the good work, Opera!
  • Hmmmm, Opera has been around for a while. Since before the time Mozilla was open source. And if you looked at it, you would see the style and navigation is totally different than Mozilla, OR IE. Seems like you are just trying to spread some FUD. I'll take my burger medium-well, without FUD, please.... :)
  • here [linuxapps.com]

    opera.com [opera.com] is dreadfully slow (prolly /.ed). I found the response at opera.no [opera.no] to be much better.
  • I didn't have much better luck on my Redhat 6.2 box. Its includes the version 2.1.0 Beta 4 of the QT library. I get this result:

    QObject::connect: No such signal HotListTreeView::expanded(QListViewItem*)
    QObject::connect: (sender name: 'hot list dir view')
    QObject::connect: (receiver name: 'hot list dir view')
    QObject::connect: No such signal HotListTreeView::expanded(QListViewItem*)
    QObject::connect: (sender name: 'hot list entry view')
    QObject::connect: (receiver name: 'hot list entry view')
    QObject::connect: No such signal QHeader::clicked(int)
    QObject::connect: (sender name: 'list view header')
    QObject::connect: (receiver name: 'hot list entry view')
    QObject::connect: No such signal QWorkspace::windowActivated(QWidget*)
    QObject::connect: (sender name: 'unnamed')
    QObject::connect: (receiver name: 'Opera main window')
    /usr/local/opera/opera: error in loading shared libraries: /usr/local/opera/opera: undefined symbol: windowList__C10QWorkspace

  • I think you can still use the .deb provided by Opera. You'll just have to install the latest libqt2.1 .deb package too. It is still in Incoming, i.e. not officially part of unstable (woody) yet, but it'll be soon. It should work with potato (Debian 2.2) too. Get it here:

    I am downloading it for myself right now. I hope it works. :-)

    Anthony Fok
    (One of the 500+ Debian [debian.org] developers)

  • $35? Got fucking raped man.
  • People will pay for a browser because it's stable. Because it's standards compliant. Because it's fast. Because it's small and takes up few resources. Because it doesn't automatically shove portals and newsreaders, email programs, media suites, channel content or anything else down your throat. Oh, and because it's features aren't being dictated by a uber-corporation that could give a fick what you really want cause their advertisers/investors want you to have some inane crap that leads you to them. Free does not necessitate better.

    Which, I guess, is as good a reason as any to never use Netscape's browser.

  • There isn't a mirror at linuxapps (at least, I couldn't find it). Opera said there was.

    Sorry.
  • #0 0x401b6d91 in QFontDatabasePrivate::families () from /usr/lib/libqt.so.2
    (gdb) bt
    #0 0x401b6d91 in QFontDatabasePrivate::families () from /usr/lib/libqt.so.2
    #1 0x404bc514 in QPrintDialog virtual table () from /usr/lib/libqt.so.2
    #2 0x80d8836 in XtRemoveTimeOut ()
    #3 0x40608a05 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6

    I have no idea. Stuff that I compile myself always works, though...
  • yep. on my box, netscape's crashes approximatly after 1-3 hours of use, at least for every 4.xx releases. And what i really *hate* is when it 'captures' the mouse pointer (when the arrow is horizontally mirrored). In that case, if it doesn't what to release it after 2-3 minutes, the only solution i know is CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE. I'm not always happy to do that.

  • Dude...get a clue. This is not Richard M. Stallman of the FSF. This is some lame troll.

    ------
  • You know, with as many people who hate Netscape with a passion, I'm surprised nobody branched the Mozilla code to make a small, stripped down browser.

    I disable Java and JavaScript in Netscape anyway, so if the code wasn't even there, that's probably a big chunk of code that could be ripped out to save space and memory.

    Lynx/Links/w3m don't support Java, JavaScript, DHTML, etc. but how many people still use these browsers on a daily basis? I use lynx and links whenever I can rather than try to load Netscape on this p166 with 32 megs of ram. Of course, when I have to go to a site with Java, I have to load Netscape.

    People have been using two browsers for a long time, so why not just have two versions of Mozilla (a Mozilla-lite and a Mozilla-bloated). You could package them in the same distribution, but simply having one executable that is half the size (or less) and doesn't have all the bloat would be a great thing. Or even have one executable that supports modules, so when you don't want to load support for Java/JavaScript/DHTML/Mail/News/EverythingUnderThe Sun, you simply don't have to load it into memory.

  • The thing about that is that Opera doesn't necessarily work. It's notable that netscape has the fastest javascript implementation too, and with more and more client-side javascript popping up everywhere, it's making more and more of a difference.

    On windows, Netscape sucks. Badly. It crashes out at least ten times as frequently as IE and it has that annoying habit of redrawing the entire page when you resize the window. IE's display engine is far more efficient than Netscape's.

    When I load opera, I feel like I've clicked into an irc client. It comes up with a trillion little windows and some lame-looking subpanes or something, and then it fails to display pages properly. I mean, tables suck, they're a bad kludge, there HAS to be some better way to do tables, but if Netscape and IE can both get them right (Hell, lynx does a decent job displaying the data in tables) then you'd think Opera might be able to take a stab at it.

    The only thing that might get me to use Opera would be if it had COMPLETE CSS support (And I'm talking about small caps and everything, no screwing around) as well as a fast javascript/jscript implementation, Java with JIT, refreshed the page in the same way as IE, and was better about downloading things than IE. It'd also have to have a smart FTP client.

    Mind you, I have none of that now (Except for JIT), but there's no point in switching to a COMMERCIAL product if it doesn't fulfill your desires (Insert comment about Natalie Portman swimming in Hot Grits here). IE is free. Netscape is free. Opera is not free. Hence, Opera has to be better than both of them in every conceivable way to draw me in.

  • wanna bet?

  • doo! (Score:1)

    by prot0z ( 147134 )

    >wget -c http://www.hardware.no/download/opera.tar.bz2
    >bzcat mv/opera.tar.bz2 | tar xv
    >opera
    Segmentation fault (core dumped)
  • 8M on a 386 are the requirements for the Linux version of ARACHNE, but some of the older DOS versions could run on ANY x86 machine. I had it running (but not connected to the net) on a 10 Mhz XT clone with 640k RAM and a 10M HD. Once Michael has the Linux release cleaned up a bit, I wouldn't be surprised if it were to run with 4-6M of memory. The 386 requirement is not likely to change though due to kernel requirements.

    To rimez:
    The requirment to run it as root will change once it is out of alpha. And I think he was planning on open sourcing some of the project, but not the HTML rendering engine. I would hope that he can strike a deal with Caldera to get it bundled with OpenLinux, since he previously licensed them the ARACHNE for use as the WebSpyder browser in OpenDOS.

  • oups.. i have the wrong qt

    >ldd opera
    libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x4001b000)
    libqt.so.2 => /usr/lib/qt-2.0.1/lib/libqt.so.2 (0x40038000)
    libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x40371000)
    libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x4043f000)
    libXt.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6 (0x4044e000)
    libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x4049c000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x404a0000)
    libICE.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0x40595000)
    libSM.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0x405ad000)
    libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0x405b7000)
    libpng.so.2 => /usr/lib/libpng.so.2 (0x405c7000)
    libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 => /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 (0x405e4000)
    /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

  • I think the flamefest going on here over the best browser underscores an important point: there is no clear best choice for a web browser for Linux.

    Mozilla? Bloated. Netscape? Bloated and proprietary. Opera or Arachne? Proprietary. Lynx? Nice and fast, open source, but no graphics. Konqeror? Dunno, never tried it. Probably several others I've never even heard of.

    But clearly, if there were one good choice, there would be some degree of consensus. We don't see flamewars about the best C compiler for Linux. It's gcc. Period.

    Clearly, there is a crying need for a web browser that is GPLed, graphical, small, fast, and robust. There ain't no such animal yet. We need to build one.

    ------

  • Is that music B, Game Boy music C, or NES music C? I know NES music A is "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and Game Boy music A is a Russian folk song "the pedlars".

    Oh, and you can get lots of remixes of "the pedlars" on Napster: search for song title: tetris.

  • To be fair, I seem to remember couple of years back the Opera developers were quite resistant to building an integrated mail client into the browser, but ended up doing it anyway in response to extensive pressure from userland. Not a fantastic excuse, but they did try.

  • 've been using the nightly bulids of Mozilla (pre-M16) for a while now and they have been much more stable and fast then Netscape is.

    Erm. You must be getting different nightly builds than me, because the average time between crashes with nightly builds for me is about five minutes.

    Don't get me wrong, I hope that Mozilla will get a good future and check the nightly builds almost every day and admit that it seems to have became a bit lighter and faster lately. But stabilitywise it's far worse than Netscape 4.7 on my machine. NS crashes 'only' once in day or two...

    After saying that I'm going to download the latest build and check if the stability has been improved dramatically during the last 24 hours though. ;)

  • Uh, that can be done by having a *PARENT* window, much like closing the main window of an application with a file chooser up will hide the file chooser, too (at least under most X window managers :-))

    It does not require that the child windows reside inside the parent, which is the annoying part of "MDI" and was done ONLY to avoid swapping in other programs on ancient Windows 3.1 platforms (because moving the windows or closing them would not expose screen area that has to be redrawn by other programs).

    MDI is truly an abonimation and it would be nice to get rid of it!

  • The binaries in the DEB archive is the same one as the one in the tarball, so there should be no difference, other than that there are a few more files included in the DEB version.

    Unfortunately, our information about where to find the libraries for Qt 2.1 has been somewhat lacking, but we are in the works of fixing that glitch on the web pages.

    And for those that wonder; yes we are planning to release RPMs as well. It's just that the DEB archiving happened to be finished first (which partly is because I'm a Debian developer myself).

    Note: I am an Opera Software employee, but the opinion expressed here are my own

  • You need to update the Qt libraries to version 2.1, the beta version included with RedHat 6.2 does not work, unfortunately.

    Note: I am an Opera Software employee, but the opinion expressed here are my own

  • I haven't used Opera lately (since I started hosting my bookmarks remotely via Netscape's wonderful roaming feature) but it is small: The last Windows version I tried fit on a floppy disk, and it's really a pretty good basic browser. It lacks some of the frills, but it's both small AND fast. Mozilla has some impressive aspects, but (like the Gnome stuff it is becoming increasingly tied to) it's a pig. I'm leaning toward Konqueror for my routine Linux browser, but I guess I'll have to give this new Opera a try...
  • Some short comments (I must admit that I didn't completely understand what you asked for):

    1) We ask you not to send bug reports to us, since we have enough bugs to work on, anyway. As soon as we hit BETA stage, we will open up to bug reports.

    4) Qt 2.1 is no longer an alpha, it is a released product.

    5) If you have questions, please ask in opera.linux [opera.com] We try to answer as time permits.

    Note: I am an Opera Software employee, but the opinion expressed here are my own

  • People just don't know how to read anymore! I said *dominant* marketshare. Last time I looked Linux, XFree and gcc were not the market leaders. Give them a few years and they might be. But they aren't today.
  • People just don't know how to read anymore!

    I read your message very well. And I don't think you considered my points very well. You certainly ignored my main point, i.e., that this Internet thing we're all using right now was and continues to be developed using Open Source methods.

    I said *dominant* marketshare. Last time I looked Linux, XFree and gcc were not the market leaders.

    Well, I guess it depends on how you define your market.

    Linux: As I said, Linux is the most popular OS for hosts permanently connected to the Internet (i.e., static IPs). This seems a reasonable metric to me. Not the only one, by any means, but reasonable and useful.

    XFree: Easily the most popular X server software available. Sure, XFree doesn't have the market-share of Microsoft in the area of desktop OSes. But it also doesn't have the market-share of Ford in the area of automobiles. (Point being: XFree is neither a desktop OS or nor a car.)

    GCC: Easily the most popular cross-platform compiler available. Why "cross-platform"? Because to me, a compiler that is tailored to a particular platform isn't the same thing. It would make sense that Sun can make the best compiler for Suns and Microsoft can make the best compiler for Windows [1]. But I don't want to write code that only works on one platform. Look at shops who have heterogenous networks, and GCC is almost always the compiler in use.

    Footnote #1: Interestingly enough, I've heard arguments that neither Sun nor Microsoft makes the best compiler for their own platforms. But that is another story.
  • Yeah. Sometimes to relieve netscape related stress I try to get lynx to crash.
  • I wish somebody at Opera could please answer me this though: why, oh why use an MDI interface for a web browser?
    As far as I remember SDI has been mentioned several times in the opera.linux newsgroup, but I believe it was said to be dependant upon the window manager. It's a recurring subject so I think they've already got the point. (I'd like Opera for Linux with SDI too :)
  • Why would anyone want to use Opera if Mozilla is available?

    Because there are some people who don't have 256Mb ram to spend on Mozilla thingie.
    Really, i use Opera day to day on a 486/66 with 16Mb ram and it works fast enough, even with 5-10 pages open. Now try that with Mozilla thingie. :)

  • These supposedly-important new web standards seemed to be the cause of much of the bloat. I don't everyone wants to be imposed upon to have to have something that monolitically does everything anyone ever proposed. So I'm happy to see those things not included.

    Still, they could be included if it is done by making them modular. They have to be separate files for each feature, with the main process knowing how to find things (dynamic library search) and also handles the absence gracefully (sorry, no application to handle that document class). They need to be separately downloadable, but also convenient to download all you want at the same time.

    Those separate apps can then be made to appear integrated or appear separate but that should always be, like anything else, user choice.
  • Doing a bit of fortune-telling, are we? Reading the tea leaves and consulting the pigeon entrails?

    Because that's what it is: fortune-telling. There is no stable open source, standards compliant and free browser today. In fact, the open source, standards compliant and free *anythings* that have won dominant marketshare are pretty rare. Apache, Perl, BIND, and that's all that I can think of.

    You may have faith that open source is superior to closed source, but the typical user doesn't. All they care about is that something works and works well. But don't get your knickers in a twist, Opera is targeting a whole different audience than Mozilla, Netscape or IE. They are targeting those who are willing to pay $40 for a small fast browser. Looking at the free beer crowd (NS, IE and MZ), they'll have a lot of work to do to compete in the small and fast department.
  • " Will Opera integrate with my desktop?
    In version 4.0, integration into the environments such as KDE, Gnome, CDE, and others will not be a priority. "

    Now, now. You'll never beat Microsoft if that's your attitude. ;-)

    Actually, I think they just mean they're not putting in special code for docking and such at the moment. I think that's fair - lets see how KDE and Gnome evolve first before putting in such desktop-specific stuff. Almost all the applications I use now work just fine without any desktop-specific hooks and I'd rather the Opera guys concentrated on getting the browser itself right, just now.
    --

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