Former Dev Gives Gloomy Outlook On Linux Support For the Opera Browser

An anonymous reader writes: "It doesn't take a Columbo to figure out that the 'previous employer, a small browser vendor that decided to abandon its own rendering engine and browser stack' is referring to Opera in this comment answering the question 'Do you actually use the product you are working on?' It appears to originate from Andreas Tolfsen, a former Opera developer who is now part of the Mozilla project. From releasing a unified architecture browser including Linux support since 2001, Opera decided to put Linux development on indefinite hold, communicated through blog comments, and focus on Windows and Mac for their browser rewrite centered around the Blink engine that had its first beta release last spring. The promise to bring back the Linux version in due time was met with growing skepticism as the months went by, and clear answers have been avoided in the developer blog. The uncertainty has spawned user projects such as Otter browser in an attempt to recreate the Opera UI in a free application. Tolfsen's statement seem to be in line with what users have suspected all along: Opera for Linux is not something for the near future."

Opera was great... till v12

[diorcc]

Been an Opera user since '98. Not die hard, but I always had Opera running in conjunction with other browsers. For a time solo, and now back to using FF, and Chrome (which is what the new Opera really is, minus the extensions - so what's the point?). It was a great browser because it was like an swiss army knife - one that is highly configurable WITHOUT the need for any extensions. Couldn't agree more with the ex-Opera dev. Sadly, they've decided to kill it. I'll keep an eye on Otter browser and keep using v 12 as my research / search and rescue - browser.

Re:Opera is dead.

[Threni]

It died right at the start when it was `pay up for love the ads`...resuscitated briefly when it was the only decent browser for pre-smartphones, then got finished off when Safari and stock/Chrome was let free on smartphones/tablets.

bloatware

[banbeans]

It died when it became bloatware just like the rest of the browsers.
Who remembers when it was lean mean small and fast?
I remember a time when surfing with Opera was 3x as fast as ie.
IE got better and Opera got worse and firefox stole the thunder.

Another webkit is irrelevent

[linebackn]

One of the strengths (and simultaneous weakens) of Opera was that it used it's own unique rendering engine. That gave it an advantage in specialized situations where others would not quite fit.

Since they changed to using webkit, they are, in my opinion, basically irrelevant now. They might have well just become another one of those circa 2000 Microsoft Internet Explorer shells.

Say what you will about Presto not working on site x, y, or z, more diversity is good, and it helps keep real standard in check. There were once too many sites that were only viewable in IE, I do not look forward to a future internet that is only viewable in Google Chome.

Is there any hope at all that they might open source the Presto Rendering engine?

Re:No Market Impact Expected, but Short it anyway

[TeXMaster]

There are only two rendering engines for Linux, and they are Gecko and Webkit, both of which have horrible support for a lot of advanced web standards such as SVG and MathML, because the focus today is on who makes the fanciest sliding div effect rather than on actually properly implementing existing stuff. The loss of Presto and the reduction of alternatives is a very sad day for the web.