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Update: Opera Browser for Linux 170

Posted by Roblimo from the can't-come-soon-enough-for-me dept.
S7 writes "Opera Software has indicated that it is currently diversifying its browser to accomodate a wider flavour of Linux distributions, not just RedHat and its derivatives. Hope they finish soon!" Yeah, I know Mozilla is going to have wonderful features like instant messenger and changeable themes and I don't know what-all else if and when it ever gets end user-usable, but Opera is a plenty good enough browser for the likes of me; it's fast, compact, simple, and reliable, all of which are software qualities I admire immensely. In fact, the only two things I really miss from Windows are Opera and NoteTab, which is IMO the worlds's finest text processing tool for online journalists. Now that Opera's on its way to Linux, all I need is a Linux version of NoteTab or something like it and I'll be in PC heaven!
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Update: Opera Browser for Linux

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  • Yes, we all are all waiting for this new browser that will be replacing netscape.... Are they planning to distributed it like netscape?

    Although netscape really hasn't crash that many times for me.....
  • I think this is the real news [opera.com]. Availible beta for BeOs.
  • When Opera for Linux comes out, and it's as good as the hype, I will pay for it. That being said, I find extremely amusing their justification of why nothing is free [opera.com].
  • I know this is Offtopic, but it seems that over the last few weeks, Slashdot has increased the rate of posting. It seems that whenever I reload, there are new stories, and those stories qickly get up to over 300 or 400 replies.

    has anyone else noticed this?

    dave
  • I have to say, being a long time Slashdot reader, I really don't like Roblimo's style. Whereas most other Slashdot news announcements identify the link with a little bit of commentary thrown in, Roblimo tends to write an entire paragraph with his opinion on almost every story in the announcement.

    I find that kind of lame, when all of those who post Slashdot stories thus far have seen fit to simply announce the story with a little bit of Slashdot spin, Roblimo thinks everyone needs to hear every last detail of his opinion on the news item on the stories he posts (maybe not all the time, but much more than other posters).

    Keep the noise down, Roblimo!
  • With Mozilla still a season or two away, but quite a real project, how is Opera going to compete? Their selling points--stability, standards, customizability, etc.--worked so long as their major competitors were MSIE and Navigator. Mozilla, which was built with the open source philosophy of doing the Right Thing, and is developing with a speed that a closed source effort like Opera just can't match, is going to blow away the competition.

    Will Opera give distros discounts to bundle Opera with their boxed versions? Will they count on being lighter than Mozilla? How will they differentiate themselves? What can they possibly do that Mozilla can't match?

    As much as I like Opera, I wouldn't give much for their chances.

  • We've heard these updates before. How old is Opera by now, and since when have they been promining ports "real soon now"? It's a nice Windows browser, but the window of opportunity has slammed shut for them. In the time since Opera first started planning ports, Macs have gotten a version of IE that's actually not too bad (and fairly quick), Linux users are in the process of getting decent browsers with KDE and Gnome, and Mozilla is actually starting to finally grow up, and in public where everyone can see the progress.

    In the early days when Netscape and Microsoft first started heading up the bloatware path, Opera had a nice market opportunity, but I think it's been squandered. Nobody's going to pay for a closed-source browser, however spiffy, when there's a reasonable selection of respectable open _and_ closed browsers, all of which are free. It's time the Opera folks started a new project.

    - -Josh Turiel
  • OK, before I get flamed here, let me say that I've gone back and looked at the last several stories that Roblimo posted and there hasn't been that much commentary in most of them.

    That being said, I certainly have read news postings by him in the past few weeks that have been a bit too long-winded.
  • A port of Opera to Linux is extremly important for Linux. Though I myself find lynx the ultimate browser, I constantly hear complaints about Netscape and demands from Windows users, who'd like to switch to Linux, for a java-capable, graphical browser.
    Regards,
    January
  • I found that link the be quite amusing and I also consider it reason enough to never use any Opera products.

  • From the Opera URL listed in the parent:

    And besides, you may get something 'free', but then it's mostly 'cheap' and of inferior quality. 'Free' and Opera don't go together - and never will.

    The Opera folks clearly don't grok "Free" (speech) software. Just wait 'til mozilla's been out for a year or two--they'll grok then. I may buy a license anyway if I think it will be worthwhile for testing my HTML for compatability, but I don't think Opera will ever become very important unless they free the source. Not because I object to paying for a license, but because I don't think they will be able to keep up with mozilla.

  • Why I can't support Opera (Score:4)

    by Trick ( 3648 ) on Sunday October 10, 1999 @07:01AM (#1625421)
    While I'm sure Opera is a great browser, it seems to me their marketing philosophy is about as incompatible with free software's as you can get.

    From their own literature: "Nothing is really 'free'. It is merely subsidized by other products. It is done in the interest of market share and domination, but not necessarily in the interest of the user. "

    They further claim that the only reason software is given away free is to "tie in" users to buying software later. To those of us backing free software, this is obviously a gross overgeneralization at best, and complete ignorance of what we stand for at worst.

    The following bothers me even more: "And besides, you may get something 'free', but then it's mostly 'cheap' and of inferior quality. 'Free' and Opera don't go together - and never will."

    If this is really what they believe, they need to do a little research before they even think about pushing their way into the Linux market.

    ---
    Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
  • They make pretty good points. Netscape wants you to use my.netscape.com, their webmail, even the search botton, and the new shop@netscape points to their netcenter. IE is the same thing I am pretty sure search engines pay to be featured when the user clicks on search in IE. Ofcoarse you still can change all these settings, but most computer users don't know how. The only true way to get free lunch for most people is if the lunch is *PL.
  • Tough road for opera I'd agree.

    But they might get some sales merely by being in stores, something Mozilla may not do. Linux users aren't very used to going to stores for software, but new converts from Windows may be different. They could also play the bundle game, with distros, or apps they play well with.

    They may also have a shot at the browser market for embedded Linux devices if they are light enough.

    I'm attracted to their tables-capable text only browser as well, I don't think Mozilla has done that.

    If they want desktop market though, they better get out there well before Mozilla releases officially. Without being buggy. Ouch.

  • Opera is WINEable (Score:3)

    by mutende ( 13564 ) <klaus@seistrup.dk> on Sunday October 10, 1999 @07:15AM (#1625425) Homepage Journal
    For those of you who cannot hold your breath: Opera [opera.com] is WINE [winehq.com]able.

    //Mutende
    --
  • I'll pay too... if anything, to stop "silly" netscape updates like the "shop@netscape" button on version 4.7!

    At $17.50 (student price), it's almost worth the hassle of getting rid of the afore mentioned shop button and the netscape communication screen when you fire up netscape's email...

    And to think that they spent time adding the shop button instead of fixing bugs... netscape crashes regularly on my machine :-(

    And finally, I feel that opera must not be swallowed up by anyone... see what happens when a perfectly good browser gets bought by an on-line service (delays of releases to integrate instant messaging) or an OS company (I'd try using IE for Linux if microsoft developed it).

  • Before Netscape made their announcement that Mozilla would go open source, Opera, I think, could have had a good chance at becoming the browser of choice for Linux users. There were a lot of people clamoring for a port back then.

    However, instead of jumping on it, they made the absurd demand that people pay up before coding even began. Obviously, not many took to this. (The fact that a few did actually shows how desperate people were for a good browser.) If Opera had seized their opportunity, there's a good chance a good portion of us would be using it today. But, history being what it is...

    Like you say, they're gonna have a tough time in the face of Mozilla now, as the lizard is just on the threshold of being ready for everyday use. Besides, the fact that Mozilla is free/open source software gives it a huge edge, and Opera doesn't appear to be budging on that issue. (Not that I blame them, since the browser is their only revenue. Of course, if nobody uses it, they'll have trouble getting money whether it's closed or open.)

  • On linux, I compared display speeds side by side with Netscape 4.61, and Mozilla release 10 was much faster. The design is much nicer too. Can't say Opera did much for me.
  • NoteTab is one Windows Apps which I really prefer to any other Text Editor. I had written to the creater of NoteTab but he didn't seem too interested in porting it to Linux. Reason: too much of effort involved. I even offered to help there but he wasn't willing to take help. Anyone's given it a try?
  • After buying NoteTab Pro, I was pleasantly surprised by the mileage I could get out of it. I was looking for an outlining tool, which is one thing that NoteTab Pro isn't so great at, but instead I got a very extensible bare-bones editor that knows just enough HTML. My fledgling website owes a lot to NoteTab Pro.

    A unix version would be greatly appreciated. And don't talk to me about EMACS! EMACS might be good for solving the Towers of Hanoi, or as a LISP platform, or for whatever new feature that they've piled on the heap, but it certainly isn't lightweight like NoteTab.
  • I quit using Windows in 1997. The same year that Opera announced "Project Magic", [opera.com] its plan to port Opera to "WinDOS-free" (their term, not mine) systems. Since then, I've waited...waited... and waited.

    Attention Opera Software: stop announcing new projects and just port the damn thing already. Geez. How can a company diversify a product that doesn't even exist yet? As an aside, there's an old joke about Microsoft promises. The punch line is "My husband's a Microsoft developer and he just sits at the end of the bed and tells me how great it's gonna be when I get it." Sound familiar?

  • directed more towards IE (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Their "free" argument is basically directed at IE and netscape. The only free browser that actually exists right now is lynx, and is not really in competition with the high end (faster than 286) market. If you think about it, all their claims in the argument are true when applied to netscape and IE. IE and netscape are nothing resembling free.
  • In the near future I will need to evaluate Mozilla/netscape, opera, and then there is the underdop aramadilla. Netscape sucks right now, opera is non-existant, and armadilla is still pre-beta (alpha). Mozilla surprisingly is not too bad even though it is pre-beta. The nicest thing I remember about opera is that it offered a nice browser in a nice small package. Netscape is bloatware and mozilla is half the size but still a a lot bigger than the other browsers. Linux is in need of a browser, that is it.
  • Suprisingly enough netscape 4.7 for linux has java that works. I haven't gotten a single bus error yet. I've got java and flash now. I'm happy. heh
  • There's a notetab-esque clone you can check out on freshmeat: gnotepad [freshmeat.net].
    Works wicked nicely for me, and i've had pleasantly few problems with it:)

    -blarg

  • Shameless NoteTab plug (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Okay, I'll join the fellow NoteTab users in recommending this little piece of software. I've been using the freeware version for quite some time and it rocks.

    I've used it as the ideal HTML editor for a long time, just downloaded the LaTeX2e clipbook libraries and it's good to see how well NoteTab and dvi viewer from the MIKTeX distribution work together. :)

  • Lets not discredit opera so soon. Yes, they are not open source, but Mozilla still needs a lot of work and Netscape crashes more then a test car. Opera *is* working on Linux actively (I check every so often) and they are coming up with some good products. Before, they had a few screen shots of a text based browser that can do layout much better then lynx. Personally, I will try their browser until I feel Mozilla is stable and small, which I don't feel right now.

    I don't think that this should have been posted as a story, as it s not news for nerds. I also don t think we should all team upand criticize something for not being open or free, when there is no free & stable alternative yet. Just my 2 yen.

  • Opera will never be a big player (Score:3)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Sunday October 10, 1999 @08:28AM (#1625446)
    Why?

    1) Their HTML rendering is quite lame. It doesn't render most simple HTML correctly, so things look 'weird' compared to Navigator/IE. If they can't even get that right, they've got no chance.

    2) The interface to the program is, well, 'weird'. It's not intuitive; it's way too complex and hard to configure the way most people are used to browsers working (and yes, I realize some people may not like the way Navigator/IE work interface-wise, but that's what people are used to).

    3) It costs money. Duh. Remember how Navigator started losing the browser war in the first place?

    And lastly, c'mon, the name of the thing! The only thing worse than Opera is Country & Western! ;)

  • Linux needs a new browser (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not Netsacpe. Not Opera. Not one of these damned CORBA projects that seems to invent the entire universe to pull out a browser. No "massive application frameworks" just so they can make a call to Browser(). They need a browser. Written from scratch to JUST BROWSE the web and do nothing else. I mean, come on, people.. this isn't hard. I myself have written a parser. How hard is it to write a layout engine for JUST HTML? Then to throw in graphics? I can't imagine it to be something worth billions of lines of code, especially since Opera HAS proven that a browser can be small..
    So anyone want to take up the call? To make JUST a graphical browser and not a full featured internet (cr)application?
    Magnwa

  • Nedit is light, know html, and is very configurable. I love it. I've never tried the Windows app, but if you are looking for a killer unix X11 editor, nedit is excellent. Try it.

  • I loved Opera under Windows. Fast, small, easily downloadable. What more could you ask for?

    Well, a few kept promises would be a good thing, I think.

    1. Project Magic will be updated monthly. Big surprise, it's updated every two months, unless somebody (like me) leaves them a nastygram in the guestbook telling them they haven't done so in two months.
    2. In April, we were told that at least a beta for linux would be released in 2Q, 1999. Shocking! We've got nothing other than a couple of (easily faked) screenshots of a text based browser!
    I've given up. Mozilla still isn't ready for even beta use, Opera is dead (IMO), and I've not yet tried Amaya (though that will be fixed later today). Netscape is buggy (at best). No good browsers for Linux yet, and none on the horizon.

    I give up, and will simply stick with Netscape for now.

  • Imagine if all the cheap geeks(like you) can support opera by actually paying for their blood-and-sweat product. I guess you don't make a living out of writing softwares. oh, don't forget to ask squaresoft to release their Final Fantasy VIII source code and get a swift kick on your @$$.
  • The last time I checked, Opera doesn't do PNG files. Too bad. (Then again, the Big Boys don't do PNG correctly, either.)
    I probably will never use Opera; if I need pages tested with it, I get a net.friend to look at them and report back.
    Besides, Communicator 4.7, despite its "Shop" button staring at me, has not crashed yet.
    --
  • Yes, we all are all waiting for this new browser that will be replacing netscape.... Are they planning to distributed it like netscape?

    Opera isn't a new browser. It's been around for windows for at least 3 or 4 years. It's small (2MB), fast, configurable. It does follow the standards.

    The only setback is that you've got to pay for it. But, I gladly fork out $35 or whatever the price was for a browser as good as Opera.


    --

  • Will this "diversification" include any hardware architecture besides x86-PC? Will it include any Unix other than Linux? The Opera web page says that they are "experimenting" with FreeBSD and Linux/sparc support. When will we see the results, and why such a small range of platforms?

    The advantages of free/open software go beyond cost, stability, and features. Nearly every major open software project (with a few notable exceptions, such as FreeBSD) is portable to a wide variety of hardware and software systems. I don't deny that commercial software has certain pros, but almost all of it has one huge disadvantage which completely cancels out any of those advantages. Closed software for Linux is fine, as long as it is for Linux, and not just for Linux/x86, or RedHat Linux, etc.

    Can I install Wordperfect 8 on my PowerPC 603e box? How about Opera? [No; neither the BeOS or Linux ports have been compiled for PPC.] Heck even free (beer) closed-source projects---like the MIT Scheme interpreter, which runs on Linux and NetBSD---are distributed in x86 binary form only.

    I don't have an Intel box, so I haven't even had the chance to test these programs. In the meantime, I've gotten along just fine with free alternatives. With open-source software, I don't need the maintainers to develop on my specific platform; I can simply compile myself from code if no binaries are available. In the rare case that there is a problem, I can work with the authors to fix it.

    I applaud anyone bringing software to free operating systems. But until they unlearn their old habits from growing up in the Wintel duopoly, they will never compete with open source software.

  • Quick replies to your three points...

    1. Actually, it's the Netscape/IE rendering that's lame. Opera does a darn good job from what I've seen. If you haven't noticed, Mozilla also "breaks" alot of HTML that works fine with Netscape/IE, so that it "looks 'weird'".
    2. Yes, Opera's interface is a little weird. It's that darn single window thing. I hope like heck that the Mac version will follow standard conventions and use multiple windows.
    3. It's their only product. Without pulling in money from somewhere, the guys don't get paid. If you can't make a living, you quickly go do something else. Duh. I haven't looked much into how the whole free software movement actually works, but somebody's gotta be paying your rent, right? So either you have a full time job on the side of your FS devel, or some big company is subsidizing the devel.

    CT

  • I found that link the be quite amusing and I also consider it reason enough to never use any Opera products.

    Heh, You've not tried Opera I guess. Opera is small, fast .. (blah.blah.blah). To put it short. There are two things I miss from my windows-days. It's Opera, and its mIRC.


    --
  • I'm sorry, but I'm all for new products if they're better and free and everything, but Opera is simply a horrible browser. Say what you will about Netscape and IE, but they're pretty damn easy to use, and almost every web browser on the planet has followed their UI leads, even the simple ones like the one found in KDE. The few times that I've been required to use Opera for testing web designs, I've found it's UI to be horrendous at best. They split the concept of the browsing pane into multiple windows, almost like a separate sub-desktop. Their fonts always rendered a size too high. Their HTML compatibility was awful (this was the 3.0 release). And they had so many extra things bundled into the system that I couldn't even beging to configure it to do anything even remotely like what I wanted it to do. There is something to be said for the simplicity of IE and Netscape, which made the web about as easy to use as a cheap hooker (which, honestly, is what the web has become).

    As far as I'm concerned, Opera is nowhere near the browser that Netscape/Mozilla is and is only getting recognition because they're an 'alternative'. When they concentrate on making web browsing as painless as their competitors, then they'll have a product they can market.
  • We're not talking about comparing Netscape 4.x to Opera. We're talking about Mozilla (Netscape 5.x) and Opera. Mozilla is very small, extremely modular, and really fast. Opera has no chance.

    Ever tried Opera for windows? After installation the entire thingie (without cache) took 2MB. It opens in a second, the cache is extremely configurable .. i *love* that browser.


    --
  • 1.) If you say so. Under Windows, when I was using the trial version, it rendered everything I looked at fine except for one thing: Dejanews' "Power search" page. It placed one of the little boxie thingies (I'm so technical...) down a line, making it look a little weird. 3.6 or something might have fixed that, too, but I can't remember... Overall, it renders fine an dandy AFAIK. Maybe the linux port is different, if there's a downloadable beta I'm unaware of or some such thing...

    2.) Eh, it's different, but it's not like it's absurdly difficult. It still has back/foward buttons and all, they're just... smaller... ;) If you're running Linux, you can figure out the Opera buttons in no time flat.

    3.) Yep. I agree... that's why I'm not using it right now. I would pay money for it, actually, but I don't have any right now. :) For the moment, I'm somehow dealing with the Goliath that is Netscape v4.61, and occasionally saying "hell with it all" and using w3m or lynx..


    I'm not sure what direction they're going to go for Linux (if it's as straight a port as they can do of 3.60/Windows, YESSSS!!!), but (as much as the Opera people might like it that way) I don't think Opera is meant to be "God's next browser". It's "the alternative", sort of what Linux is. Linux has enough hype behind it that it's going farther than that, but one can't say so much for Opera... That doesn't make it a bad alternative. As long as it exists, those of us who don't want a browser that wastes code on things as varied as washing the dishes will be relatively happy. At least, if we can afford it. Otherwise, we'll hope the next version of KFM is a doozy...

    (Note: The above opinions are not necessarily that of the author... he wasn't meant to post stuff right after he got up... :)
  • How about mnemonic [mnemonic.org] ? There are several alternatives for Linux platform.
  • Opera for Windows rocks. Definitely worth the $35 I paid them for it. I'm really looking forward to the Linux version so I can stop using Netscape. Yeah, I'm also glad Mozilla's coming, so there will be a free browser too.

    Linux needs lots of good software, both free and proprietary. Every good product like Opera that becomes available for Linux makes it a more viable platform for business and home desktops.

  • No, I don't think all other browsers are doomed to failure. Star Office, though, is free (as in beer), and the browser also is also bundled as part of a larger product. As long as people keep using Star Office, the browser can ride on the coat tails of the suite.

    KDE is open source, which means that as long as somebody, somewhere is interested in it, it can continue to be used and updated. This is not the case with Opera. If the company goes under, gets bought out, or decides the Linux product isn't profitable, development stops even if it has a core of devoted users.

    Opera, being payware in a market where people are used to getting their browsers gratis, has a steep uphill battle. It can't just be a little better in order to thrive. It has to be a LOT better. With the slimming down, modulization, and standards adherence of Mozilla, that's going to be a tough bill to fill.

    I don't think all other browsers will die out or cease to be developed, but those that are proprietary and require a fee for use will be hard pressed to survive and make money.

  • Yeah I asked him about this a while ago too.

    However I suspect that someone will get a X11 NoteTab clone long before I really master vi...

  • Roblimo... (Score:3)

    by linuxci ( 3530 ) on Sunday October 10, 1999 @09:14AM (#1625473)
    The context of your comments about Mozilla seems to imply you think it is going to be yet another slow and bloated Netscape browser. If you had read the previous comments on the other two recent Mozilla articles you would have realised that Mozilla is making really excellent progress and is a compact download size.

    Netscape will be themeable but that's just a spin off of their XUL user interface language. The fact that all the interfaces are written in XUL means that it can be easily themed as well as customising the user interface to the way you want.

    As for integrating Instant messaging with email. No one at Mozilla.org said that and even if Netscape does do that you can easily get a copy that wouldn't have this feature.

    Mozilla is here now (although in pre-alpha form). You can't see a current build of Opera on Linux so I believe Mozilla will be along sooner rather than later. Even if you don't like Mozilla their rendering engine is good and someone can use it as a base for another browser with a different interface.

    If Opera had started porting (although to be fair they didn't have much money when they started) to other operating systems before the Mozilla announcement I believe they would have got a good share of the market but now their browser is likely to follow behind Mozilla and so is unlikely to succeed unless they can offer something special.

    --

  • Re:Why I can't support Opera (Score:3)

    by arcade ( 16638 ) on Sunday October 10, 1999 @09:15AM (#1625474) Homepage
    If this is really what they believe, they need to do a little research before they even think about pushing their way into the Linux market.

    I really hope you believe that every software for linux should be 'gratis'. There are lots of non-free software available for unix / linux. Opera will be an addition to this.

    Linux will never become a big hit, if we (the linux users) demand that every piece of software for this OS should be free. We need companies like Adobe to make programs for us -- so that more webdesigners move to linux. Don't give me the stuff about gimp - since gimp its current state cannot compete with commercial alternatives for windows.

    The point is - for the commercial vendors to support linux, they need to make a profit. And to make a profit, they need to sell software. At least they think so. They won't bite on RMS hook and start making Free Software and sell support and so on. They want to sell their software.

    I greet Opera Software welcome to the linux market, and I look forward to buying their browser when it does become available.


    --
  • Attention Opera Software: stop announcing new projects and just port the damn thing already. Geez. How can a company diversify a product that doesn't even exist yet?

    The developers of the linux version are diversifying it so that it's not dependent on one particular linux distro.

    That's how.

    --
  • 1) Their HTML rendering is quite lame. It doesn't render most simple HTML correctly, so things look 'weird' compared to Navigator/IE. If they can't even get that right, they've got no chance.

    Yeah, they follow the standards - and therefore they are lame. Learn to code html, and Opera will be your friend. I promise. ;)

    2) The interface to the program is, well, 'weird'. It's not intuitive; it's way too complex and hard to configure the way most people are used to browsers working (and yes, I realize some people may not like the way Navigator/IE work interface-wise, but that's what people are used to).

    The interface is *great*. You can have multiple windows in one instance of the browser, you resize them inside the 'main' thingie. It really can't get any better. And 'hard to configure'? It took me 15 minutes to learn, configure and start using it -- coming straight from netscape (3.x at the time).

    3) It costs money. Duh. Remember how Navigator started losing the browser war in the first place?

    They've got to earn money some way. Netscape is dying. InterNet explorer has won the regular browser war. Opera on the other hand is making lots of money, and they are winning market share slowly but steadily.


    --
  • Yes, and you know why we order CDs of distros? Because distros are huge, and in many cases (i.e. no network) the only reasonable way to install is off a CD. A browser is not very large, and can easily be downloaded.
  • Find a copy of Mosaic. Now that had a configurable cache. :)
  • Not so I've noticed (Opera Build 3.60.0.286, Win32 version / Wine CVS from last week sometime). Loads up nicely, renders great, crashes five seconds later (whether I try to do anything with it or not).

    If you've gotten it to work, details would be appreciated.

    Joe
  • I use Opera mainly because of all the time saving features:
    • Alias for bookmarks
      I only have to type "a", and it goes to Altavista.
    • Name completion
      In addition to www.*.com, it searches www.*.net, www.*.org, or whatever you want it to, in your prefered order.
    • Customizable displaying of pictures
      I can select if it should load and display pictures, only display already loaded pictures, or not display them at all. Very nice when I'm using a modem.
    • Save address info
      I often order stuff online, and when filling out address info, all I have to do is select the right fields, and paste in the info
    Also, I can turn off animated gifs, all colour/layout info (nice for clueless designed pages), and rescale complete pages, including the pictures, not just the text. For the record, I am not associated with Opera Software in any other way than being Norwegian.
  • I have to disagree big time with the first two assessments:
    1. Lame HTML rendering. Umm, ever hear of the W3C? The HTML spec? The reason a lot of pages look screwy in Opera is because of buggered HTML, caused by two things in particular: Brain-dead point'n'drool WYSIWYG editors like FrontPage, and lazy "webmasters" who never bother to check their markups for compliance and portability.
    2. The interface is foreign to someone who accepts the Netscape/M$ paradigm for how a browser should look and feel. If you use it for a few days (and play around with customization) you will really appreciate a lot of its features. Especially the fact that you don't have to spawn a dozen instances of the browser in order to have a dozen different pages all viewable in switchable, full-size windows.
    3. It does cost money (I still think it's worth it). However, I wish Opera would revisit their strategy for marketing to the Linux crowd. We've been hearing about this mythical port for far too long, and it's smelling vaporous. And if they really want the good will and support of the OSS world, they should go open source as well.
    Opera and Cool Edit are the only reasons I still have a Windoze box. Even if your main reason for getting it is to have a pretty HTML validator, it's a worthwhile thing to have.
  • I, personally, have no objections to proprietary software on free platforms.

    However, Opera certainly do need to sort out their attitude. It does not make sense to insult the platform you are porting to and expect people to buy your product.

  • I don't understand why people think the Opera MDI interface is so good. I have a window manager to manage windows, I don't need the app to do that for me. Seems like reinventing the wheel to me...
  • Thats not the point. Saying that free software is usually low quality is just ignorant, especially for a company wanting to enter the linux market (like the guy above me said).

    Linux does not need closed source programs as much as you say. To have popular desktop operating system, you not need $100000000 3d apps, or photoshop, or some other funny apps becuase most people don't need them. Linux need Office suites, web browsers, e-mail clients, and it already has those, and it will have free+open source versions available by mid 2000. In fact, the only closed source apps that Linux needs are games. As of now, there aren't many good and finished oss games (yes, the card games that come with the desktop envirements are fun, but I am talking about glitzy games like Q3).

    Ohh yea, gimp can compete with some commercial software, like PSP.
  • Rol> Why not try notetab with WINE ?

    Failing that, you could always use VMware.

    I can't imagine NoteTab being so complicated that WINE couldn't run it.
  • I totally agree.

    MDI, among other things, obscures all the information I want to have access to in my other windows. In the broken windows interface, MDI is almost necessary, or the taskbar becomes unusable, but this ISN'T WINDOWS, last time I checked, and I won't use a product that uses MDI. Star Office is right out, and if Opera continues with this bad bad course of action, their browser is something that will never be on my system.

    Why should I pay to have the information in my other windows covered? I can live with Netscape's problems if Opera is going to make such a stupid mistake.
  • Now I hope the MOzilla people read this.. I would REALLY like to see aliasable bookmarks. Hitting 'a' to get to altavista, 's' to get to slashdot. Does anyone know of a way to do this NOW in Linux?
    (Maybe KDE hotkeys?)

  • I'm attracted to their tables-capable text only browser as well, I don't think Mozilla has done that.

    I thought that was interesting as well. But I get the impression that it was just a toy one of the programmers hacked together. It sounded like their marketing people (if opera is that large of a company) couldn't wrap their heads around a piece of text-mode software.

  • Are you referring to the same browser I've used for nearly the past two years? There's no arguing the multiple window/single window line because it is much more a matter of personal preference than it is a technical one or one of standards (whatever that means). Now that 3.6 has worked out the bugs in the proxy and plugin support, I use nothing else at work.

    Opera is exactly what I expect from a browser. It is small, fast, configurable, W3C-recommendation compliant (more so than either IE5 or Netscape 4.6), and reliable. The ease of use, a nebulous term at best, is excellent. Others in my office have downloaded the shareware edition after witnessing my use and some of them have continued to use it.

    I was, and continue to be, willing to pay for this in the face of free alternatives for the simple reason that the free browsers do not meet my criteria. If Mozilla matches up, I'll use it. If it doesn't, I'll drop it. When the Linux edition of Opera is released I will test it and if it's as polished as the Windows edition, I will fork over my money and be glad that someone wrote a browser with someone like me in mind.

  • Actually, I've found a distinct increase in noise lately. Most of the articles are pretty boring (AFAIC), and I often find myself equally disinterested in those articles which accumulate a modest 50 or so posts and those which acquire well over a couple hundred or so.

    I have noticed a few comments to the effect that this "Roblimo" person has been posting an incredibly large amount of articles the past few days, but I'm not sure if that causes this paragraph to correlate to the first.. (and I wonder why the moderators don't appreciate my more-than-slightly off sense of humor..)

    And strangely enough, I haven't really noticed any marked increase in posts. In fact, I've gotten quite bored the past few days waiting for an interesting topic, or even a topic I feel is worth talking about to come up.. usually becoming rather.. disappointed.. Maybe I'm just bitter because all of my story ideas get shot down (not that I don't understand why with most of them.. hee hee..). ;)

    Oh, um, wait.. "the past few weeks"? Ah, sorry.. My attention span isn't generally that long. I thought we were talking about the past few hours or something. =L

  • I applaud you. I feel the same way. Maybe I'm spoiled, but dammit I LIKE it, and I think that we can DO it! I would much rather pay for programs that give me freedom such as AbiWord than yet another proprietary crappy program.

  • I was ready to pay before coding began, but I just about begged them to consider using the gtk/gnome libraries for the browser. A couple years passed, and then they said they were using qt.

    I now have qt on my system, but still would have liked having a gtk version.

  • However, Opera certainly do need to sort out their attitude. It does not make sense to insult the platform you are porting to and expect people to buy your product.

    You need to understand something. You need to understand that Opera only is available for Windows at the moment. And, what good windows-software is free .. as in open sourced and GPL'ed?


    --
  • (yes, the card games that come with the desktop envirements are fun, but I am talking about glitzy games like Q3).

    Not a good example, since Quake3Arena will be released on Linux (and win32,mac). But games are still why I boot win98. Check out the free demo of Madden2k if you want to be blown away. I play about 5-10 free demos a week, and I can't think of 5-10 major games that are out in Linux. Add the 3 click from net to gaming experience that you get with win and Linux has a loooooong way to go as a gaming platform.
  • Do you know how it treats PNGs, ie as distinct from GIFs?
    (For an example, check out my listed webpage: if the top-left most PNG block doesn't come out as purple on transparent, it's bugged.)

    Also, anyone have any ideas on how commercial it'll be? It's hardly as though I *want* to pay to use something, on linux, but if it's very VERY good and the only one in its field, I'll consider it...
    Open Source? :)
  • Linux does not need closed source programs as much as you say. To have popular desktop operating system, you not need $100000000 3d apps, or photoshop, or some other funny apps becuase most people don't need them.

    You don't get the point. Regular Joe want to make his own homepage. Then he want something that can compete (or preferrable the program itself) with his pirated Dreamweaver -- that he can (pirate and) use in Linux.

    Regular Joe don't want to relearn all the programs. He want to be able to swap to linux, and have all the software he normally uses available to him in the new OS.

    And - GIMP can compete with PSP -- but it cannot compete with photoshop.


    --

  • Excellent ... a careful and reasoned argument.

    I must say I am starting to agree with you, I am starting to think Cmdr Taco has gone mad what with the buyout and all and his new handle is Roblimo (yup Rob in a Limo).

    CC


  • Actually, I suspect that game engines will be moving into open developement sooner or later as well.

    The problem with games is that they are so much more than they code. They need a story, lots of artwork, motion capture or video clips, music, sounds etc, all of which can usually not be produced by someone with gcc and emacs (though, maybe as the open source philosophee proliferates in non-tech society...)

    Provides for some good question to put to Carmack tomorrow.

    -
    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
  • I totally agree.

    I on the other hand, totally disagree.

    MDI, among other things, obscures all the information I want to have access to in my other windows. In the broken windows interface, MDI is almost necessary, or the taskbar becomes unusable, but this ISN'T WINDOWS, last time I checked, and I won't use a product that uses MDI. Star Office is right out, and if Opera continues with this bad bad course of action, their browser is something that will never be on my system.

    Well, I for one love the Opera interface. I really like Opera's interface with multiple windows within the main one.. You call it MDI - a word I've not heard before (Multiple Display Interface or something?). But, it's great to use. It's not reinventing the wheel, it's making everything much more easily accesible within the browser.

    But, this is a matter of taste, and my tastes may not suit yours.


    --
  • I've worked with the Windows version of Opera before and I wasn't impressed. It is small, true, but so is Mozilla. And the KDE browser isn't half bad either. So why they think a non-free commercial browser will thrive in a free OS with equally good free browsers is beyond me, but I'm not a marketing droid. Opera will, I predict, die off as their business model crumbles. Times are changing, and openness is the new rules to play by. Closed source products have their days numbered. Opera could change, but they won't. And that's why they'll be just another has-been in the long run.
  • From what I understand although Mozilla is free and open source it is *not* GPL. At the time the entire Mozilla project got started the impression I had was that Netscape was looking to get the open source community to do lots of free work for them; was I mistaken?

    One of the biggest problems currently facing all operating systems, perhaps *the* biggest, is the lack of any decent open-source graphical browser that's under the GPL (or a decent variation of it). Considering how incredibly important the browser is (I'd consider it now the most important application) this is mind-boggling!
    --
    Chris Long, Departments of Mathematics & Statistics, Rutgers University
  • Yes!

    Install khotkeys, and asign command like this

    kfmclient openURL http://www.slashdot.org

    to some shortcut.

  • Amazing (Score:1)

    by CC ( 1075 )

    Am I the only one amazed to see a 100 thread discussion about a Windows program on slashdot?

    If so I must be in the wrong place.

    CC

  • Am I the only one amazed to see a 100 thread discussion about a Windows program on slashdot?

    Hook. Line and sinker. I'm biting on far too much bait.

    It's about Opera beeing ported to linux.


    --
  • Now see? That's a good idea. The problem with UIs now is that they are being created by hackers and not by users. If we did some research, we'd discover that the users dictate the types of UI's that work best for them, and then we'd code to that. Not to some inane thought of what we think the UI should be. (Or worse, some bloated themeware that envelopes the entire widgetset.. ouch. .some people don't care what's outside the HTML widget and care more about how damn usable it is. I'm not going for 3r33t surfing here, just useful surfing) Magnwa
  • Back when MSIE 3 came out, and the start of the real dirty browser wars... magazines, especially Ziff Davis ones, were going mad comparing Netscape ith MSIE.. every so often they would compare the two with Opera and Mosaic.

    It's time for another comparison. I want to see the goods. Screen shots of some pages, reviews, etc. I don't have time to do it myself. I'm content fudging around with Netscape and trying to avoid crashes.

    I don't see myself using Opera.. since I can't bring myself to pay for a browser when MSIE runs well under VMWare, which I paid for and find useful.

    I never liked Netscape's text handling. Text handling in all the nix's is quite bad... but even Netscape for Windows (come on Adobe! Do what you did to Windows to Linux! Bring us some nice engines!) looks drab.

    Text is all the wrong size too.. maybe it's because people write for MSIE... but even /. looks not right to me. Do I have time to customize my browser?
  • "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!"

    A lot of posts here that Opera doesn't understand what free is, or otherwise complaining about Opera not being free. I think that most of these posters are still grossly confused between gratis and libre. Opera is neither but this hardly makes it satanspawn.

    TAANSTAFL was first coined in the Great Depression of the US. Signs proclaimed "free lunch", but those seeking freebies during that hard time soon realized that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch", since they had to "endure" sermons. Sometimes I think the preaching and gnuspeak on slashdot is the price paid for free software. Yeah, you don't have to pay money for Mozilla, but you have to endure endless sermons on how it is morally superior to Opera, how its developers are altruistic saints, and how those /.'s who don't know the difference between an assign and an equivalence are nonetheless guaranteed a place in hacker paradise.

  • Re:Amazing (Score:1)

    by CC ( 1075 )

    I know I should cut back on the bait, but a well stuffed hook is required when you fishin' for windoze wienies, they don't usually see a normal sized bait.

    The Opera port has been in the works for quite a while, they just twistin' in the wind trying to figure out how to make $s here.

    This forum has gone from a place for nerds to hang to ... the post sellout thing, a place for wannabes to hang.

    News for turds. Stuff that flatters


    CC
  • what good windows-software is free .. as in open sourced and GPL'ed?

    There's a port of GCC for windows.
    ---
  • it's great to use. It's not reinventing the wheel, it's making everything much more easily accesible within the browser.

    However, it makes the broswer the only thing that IS accessible. If web browsing was ALL I did, then I probably wouldn't have these 20 some odd windows open on the rest of my screen, hmm?

    If all you're doing is web browsing, maybe it works for you. But I know that when I'm browsing, I'm often doing something else, too. Watching logs, chatting, etc. If you're using a WM that uses some braindead construct like a taskbar, then another braindead construct like MDI will probably do you fine. However, if you hate taskbars, and thus don't use them, then MDI is just going to hinder productivity.

    That's the only reason I put up with MDI on Windows, and why I do not put up with MDI on any other system.
  • Look, friend. I am not trying to convince anyone that lynx is in all respects superior to other browsers, OK? Let's not start a stupid browser war about that one. All I say is that for most of my applications lynx is just fine. From time to time I also use Netscape, mainly for leisure. But hey, there are some people who actually work with the web. E.g. most of the databases I use for literature retrieval work fine with lynx, so does Slashdot, Bionet, Nature.com, sciencemag.org, entrez browser and many other sites. Lynx is fast and displays only what I need. Bite me, if you can, my anonymous friend.
    Regards,
    January
  • There actually already exist a textbased browser that can do tables, it even does frames. The name of the browser is W3M and I think it is working really great, renders slashdot as good as it gets in an xterm. And yes, it is gratis!

    Find it here:
    ftp://ei5nazha.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/w3m/
  • Why would we want to have more "webdesigners" using Linux? Heck, why would we want more "webdesigners" at all. Let them make their crap on Win* with Flash, MSHTML and what not.

    /mill
  • I tried mnemonic a little while ago, and its far from done, although it looks promising.. Its true though, a browser needs to be a nice small simple app, not some huge gigantic bloated pig just to parse HTML and hraphics. all that java/javascript nonsense can come later, get the important part first. And use GTK of course, its perdy. :)
  • Is there any such GPL'd project that comes close to this? I see that this editor for HTML has some of the features http://bluefish.linuxbox.com/ Could Bluefish act as a nidus to create a solution?

  • Nobody's going to pay for a closed-source browser, however spiffy, when there's a reasonable selection of respectable open _and_ closed browsers, all of which are free. It's time the Opera folks started a new project.

    I gladly paid $35 for Opera's Windows version, because it was the best performing, fastest loading, most reliable browser for this OS. I think some Linux users will make the leap for the same reasons, regardless of Mozilla's supposed future dominance.

  • 1) Their HTML rendering is quite lame. It doesn't render most simple HTML correctly, so things look 'weird' compared to Navigator/IE. If they can't even get that right, they've got no chance

    Most cases of poor Opera rendering are due to malformed HTML on the Web page you're looking at. Netscape and Microsoft have created browsers that are extremely lax in enforcing HTML syntax, and as a result many lazy Web page developers like me don't make sure our pages are valid HTML.

    Opera, on the other hand, is less forgiving of bad HTML. For this reason, it's a great browser to have around as you are developing and testing a Web site. (Another good tool: The W3C HTML Validator [w3.org].)

    I've been using Opera as my main Windows browser for several months, and the only poor rendering I would blame on Opera is how the browser displays numbered and unnumbered lists. The renderer puts a lot more vertical space between list items than any other browser, and I hope the developers will address this in a future release.

  • Their HTML compatibility was awful (this was the 3.0 release). ... As far as I'm concerned, Opera is nowhere near the browser that Netscape/Mozilla is and is only getting recognition because they're an 'alternative'.

    Early versions of Opera were terrible, but version 3.60 for Windows renders HTML well and supports standard HTML better than any other browser. It also contains more support for Cascading Style Sheets than any of its rivals.

    There are dozens of alternatives to Navigator and Internet Explorer. The reason Opera is getting attention now is because it's getting good.

  • What I hate most is that now half the time the stop button is off the screen because of the shop@netscape thinggy :-(

    Netscape have an option I understand in prefs.js (was that the file) to disable the button... just haven't got around to doing it yet...
  • Well.. according to some, the MPL is a GPL'able license. Not to me, however, but your milage may vary. Since I believe Netscape will take features and code of Mozilla under the wings of the NPL, I do not believe it to be a free license. BUT! That's just my interpretation and speculation.. not the absolute truth :)
  • Humbug. I heard this story five years ago, and I'll be hearing it five years from now...

    "You Free Software people can't build a usable UNIX replacement"
    Oh, wait, we did - GNU/Linux, a modern cross-platform POSIX OS

    "You Free Software people can't build GUI tools for end users"
    Oh, wait, we did - Gimp, used by plenty of experienced digital artists and newbies alike.

    There's always someone who says the next mountain is an impossible climb, and they've been wrong EVERY TIME so far. Why would it be different this time?
  • Do you know how it treats PNGs, ie as distinct from GIFs?
    (For an example, check out my listed webpage: if the top-left most PNG block doesn't come out as purple on transparent, it's bugged.)

    Windows 95 platform,
    Netscape Navigator 4.08: Purple square
    Opera 3.60b3: White square with a purple big-cheeked face

    These are of course older versions, but does that answer your question?
  • I'm waiting to be stomped, SniggleBunny.
    We've sure got a sackful of features (the alternative I suppose would be to hang around in #warez all week scrounging Kai's add-ons, since PS ships with hardly any good add-ons)
    The interface is only "hostile" if you're insistent on treating Gimp like MS Paint. IF you want a kiddy finger-paint package, write your own, this is a serious job and it has a serious tool.
    Much of the more glaring inconsistency is gone in the forthcoming Gimp 1.2 (try 1.1.10 now to see what's coming), and
    If you're one of the zillions who can't find their right mouse button (doesn't Windows have one of those these days?) Gimp 1.2 adds an explicit GUI menu selector too.

    For those of us who've tried PS recently after using Gimp, it's annoying to have the One-Picture, One-Menu, One-Process method. I'd like to get some WORK done here.
    Of course, since it's Free Software you're free to fix all of your perceived problems and see if TigerT et al prefer your "easy" version.
  • In case you didn't know, Wine will run both Opera and Mirc. I tried them both last night.
  • I bet you that IE5 is more standards compliant than opera.

  • Re:Why I can't support Opera (Score:4)

    by Trick ( 3648 ) on Sunday October 10, 1999 @02:19PM (#1625538)
    No, I don't believe absolutely everything that runs on Linux needs to be free -- actually, in either sense of the word. It'd be nice, yes, but I'm willing to admit that a lot of good software that isn't one or both types of "free" might still be good to see on Linux.

    My problem with the Opera people is that they seem to think anything free is shoddy, and the fact that their software isn't free is some kind of incentive to use it. It just sort of flies in the face of everything that created the OS they've decided to port their browser to.

    ---
    Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
  • Well, to be fair to Opera, those comments are mainly aimed at IE. People say "Microsoft gives away IE for free, so why should I pay for Opera?" and Opera responds by pointing out, correctly, that IE isn't *really* free - it's subsidized by the cost of Windows and other Microsoft products.
  • I second that. How long has it been anyway? I've been hearing for the past year or 2 now (at least) how "oh, Opera's working on a port and it'll be out RSN"... yeah. Okay. Sure, we believe you.

    Not.

    Come on folks. At this rate, they MIGHT finish their port of Opera to Linux and the Qt widget set (blah. I dont care so much about the license of Qt - I just think it's ugly. Give me Gtk or give me death.) before Mozilla gets a final version out.

    Also, it's kinda funny how Opera claims their browser is more up-to-date than anyone else's... Hmm. They don't support HTML 4. (Netscape and IE do.) They don't yet have support for CSS 2. (IE supports it, albeit somewhat brokenly, and Mozilla is aiming for complete CSS2 support.) Do they support DOM?

    Come on, Opera. Lets see some progress here. You've been working on ports to several different platforms for how long now? And have any of the ports been completed? How many new versions have you released for Windows while the different ports have languished? Was the original source written with any kind of portability in mind AT ALL? Or is it being completely rewritten because it was too Win32-centric?

    I think an explanation of this is in order.

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