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4th 'Technology Preview' Of Opera For Linux
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.
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.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
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.
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.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
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.
http://www.opera.com/new.html 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.
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
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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:
.plan files for the developers. In these plans we'll make all
- -------------------------
--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
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 --
Now, now. You'll never beat Microsoft if that's your attitude.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
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
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
here
/.ed). I found the response at opera.no to be much better.
opera.com is dreadfully slow (prolly
--
E_NOSIG
There isn't a mirror at linuxapps (at least, I couldn't find it). Opera said there was.
Sorry.
--
E_NOSIG
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...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
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.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Yeah. Sometimes to relieve netscape related stress I try to get lynx to crash.
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.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned