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Opera 6.0 for Linux Released

e1en0r writes "Opera released 6.0 for Linux and 6.02 for Windows today. The new features include cookie management and plug-in support. I've been using the beta release of Opera 6 for a while now and it's great."

13 of 414 comments (clear)

  1. This is how it was meant to be! by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 3, Insightful
    This is the sort of news that makes me think that things really are getting better and improving. Not so much because of Opera itself, though it is a fine browser indeed, but more because there are now plenty of good competitors in the web browsing arena.

    Especially on Linux, there are at least 3 excellent browsers, or 4 if you count Galeon/Gecko as separate to Mozilla, with none of them having a significant lead over the others as far as I'm aware.

    This happy situation, with all the browsers competing against each other on a level playing field unfortunately does not (yet) exist on Windows, but lets hope that soon as Mozilla and Opera both improve the market will balance out again.

    Hurray for the benefits of competition!

    1. Re:This is how it was meant to be! by d3xt3r · · Score: 1, Insightful
      Especially on Linux, there are at least 3 excellent browsers, or 4 if you count Galeon/Gecko as separate to Mozilla, with none of them having a significant lead over the others as far as I'm aware.

      As long as Windows has 95% of the desktop OS market and IE is the preferred browser on that platform, all of the the browser competition on the Linux front is somewhat meaningless.

      I am thrilled to have great web browsers for Linux (my platform of choice), but 4 browsers for a platform that has less than 2% of the deskotp market does nothing to sway web developers to target anything other than IE.

      Maybe some decent web browsers will help the cause to increase Linux's presence in the desktop market. I guess only time will tell.

    2. Re:This is how it was meant to be! by Glytch · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As long as Windows has 95% of the desktop OS market and IE is the preferred browser on that platform, all of the the browser competition on the Linux front is somewhat meaningless.

      Not to Linux users.

  2. Opera as fast alternative by Zelet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When I first started comparing browsers Mozilla was slow as dirt and really buggy (fixed since then) and IE was/is insecure so I looked into Opera.

    At first I thought that the required ads were going to get annoying, but in truth, they weren't that bad at all. Plus, if I hated them that much I could pay a small fee and get rid of them.

    But the best part about Opera is it is the fastest html renderer there is out on the market as far as I am concerned. A second high point to Opera, is that it is completely standard compliant. Unlike some browsers... which one you ask? Um... IE maybe, but that could just be me.

    The winner in the pack now has to be Mozilla, but a close second right now is Opera.

    --
    ...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
  3. Re:ASP support? by NanoGator · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, ASP is a server side scripting language. Opera doesnt interpret .ASP, the webserver does. If a site using ASP (an MS technology btw...) doesnt render correctly on your machine, its not Opera's fault, it is the site developer's.

    One thing that might help is to change how Opera identifies itself. On the version I have, it defaults to IE 5, when I have a problem I switch it to Netscape. I occasionally have good results. The reason for this is sometimes an ASP or PHP site will detect your browser and alter its content based on that.

    FYI :)

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  4. Re:A banner in the browser. by rob_canoe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Which part of "Buy Opera today - For the best internet experience Ad Free" do you not understand?

  5. Re:ASP support? by Havokmon · · Score: 5, Insightful
    One thing that might help is to change how Opera identifies itself. On the version I have, it defaults to IE 5, when I have a problem I switch it to Netscape.

    Except it could be argued, How are we to level the playing field (removing IE-only sites), if we browse pretending to be IE?

    --
    "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
  6. Re:Java by tom.allender · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Java != JavaScript

  7. Re:the killer by fmaxwell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can block the ads by adding these lines to your hosts file. You can also add these servers to the Junkbuster block file.

    Or you could just pay the reasonable registration fee instead of trying to find some technological means to cheat the people that wrote Opera.

    It's ad-sponsored or user-sponsored. Either put up with the ads or register the browser.

  8. DOM support... by jvmatthe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have been working with javascript, DOM, CSS2 for fun in the evenings, and so far Opera doesn't do enough of what I want it to do. Mozilla seems to be the only browser that supports the DOM as outlined by the W3C, and for that reason, I won't be using it, regardless of how fast it is.

    See an example of what I've been doing with Mozilla here. It's a card game that I enjoy on my Handspring Visor and "ported". Works great in Mozilla, but dies in every other browser I've tried.

    Ah well. Go Moz!

  9. Re:Not how it was meant to be! by ender81b · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can't say much about a native FreeBSD version but as for the rendering web sites improperly.. that isn't Opera's fault. Running silicon.com through the W3C's HTML validator brings up around 89 errors. This is not the fault of opera it is the fault of sloppy web design which has become prevalent around the web.

    The reson they, probably, ignored your request was the fact that you where lucky it ran at all since Opera supports, and strictly adheres to, the W3C's standards. Sloppy HTMl,XHTML,XML, etc is very prevalent today and only recently have company's begin to insist on error-free code - something the rest of the programming world tries to do but most Web coders ignored for years. If you are going to bring up the "browser-blah renders it fine" argument yes, it will and Opera won't because opera doesn't have the same type of error control built in on purpose. Strict standards and no more unsupported tags (Netscape was famous for this) are a must to have a truly interoperable web.

    BTW, i am curious to see what you mean by 'loads of sites.' I use Opera excuslively and haven't had any problems for months. Even silicon.com was usable. make sure Opera is set to identify itself as 'opera' and note MSIE or Netscape - sometimes people use activex controls or other unsupported crap which might be what is causing silicon.com to not work.

  10. Re:A banner in the browser. by Isldeur · · Score: 3, Insightful



    I think he's right. What are these extra features which are worth 39$? I would love to have a reason to support these people but the free alternatives (mostly konqueror 3.0 but I suppose mozilla as well) do 97% of what I need. I really would love to find something to differentiate enough that it's worth +$39...

  11. Re:A banner in the browser. by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 3, Insightful
    And you don't need a PhD in linguistics to understand that "free" has two independant meanings in English and you (and the person you are responding to) are using the shallow one. Opera (the ad-less version) is non-free in *both* senses of the word, freedom and gratis, Opera with the ads is free in the "gratis" sense of the word, but still not free in the "freedom" sense of the word (can't see the source code to modify or fix the thing yourself). And there exist some people who do really care a lot about that to the point where they will pick a tool with available source code over one without. I'm not one of them, I use Opera myself, but to assume that they are always referring to price when they say "software should be free" is to misrepresent their position. Even though I don't agree entirely with them, It still bothers me to see their position misrepresented over and over. It's not fair.


    I do have one problem with the "software should all be free" attitude, but it is that people refuse to see that something which is open source is harder to charge money for since people could pirate it with almost no effort at all, and thus software that is free in the freedom sense of the word yet not free in the gratis sense of the word is rather rare. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. I was about to mention Linux
    distros, except that with them the price they charge is entirely on the honor system. It is
    perfectly legal to buy one Redhat CD and install it on 100 computers, then burn a copy of it for your friends to install on their computers. It is perfectly legal to download the whole ISO image and burn the CD without ever even buying one initial copy to start with. The only reason they can make money at the model is because there are enough people that are willing to pay them money anyway even though they are not legally required to to get the distribution. This is because most of their customer base consists of "fans" and others who want to see them do well. That model doesn't work if Redhat use was expanded to the computer using populace at large.


    But saying, "these people don't realize that freedom of use inevitably leads to gratis distribtion" (which is my point) is very different from saying "These people are lazy-ass bums who want everything to be gratis" (which is how your post ends up implying things).

    --

    Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.