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Opera Releases Stable FreeBSD Browser
1nsane0ne writes "The Register is reporting that Opera has released a production FreeBSD version. It appears to have fixed some of the problems that I found in a few hours of playing around with the betas and will be interesting to test a bit more."
It is my duty as a random Slashdot idiot to ask the following:
isn't BSD dead?
a web browser for freebsd is like playing quake on my stereo. freebsd, just like every other non-Mac, non-Windows OS, belongs on a server that nobody ever logs in to.
Very good to hear. I love my FreeBSD desktop dearly, and one of the last ties I had to enabling Linux compatibility was a release version of Opera. So far I have yet to find a better combination of
- low-profile,
- high speed, and
- functionality
in a single browser. Most of the other browsers I've come across were of the "choose any one of the above" variety. I've found niche uses for all of them, but Opera was the best choice on a old P75 for me.Who would think that a dead browser being released on a dead operating system would call for such little commentary?
That being said - OpenBSD forever!
damn... freebsd is dead may this comment be with you!
-JAPAN: ol yor beys ar bilong tu as! -AH!
"Who would think that a dead browser... "
Define dead. Percentage-wise, IE is the only browsezr that's alive.
Somehow they've found money to keep developing new versions of Opera, so I wouldn't be so quick to call it 'dead'.
"Derp de derp."
Maybe it's a Halloween/Zombie thing.
Dad, You killed the zombie Flanders! He was a zombie?
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
-schussat
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
I am glad to see Opera available to yet another platform. Perhaps Opera is trying to become the netscape of Unix-land.
Opera is a lot faster than Mozilla, and I think it is a prime browser. I've been using it off and on for almost 2 years (I knew a guy who was from Norway, and was huge on this browser even back then).
This is awesome. Way to go Opera. Congrats FreeBSD.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Now just point it over here. I think it runs on a BSD machine.
An appeaser, said Churchill, feeds the crocodile in the hope that it will eat him last. But sometimes the croc eats him first anyway. For months, the US, Britain and Canada had warned the Indonesian government about terrorists operating within its borders. So had Singapore and Malaysia. President Megawati's administration responded by calling Washington anti-Muslim. The American ambassador was publicly denounced by her vice-president. Hassan Wirayuda, the foreign minister, said in February that the outside world's fears of Islamic terrorism in Indonesia were overblown and that in Jakarta 'we laugh at it'. Ha-ha. From government contacts to police indifference, the administration's strategy was to deny the crocodile existed and then quietly slip him the la carte menu.
Now, Indonesian stocks are down, the rupiah's in the toilet, the national carrier's flying empty, and the official tourism websites have switched to continuously updated info on dead tourists, safe in the knowledge that they're unlikely to be getting any new bookings from live ones. 'We're finished,' says the chairman of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce. The members of the Maroubra Lions Rugby League Club, who visited Bali at this time every year, won't be back. On Saturday night after dinner, the blokes agreed to babysit while the wives went out dancing. They didn't return. On Monday, Craig Salvatori put his two young daughters back on the plane to Sydney and told reporters he had to stay to 'look for mummy'. He found her in the morgue a couple of hours later, so badly burned she was identifiable only by her jewellery. But not to worry, Mr Wirayuda: if the Western partygoers are fleeing, the high-rolling Islamofascists are here to stay. On Monday, for the first time, Mrs Megawati's government conceded that al-Qa'eda are operating inside the country.
The slaughter of hundreds is, relative to population, an Australian 9/11, with the same heart-rending details of people clawing desperately through the rubble in search of husbands, wives, children. When Osama's boys hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the root-cause crowd, after some pro forma regret about the loss of life, could barely conceal their admiration for the exquisite symbolism of the targets, the glittering monuments to American militarism and capitalism. The New Statesman dismissed the victims as Wall Street types who made the mistake of voting for Bush rather than Ralph Nader.
If you had to pick anywhere on the planet where Bush voters are thin on the ground, Bali's hard to beat. Lots of Aussie beach bums, Scandinavian backpackers, German stoners, braying English public-school types taking a year off to find themselves, but not many registered Republicans. This mass murder was clearly going to be harder to excuse, but the root-causers gamely rose to the occasion. The Sydney Morning Herald's Margo Kingston fretted over 'whether we've respected and nurtured the place we love to visit or colonised it with our wants... Maybe part of it is the lack of services for locals. A completely inadequate hospital, for instance, so graphically exposed in the aftermath of the horror. Some people -- foreigners like us, elite big-city Indonesians -- make their fortunes. Have residents lost their place, their power to define it? Did the big money fail to give enough back to the people who belong there, whose home it is?', etc., etc. Well, if the insensitivity of Western tourism is the root cause, Margo can relax: it's not gonna be a problem any more. Whether or not, as Margo would say, poverty breeds terrorism, in Indonesia last weekend's terrorism will certainly breed poverty.
While we're singing the old favourites, here's Bruce Haigh with a timeless classic. Mr Haigh was an Australian diplomat in Indonesia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabi
Well, that don't prove nothing. I mean look at mozilla, its still under development even though it just keeps getting more bloated and unstable. Or for that matter you could take freebsd itself.
Can enjoy the pathetic advertware that windows users have to put up with
at last BSD is gaining ground
Still at least Mozilla is completely free of that crap and costs a wallet busting $0.00 unlike Operas "deal with the crap or put up the cash" based business model
thanks but no thanks
Feel free to chalk this up as a "BSD is dead post", but considering how few people use linux as a desktop, there must be 10 times less BSD desktop users. Really I'm not trying to troll, but there are just not nearly as many bsd desktop users as there are linux ones.
That said I'm surprised Opera would port for that small a user base, especially considering its a payware browser. I guess the same could have been said for Beos which never had a large user base.
Anyway good for Opera. Its too bad the other 99.999% of Desktop ISV's out there ignore any linux or nix, that isn't OSX. I keep waiting money in hand, but year after year they never come, Sigh.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
*BSD died this morning. God rest *BSD's soul..
Your average Slashdot poster is a zombie 365.25 days a year anyway. :)
Mmmmmmmmmarf, BRAINS!
That being said, as each day passes it's going to be harder and harder to pry Mozilla from my cold dead hands, especially with such great add-on software.
How many people out there are actualy sitting on their FreeBSD desktop wondering "Gee, I wonder when I'm going to get Opera or IE for my OS."
Linux has already filled the the niche of free Unix for desktops, and will completely fill the niche for servers. *BSD is Dead.
I just heard some sad news on Slashdot - operating system BSD (Berkshire Systematic Distribution) was found dead in a run down flat in London, England this morning. Apparently, it had only 3 users. I'm sure it will it missed by the Slashdot community - even if you aren't stupid enough to have used it, there's no denying its impact on the advancement of shitpiles of the 21st Century. Truly a worthless icon.
It's a shame that the IE VS Netscape war has made it almost impossible for most companies to make a living selling good browsers (or even email clients). I have no problem paying a reasonable amount of money for a quality product.
You don't want to pay for it? Fine. Use the advert version. Or don't use it at all.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Hmm.. 6.1 is groovy, but I was actually hoping for a release of 7.0 (Presto) at the end of this month. Anyone know what happened to it?
"...for that matter you could take freebsd itself... " ...please! *bad-dum-CHING!*
"Derp de derp."
Having Opera come out with a native browser for FreeBSD is a good thing but what is really needed is decent Java support.
Yahoo's reason for choosing PHP over Java/J2EE, is simply due to poor Java (especially threads) support in FreeBSD.
I am not using FreeBSD because Java support totally sucks compared to Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
On sale for $29, but checks out at $39.
Way to go Opera!!!
Dead = not growing or gaining an audience.
Oh, and I'm sure if 2 FreeBSD users buy opera they have paid for the 'porting costs.'
It is official; Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
...that BSD is... no, no, it doesn't tell me that. It tells me that Opera must be very portable, since they wouldn't have invested too much effort on the *BSD desktop market. Really, I'm surprised that this required much effort at all since the BSDs run X and most of the major X-based desktops anyway. I mean, I can see how you'd have trouble porting from Windows to *NIX, but once you've ported to one *NIX, the rest shouldn't be that difficult unless you've shot yourself in the foot, which the Opera developers plainly haven't.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
After all the caos in Linuxland people wants stability offered by BSD systems. Unless, the linux guys want to PLAY all day long applying patches here and there, trying different file systems and so on. It is good to have choices, but not if you want to do real work.
[eds. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that you perform keeping the system clean and building is what provides the platform for the obsessives and the prima donnas to have their moments in the sun. In the end, we need you all; in order to go forwards we must first avoid going backwards.
To the paranoid conspiracy theorists - yes, I work for Apple too. No, my resignation wasn't on Steve's direct orders, or in any way related to work I'm doing, may do, may not do, or indeed what was in the tea I had at lunchtime today. It's about real problems that the project faces, real problems that the project has brought upon itself. You can't escape them by inventing excuses about outside influence, the problem stems from within.
To the politically obsessed - give it a break, if you can. No, the project isn't a lemonade stand anymore, but it's not a world-spanning corporate juggernaut either and some of the more grandiose visions going around are in need of a solid dose of reality. Keep it simple, stupid.
To the grandstanders, the prima donnas, and anyone that thinks that they can hold the project to ransom for their own agenda - give it a break, if you can. When the current core were elected, we took a conscious stand against vigorous sanctions, and some of you have exploited that. A new core is going to have to decide whether to repeat this mistake or get tough. I hope they learn from our errors.
Future
I started work on FreeBSD because it was fun. If I'm going to continue, it has to be fun again. There are things I still feel obligated to do, and with any luck I'll find the time to meet those obligations.
However I don't feel an obligation to get involved in the political mess the project is in right now. I tried, I burnt out. I don't feel that my efforts were worthwhile. So I won't be standing for election, I won't be shouting from the sidelines, and I probably won't vote in the next round of ballots.
You could say I'm packing up my toys. I'm not going home just yet, but I'm not going to play unless you can work out how to make the project somewhere fun to be again.
= Mike
--
Amen. Spaghetti gives me a headache.
I've been using Opera [v6.02] on FreeBSD for some time now with no problems--what's the big deal?
So now the people who use linux have reached the level of Microsoft, with their beat on the small fry?
Just because the apparent user base is smaller means that you should no longer pay attention to a used product?
Based on these questions and the apparent answers above, we should extrapolate this further to show that microsoft has a far greater use ration comparing Microsoft to linux on the desktop than linux has to BSD. So in that light, opera should also put no time in their efforts to develope for Linux. Simply follow the croud in their development of Windows based solutions.
So an operating system gets media attention for being a grass roots movement, makes a profit for some and the makes it to the point where you have the distributors charging you $99 for the media (which I last remember being the price for Windows XP media). And people start taking on the additude of those using the proprietary software.
My spelling and gramma may suck, but there is still something rotten going on here.
They probably 'found' the money that was invested by people like me purchasing it.
:):):)
Fran
Fran
:):):)
1st 1st Poster of the new Millennium!
Since this is severly lacking, I thought I'd let you know how Opera actually works (you know, instead of just saying how happy/unhappy I am, that it exists).
I liked one think about the pre-release beta version... I didn't see any banner ads. It was likely accepting my Linux registration, despite not being the linux version.
The release (6.1) does not accept a Linux registration key, and you have to register all over again... Understandable, but still irritating.
That said, this is far better than the initial beta, or the Linux version under emulation. Just plain and simply, it is far more stable... I have yet to have it crash on me. Athough I've only been using it for a few hours, this is a very very good sign.
Additionally, I was previously unable to paste text from a webpage in Opera into AbiWord, and a couple other apps. That has now gone away, and the clipboard is working (mostly) as it should.
<RANT>
That's step one. Now all they have to do is *completely* redesign the interface and I'll be a happy Opera user. Since that's probably not in the cards, I'll continue to use Opera as little as possible.
</RANT>
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Your average Slashdot poster is a zombie 365.25 days a year anyway. :)
/. user, that you've been around /. for a while. Taking into consideration leap "years" shows that you're one not to get caught out by /. loosers who rip to shreds any post that has too little information to convey the posters opinion absolutely completely. These /. loosers most often ram your own opinion down your throat as if it is thiers and nobody elses, as if you deserve it for not being quite verbose enough. They have a need to add and blow out of proportion the smallest and most irrelevant amount of information as if it is what matters most, in a pursuit to show everyone how much better they are than the original poster.
I can see, not just by your 5 digit user id or your accurate depiction of the average
I stand ready, poised for such a reply.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
why does the company even bother doing this? *BSD has already got an excellent Linux emulation system and they can run Linux version of Opera.
Why? Why? Why does the company do this?
I can never understand...
Only took 23 hours.
Users thinking that Opera is dead should be reading Slashdot a little bit more carefully. This "small time" browser is very quickly becoming the leading source of components for embedded systems' web browsers (it's small screen rendering is the only way to go). This is not to talk about the accomplishments it has made on PC and workstation platforms, without a doubt it contains one of the fastest page rendering subsystems out there. I am willing to bet anyone that Opera will be a little bit more than rich by years end.
So when's Opera going to port to my platform? My SE/30 is just dying to run Opera on it's black and white 512x342 screen. I bet the ad banners won't even fit.
OK, I'm only kidding. Partially. *grin*
Constitutionally Correct