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."

Comments

My Obligation

[jonnyfish]

It is my duty as a random Slashdot idiot to ask the following:

isn't BSD dead?

Re:My Obligation

[bayankaran]

Yes, an Opera to accompany the dead is nice.

Re:My Obligation

[pfish]

It's still very much alive...

It may not be perfered by many, but it's still heavy in development, and prefered by many ISPs.

Re:My Obligation

[Dannon]

Since they've got Opera now, it'll be a little while longer. At least until the fat lady sings.

Re:My Obligation

[dacarr]

Opera has an OS/2 version. You figure it out.

Re:My Obligation

[jo42]

Mebbe its time you installed HeadExtractionDevice.rpm on yer leenooks box - as in extract head from rectum... :-p

Re:My Obligation

[OzJimbob]

Too true. My boss at the ISP I sysadmin at started insisting 6 months ago that we use FreeBSD on every machine instead of Linux. And I recently switched my own web server over to FreeBSD and haven't looked back. While Linux is making in-roads on the desktop with distros like Lycoris, FreeBSD is where it's at if you want a plain, powerful unix server environment. But then, now that software like Opera is available, FreeBSD is becoming more usable on the desktop as well!

Re:My Obligation

[BrookHarty]

I wasnt happy with 4.6 FreeBSD, but when 4.7 came out, KDE3 compiled. Xfree drivers that worked for my video card. Koffice compiled without problem. Everything worked for KDE/Gnome.

The biggest problem I had with FreeBSD was ports didnt compile, but 4.7 most ports I tried compiled out of the box. Only grip I have is, its still using gcc 2.95, while 3.2 is out. But I hear 5.0 is completely GCC3.3 based.

Re:My Obligation

[reg]

Have you tried installing a second compiler for ports... gcc 3.2.1 (which is in current) wont buy you anything with the base system, other than 15% slower compile times. But you can install the gcc32 port, and then use 'make CC=gcc32 CXX=g++32' to build ports such as KDE or Gnome which might benefit from the newer compiler. You might also want to insure that you use the correct -march setting for your machine also, because gcc 3.2.1 will generate worse code than 2.95 if you just leave it to the default arch (vanilla 386).

Regards,
-Jeremy

Good to hear

[Helmholtz Coil]

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.

Re:Good to hear

[phoenix_rizzen]

It *IS* available in the ports tree. Has been for several weeks. /usr/ports/www/opera It's currently at 6.10 B1, though. Expect an update shortly to 6.10.

Re:Jesus christ - front page and nine replies so f

[NanoGator]

"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'.

Re:Jesus christ - front page and nine replies so f

[unicron]

Maybe it's a Halloween/Zombie thing.

Dad, You killed the zombie Flanders! He was a zombie?

The real news

[schussat]

The real news here isn't simply that the BSD version of Opera 6.1 has been released, but that 6.1 is now available generally for Linux -- both i*86 and PowerPC platforms. This is a really significant development, and it means that, as of right now, the Linux version of Opera is now at a higher release number than for Windows (which is at 6.05 right now). The Opera folks are really moving on Linux development.

-schussat

Nice

[rppp01]

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.

I'm amazed Opera did that

[bogie]

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.

Re:I'm amazed Opera did that

[talks_to_birds]

Interesting concept:

"..there must be 10 times less BSD desktop users.."

"Ten times less.."

Is that times a negative ten?

Or maybe "one-tenth"?

hmm.. a real puzzle.

t_t_b

Re:I'm amazed Opera did that

[Jace of Fuse!]

there must be 10 times less BSD desktop users

Your probably right, but you know what? I'm glad developers don't always pay attention to things like that, because if they did Windows would be the only OS with any support what-so-ever. I'd dare say 95% of all desktop machines run Windows, if not more. So by your logic, supporting Linux or Mac OSX is a waste of time.

I happen to personally really like FreeBSD.

Re:I'm amazed Opera did that

[RazzleDazzle]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24060.html 10 times less?

It's a shame

[RatBastard]

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.

A real Review

[evilviper]

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>

Re:Presto - Where'd It Go?

[13Echo]

It is looking like there will be a bit of a delay for the Linux and BSD versions of Presto, until some time after the Windows release. That is probably why they are trying to get 6.1 as stable as possible- to gear up for 7.0.

Actually, I don't expect Presto to arrive on Linux until December or January, at the earliest.

Re:why do this?

[KjetilK]

I think it is as simple as there being many free software geeks at Opera, some like Linux, some like FreeBSD, and one of the FreeBSD geeks figured that Opera is easily portable, so it was just a matter for somebody to sit down and do a all-nighter to get it done. So, the answer to that question is probably: Just because we could.