Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Opera 26 Released, First Stable Linux Release In More Than A Year
Opera 26 (based on Chromium 39) was released today for Windows, Mac and Linux. This is the first stable Opera version available for Linux since Opera 12.16, which was released almost a year and a half ago.
For Linux, the Opera 26 download page only offers Ubuntu 64bit deb binaries. According to the Opera for Linux FAQ, that's because:
"To provide the best experience, we focused our initial efforts on what we believe to be the most commonly-used desktop distribution, Ubuntu."
The FAQ adds that the license permits re-packaging Opera for use on other distributions, so Opera can be packaged or even included in a software repository for other Linux distributions.
For those of you who haven't kept an eye on the Opera development, it's important to mention that the web browser now uses the Blink engine (since version 15 on Windows), a fork of the WebCore component of WebKit that's also used in Chrome, and it includes quite a few changes and new features, like:
- Discover (shows news and other articles in various categories, somewhat like Stumbleupon);
- graphical bookmarks with sharing support;
- improved Speed Dial with Coast-style tiles instead of screenshots (this is optional and you can still use the old Speed Dial);
- integrated PDF viewer;
- supports Pepper Flash (but it doesn't come bundled with Opera);
- tab previews on mouse over (not enabled by default);
- support for H.264 and MP3 (on Linux, this requires FFmpeg 2.3+);
- HiDPI support;
- improved Opera Turbo;
- more.
Here are a few Opera 26 (stable) for Linux screenshots:
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| Graphical bookmarks |
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| Bookmark sharing |
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| Opera Discover |
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| Opera integrated PDF viewer |
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| Tab previews |
Compared to Opera 25, Opera 26 brings browser data import, print preview and bookmark sharing along with various under the hood changes.
Download Opera 26 stable for Linux
(64bit deb only)
Notes:
- when installing the Opera 26 deb, you'll be asked if you want to enable the Opera repository, useful for receiving automatic Opera updates;
- if you had the previous stable Opera installed (12.16), you won't receive an update - that's because the old package was called "opera" while the new package is "opera-stable" however, if you have the Opera repository enabled, simply install "opera-stable".
For Arch Linux, you can install Opera stable via AUR.
Update: for how to get Flash and H.264 to work in Opera under Ubuntu 14.04, 14.10 or 15.04 / Linux Mint 17 or 17.1 and derivatives, see THIS article.
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