Opera Desktop Team

Opera OLPC Edition

By Claudio Santambrogio. Tuesday, 23. January 2007, 15:33:15

This is a special edition of the Opera desktop version - the Opera OLPC Edition.

We have been testing Opera on the OLPC laptop since we received the "lean-mean-green-machine", as some here at the office like to call it. I have been keeping both the Opera page on the OLPC Wiki as well as my own blog up-to-date about work on it. We feel the time to be ready to show you the progress we have made.

A few notes about this package:

This is (almost) a normal desktop build - so you can run it on any Linux box - but…

…you really want to read this first, before installing it:

This is a build with statically linked Qt, as are our .1 builds - but the static builds are usually made with gcc 2.95 for compatibility reasons. However, this build is made with gcc 4.1 in order to avoid a nasty issue on the laptop: the builds made with gcc 2.95 kill the machine when you run some javascript. (This one doesn't so you can turn javascript back on, if you were running without).

The package ships with a custom opera6rc:

; Put any default settings here that are overridable by users

[User Prefs]
Force DPI=96
Show Menu=0
Minimum Font Size=12
Show panel toggle=0
Button Set=/usr/share/opera/skin/olpc_skin.zip
Toolbar Configuration=/usr/share/opera/ini/olpc_toolbar.ini

[Fonts]
Toolbar=18,4,0,0,0,0,DejaVu LGC Sans [unknown]
Panel=18,4,0,0,0,0,DejaVu LGC Sans [unknown]
Dialog=18,4,0,0,0,0,DejaVu LGC Sans [unknown]

If you install this package on some other Linux box than it was intended for, you might want to back up the original /etc/opera6rc first.

The package comes with a custom olpc_skin.zip and a custom olpc_toolbar.ini: when installing the package, they will be preselected by default. However, when running the package directly from the tarball without installing it, both the skin and toolbar will not be applied automatically. Also, there is a bug in the Preferences dialog that prevents Opera from detecting two toolbars in the default location. Since we decided to also ship the default toolbar, this will be the only one appearing in the toolbar section in the Preferences. If you select it, there is no way in the GUI to revert to the olpc_toolbar - you'll need to copy it from the default location /usr/share/opera/ini/olpc_toolbar.ini to your profile. Note that some icons in the skin are missing.
To install the build on the OLPC laptop you most likely want to grab the RPM package, then install it with
```
rpm -i opera-9.12-20070122.10-static-qt.i386-en.rpm
```
or the -U flag if you have installed Opera previously and you are now just upgrading.

We have also uploaded tarballs and a DEB package for anybody running either some other distro on the machine, or for those that have problems to get the RPM to install. To install from the tarballs follow these instructions:
```
$ tar jxvf opera-9.12-20070122.10-static-qt.i386-en-544.tar.bz2
$ cd opera-9.12-20070122.10-static-qt.i386-en-544
$ sudo ./install.sh
```

Note also that we have only tested on a BTest-1 machine with default system installation - other machines than this might have their own issues. This is not a final build, but a development snapshot.

And now for to the fun part: download your build, and play with it!

We would very much appreciate as much feedback as possible! How does Opera run on your OLPC XO?

Download
Opera OLPC Edition

OLPC skin

Help us help you!New weekly build

Comments

« Previous 1 2

bexs # 1. February 2007, 19:16

Windows build this week?

chalo48 # 2. February 2007, 03:01

vote for opera

http://browserwar.info/

tarc # 2. February 2007, 08:45

It's good, but ... there are no build for FreeBSD 5.x >:-[

Abaddon # 2. February 2007, 13:10

Operaplugin wrapper crashes:

operapluginwrap[6565]: segfault at 00000000000004d1 rip 00000000f7dbf9f6 rsp 00000000ffe3bed0 error 4
operapluginwrap[6769]: segfault at 00000000000004d1 rip 00000000f7d359f6 rsp 00000000ffe11c40 error 4
operapluginwrap[6826]: segfault at 00000000000004d1 rip 00000000f7dc69f6 rsp 00000000ffd275b0 error 4
operapluginwrap[6837]: segfault at 00000000000004d1 rip 00000000f7d7a9f6 rsp 00000000ffd6ee00 error 4

Older versions (for example stable release of Opera) also crash. It's probably caused by Flash 9.

masterofopera # 4. February 2007, 15:52

"vote for opera"

"http://browserwar.info/"

YES! of course, (it is my obligation =

I have written this

Best SPEED, best equipped,
best resisstance against bad
software from NET, best
customization , best comfort,
Opera is like a swiss army
knife, most (BAD) expiriots
inkompatible. best security,
fewest security holes, no
unpatched security holes
(FireFox and internet explorer
has unpatched holes!!!!!
-----------------------------

Look here:

http://secunia.com/product/10615/?task=advisories

http://secunia.com/product/4227/?task=advisories
http://secunia.com/product/12434/?task=advisories

http://secunia.com/product/12366/?task=advisories
http://secunia.com/product/11/?task=advisories

manosantonaros # 9. February 2007, 05:17

Nice!

ssb22 # 30. September 2007, 13:20

I like the one-button zoom control (9 and 0) but I wish it was a bit coarser. I have a medical condition that makes my eyesight highly variable, and sometimes I need to quickly make the text larger or smaller, but why do I have to press 9 or 0 about 20 or 30 times (and the OLPC has keyboard repeat disabled so you can't just keep your finger on it). An option for coarser control (perhaps by default) would be much appreciated. Also, sometimes if you have scrolled half way down a page and then change the font size, the page's scroll position changes far too much. I'd expect the first word of the page to remain the first word of the page as the zoom changes, but it doesn't (and I can't figure out what the rules are). This is particularly annoying when you have a giant font.

bethf # 19. December 2007, 20:44

Excellent that you guys have provided this, the default browser on the XO machine that I just got just doesn't give you any options for customizing anything. This is not a criticism of the olpc, mind you, I think the stuff they provide is great for the purpose.

One thing that I just cannot figure out in Opera: how do I increase the font size of the menu items? And here I mean just the menu items from the actual 'Menu'. I have been able to get a reasonable size for everything else in the interface, but I just cannot get those items to change. And on the XO they are microscopic.

interrobang # 21. December 2007, 04:15

I'm using it right now. It's 1000% better than the Firefox this computer comes with. Thank you for making this! Any advice about getting Flash to work?

ThePurple # 22. December 2007, 08:30

I'm using it on my wonderful G1G1 laptop and it's a MAJOR improvement over the Browse activity they have(a HIGHLY modified Firefox) This includes tabs, bookmarks and even torrents. Sadly the torrent engine runs VERY slowly on this little machine and could use some streamlining in the XO edition.

otakuj462 # 23. December 2007, 03:29

I am also using Opera on my G1G1 XO laptop, and I also agree that it is extraordinarily better than the stripped-down XULRunner they have installed. XULRunner is on the XO is slow, feature-poor, and extremely unstable. Opera does a commendable job of feeling snappy, and not chewing through my XO's limited memory. Bravo for a job well done! I hope you continue to support this project.
For those who are interested in setting up Opera on the XO, please see: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Opera
Flash doesn't seem to work though, even though it does on XO's XULRunner.

masonsimon # 25. December 2007, 23:13

this is amazing! I just got an OLPC for christmas and opera is the first thing I installed. It feels so much faster than the built-in browser; good job!

Ninjakitten # 27. December 2007, 23:27

Thank you for doing this! I'm another G1G1 XO person. :) I made a post in the forums listing the smallish issues I've found. Are you guys still working on this as a project?

Aside from the things in my post, Opera's way better on the XO than the built-in Browse... but that's no surprise. ;)

BTW: those having trouble with flash in Opera, try Adobe's 9.0.48; it works best so far.

csant # 31. December 2007, 11:31

Originally posted by Ninjakitten:

Are you guys still working on this as a project?

Yessir

Profesjonalna # 26. January 2008, 19:23

Another great article - what can I say more?...

deborahwebb # 12. February 2008, 12:00

Thank you so much for this article. I've been looking for some info on OLPC for one of the projects i'm running on my studies at the moment and this article was great for educational purposes!

annmacgiff # 12. February 2008, 13:05

OLPC Edition of the Opera browser seems to be really great and it makes me even more sure that Opera is a valuable browser that has many versatile uses and functions. Thanks for an interesting article!

jcosteau # 27. February 2008, 00:24

This is all excellent, but could you provide a newer build. This one is over 1 year old... (What is the difference anyway?) Also, it would be nice if OLPC is also mentioned on the Opera "Download" selection boxes.

signal11 # 28. December 2008, 02:41

I have opera running on my g1g1 olpc. However, I have the following problems:
- every time i start opera, it presents me with the copyright notice
- it also loses my preferences (presumably a consequence of the prior problem)

I hope someone reading this can help me figure this out.

olpc4overbyte # 1. January 2009, 21:00

Opera (Opera-9.12-20070122.10) does not play Adobe FlashPlayer (10,0,15,3) on my OLPC XO laptop (build 767, sugar 0.82.1, firmware Q2E18). The OLPC wiki page about Opera says Flash 10 does work with this special version of Opera, but it's not working for me. All that I see is a gray rectangle where the Flash element is embedded on the web page. Clicking in the rectangle doesn't do anything either, unlike Flash in the OLPC's Browser, where a message in the rectangle says to click to play Flash. Flash plays in the Browse activity. I looked at the directories which Opera uses to find its plugins. Both the opera and mozilla directories have entries for the flashplayer.so program, but both of them are symbolic links to the same file, so the problem is not with the Flashplayer plugin but rather how it interacts with Opera. I tried the same Flashplugin on my Ubuntu 8.04 desktop system, and it plays Flash there on Opera 9.63.

Is this an issue only in this old version of Opera? Can a new release of Opera for Linux (.rpm for Fedora in the XO) be installed on the XO, and will it work with Flashplayer 10 plugin on the XO?

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