Ruarí's thoughts

You can work around this for now by creating a /etc/operaprefs_default.ini file that contains:

[File Selector]
Dialog Toolkit=4

This will disable Gtk styling support and hence avoid the issue. Once the bug is fixed by us or the Gtk team you can remove this workaround.

Let me start by saying that post below is aimed a packagers and distro maintainers. If you are a regular user who just wants to install and run Opera on your distro of choice and find that it is not available within your application repository then you probably want to read "Selecting a Linux or FreeBSD package and installing it" instead. Even if we don't natively support your package manger of choice with our official packages, we still have generic packages that will allow you to install (and uninstall if you really need to) Opera. Whilst certainly preferable, a well maintained native package is not an absolute requirement for most users. However if you are interested in making your own Opera package please read on.

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For video to work in 10.50 (Evenes) on Linux/UNIX, you need the the GStreamer Multimedia Framework, the Base Plugins package and the main Good libraries. This ensures that the following are available on your system: libgstautodetect.so, libgstogg.so, libgsttheora.so, libgstvorbis.so, libgstwavparse.so.

On some distros there is one GStreamer Good package that contains everything and on others this is split into two packages, GStreamer Good (the main libraries) and GStreamer Good Plugins (the plugin libraries).

If you don't have these installed and are unsure exactly which packages will provide these libraries for your distro, you can use your distro's favoured method of searching for packages. Typically this will be search options within your package manager, but it may also be a dedicated wesbite. Generally you can install the GStreamer Good Plugins package and your package manager's dependency resolution will ensure you get any further packages you need. If you have a distro that splits "Good", you can be more selective and just install the main Good libraries, leaving out the Good plugins.

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^{Disclaimer: I should start by stating that the text below represents my personal thoughts, and not official Opera policy. Working in the Opera testing department I often have to try out a range of different Opera builds on a number of different distributions, requiring various installs, uninstalls and upgrades. Depending on what issue I am testing at the time, I make use of a number of different methods for install. Some of the reasoning I touch on below. Wearing my employee hat for a moment the official recommended install and packages for non .deb/.rpm based Linux distributions, are the tar packages.}

Recently I saw the following comment from a Gentoo user on our snapshot blog:

Originally posted by DmitryIsaenko:

I don't actually know, where I can ask it.. but where I can get Gentoo overlay for Opera 10 or just ebuild for my OS?

Currently we only provide and support four package types for our Linux/UNIX users: .deb files for users of Debian-based systems (including Ubuntu), .rpm files for users of distributions like Redhat/Fedora, Suse, Mandriva, etc., .pkg files for our Solaris users and tar files for testing and users of all other systems. Even with the tar packages, these are fairly generic packages and not overly tailored to specific distros (e.g. they don't contain an install/ directory, with slack-desc and doinst.sh files for Slackware users).

We don't do this because we like users of other distros less but simply as an attempt to keep things manageable and keep the quality high, given naturally limited resources. The binaries contained within the provided packages are engineered to work with as many different distributions as possible. Indeed Opera fans often use them as a base to create new packages that work more naturally with their distribution of choice. Something we are very thankful for by the way! However, understandably this tends to be done only for big releases as it is entirely dependant on the time and dedication of the independant maintainer.

So ... What are users of non .deb/.rpm distributions supposed to do if they want to try out our snapshots?

Well, there are a couple of options. If you just want to do some quick testing, use the tar packages. If you want to install Opera then use the .... umm ... I'll get to that later, as I don't want to put you off so early in this blog post!

Testing a Snapshot: Part 1

If you just want to try the snapshots and don't intend to replace your main Opera installation, then you could make use of the third method I outlined in an earlier blog posting. You just need to ensure you already have the required dependencies pre-installed. On a modern (and up to date) distro the only one you are likely to have to worry about too much is the Qt toolkit. Install this via whatever method is appropriate for your distribution. Then download one of the tar files to an appropriate directory, extract and run Opera 'in place'. Here is a quick recap of how it is done, using the opera-10.00-4502.gcc4-shared-qt3.i386.tar.bz2 package as an example:

$ wget http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/snapshot-4502/intel-linux/opera-10.00-4502.gcc4-shared-qt3.i386.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjf opera-10.00-4502.gcc4-shared-qt3.i386.tar.bz2
$ rm opera-10.00-4502.gcc4-shared-qt3.i386.tar.bz2
$ cd opera-10.00-4502.gcc4-shared-qt3.i386
$ ./opera &

Note: This assumes you have installed Qt3 on Intel architecture (i386 or above). Alter the command as appropriate if you have a different version of Qt installed or use a different processor architecture.

In all likelihood this will 'just work', in which case skip to 'Testing a Snapshot: Part 2' of this posting (below). If it doesn't run try another package (e.g. gcc3 if gcc4 fails). If you continue having trouble and want to see a list of dependencies, run the following command within the extracted directory:

$ find . -print | grep opera.opera | xargs ldd

Once you are sure you have all the dependencies in place, try again.

Testing a Snapshot: Part 2

As I highlighted in my earlier blog post, running Opera in this way will cause a new 'clean' settings directory (profile) to be created as a subdirectory of opera-10.00-4502.gcc4-shared-qt3.i386 (i.e. opera-10.00-4502.gcc4-shared-qt3.i386/profile). If you would prefer use your main opera profile you can specify it with the '-pd' switch, changing that last line to:

$ ./opera -pd ~/.opera &

Note: This will however upgrade the main Opera settings/profile directory to a 10 style profile. If you intend to go back to Opera 9.64 then back up the directory first (see Method 1 in the that previous blog post if you are unsure how to do this).

Installing a Snapshot: The Background

If you really want to install an Opera snapshot, without first creating a distro specific package, then use one of our .rpm packages. Yeah, I said it, even though I know this will sound painful to the ear of many a Gentoo or Slackware user! Don't run yet, read the rest of this section first to at least understand my reasoning!!

Why the .rpm files? Well you could use one of the tar packages as they included an install script (called install.sh). However installing via RPM has one major advantage; it includes an easy way to uninstall. We have not yet written an uninstaller for the install.sh script. Therefore, doing it that way would mean having to manually remove all the files if you no longer wanted that copy of Opera. That isn't really very convenient for a release version (indeed we have a bug in our database about this: DSK-162946), but is even less ideal for snapshots given their nature (they receive very little internal testing). And why not the .deb files? Well sure, you could use these. I suggest the .rpm files because they are supported by almost all modern Linux distributions, even if the .rpm format is not used as the main package file format for that distro. This includes both Slackware and Gentoo, along with a multitude of others. In fact it even includes Debian based distros like Ubuntu! Now, I am not suggesting or advising you use the .rpm files for an Ubuntu install (though you could, I have tried it), I'm just saying it is possible!

If you are wondering why .rpm support is available on so many distributions I suspect there are two reasons. Firstly, the .rpm-based distros' historic dominance of the Linux landscape for a number of years (prior to the rapid emergence of Ubuntu as 'most popular distribution') meant that it was a very popular format, and therefore many other distros included it for the sake of compatibility. Secondly, the .rpm format is actually the Linux Standard Base (LSB) standard format. Distributions don't need to supply the RPM Package Manager to comply with LSB but they do need some way to deal with .rpm package installs (any package manager or package conversion tool that supports .rpm will suffice). That said, my own quick checks seem to show that the 'RPM Package Manager' is readily available for all major distributions, so I will use it in my installation examples below.

Note: If your distro of choice does claim LSB compliance but does not offer the RPM Package Manager, you will need to find out which package manager or conversion tool is supplied to deal with the .rpm format and do your own investigation of how it works.

Installing a Snapshot: Examples

Using the RPM Package Manager on a distribution that doesn't use it as the default package manager, means one of its key features doesn't really work that well. That feature is dependancy resolution. But if you are a Slackware user you will know that dependancy resolution is for wimps anyway! Also, you can still make use of the RPM Package Manager's dependancy checking, to help ensure everything is already in place prior to install, and to make sure you selected the right .rpm package in the first place. Here is the command to list a package's dependencies, using opera-10.00-4502.gcc4.shared.qt3.i386.rpm as an example:

$ rpm -qRp http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/snapshot-4502/intel-linux/opera-10.00-4502.gcc4.qt4.i386.rpm

You probably won't have to worry about this too much however. If you already found a tar package that worked for testing in the 'Testing a Snapshot' section above, just pick the equivalent .rpm package. Look at the numbers of the 'gcc' and 'qt' parts of the file name for the tar package that worked for you, to find the equivalent .rpm package.

After you have installed the RPM Package Manager on your distribution of choice, and made sure you have the right .rpm package and the required dependencies all in place, switch to root and install it as follows:

# rpm -Uvh --nodeps http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/snapshot-4502/intel-linux/opera-10.00-4502.gcc4.qt4.i386.rpm

Or if you prefer 'sudo':

$ sudo rpm -Uvh --nodeps http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/snapshot-4502/intel-linux/opera-10.00-4502.gcc4.qt4.i386.rpm

Note: Before issuing one of the above commands make sure you have removed any copy of Opera that is already installed by either install.sh or a native package manager.

To uninstall, execute the following as root:

# rpm -e opera

or via sudo:

$ sudo rpm -e opera

There you go, I hope that helps some of our users on non .deb/.rpm based Linux distributions get involved in testing snapshots!

Finally, after 10 is out, if a trusted Opera fan creates a package for your favoured distribution, feel free to remove the RPM installed Opera (and the RPM Package Manager itself) and switch to that. Or if you want, you can keep using the .rpm files! Isn't choice great on Linux? Have fun!