Windows users were already enjoying the Opera 10.5 beta for a while now, but the Mac and Linux versions weren’t yet available. Mac users can now rejoice, as the beta is now available for their platform as well. In the meantime, Windows users can already upgrade to beta 2 if they so desire; Linux users will have to remain patient a while longer.
Good news for Opera fans!! I would like to see Opera as default browser in few linux distribution. Which would help Opera to have fair share in market.
No it wouldnt.
Linux has about 1% total marketshare, there are probably more than twice as many opera users than there are linux users.
Not counting various mini/mobile/wii versions of opera.
Not likely since Opera is a closed-source program. Many moons ago, that was true with Netscape and Pine. These were 2 very common closed-source programs in the Linux world. Times have changed, and there are too many programs that fit in well with the underlying philosophy of the distribution itself. Lindows (AKA Linspire) would have been a possibility for Opera, but they are dead. Xandros (who bought Linspire) would probably do it for a few bucks, but it probably wouldn’t be worth the cost.
This is the dilemma of a closed program in a Free-as-in-Freedom ecosystem.
I’m not sure pine was ever closed source software – a look at its Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_%28e-mail_client%29 shows that its *always* had its source code available for free download, even if the licensing shenanigans on top of that were just crazy loon stuff eventually ending the death of pine, abandonment by UofW and a resurrection by OSS developers as “alpine” with a “normal” (Apache) open source license.
…I have to say it is shaping up pretty nicely. All the javascript issues I was seeing are gone, rendering is quick, I love the super-butter-smooth scrolling…
Cmd+click for “open in new tab” on Mac! Hooray!
I guess other shortcuts have been improved as well.