Rehearsing for Big Opening: Opera 10 Alpha
Opera measures up. With a new, faster version of the Presto engine and a 100/100 score in the Acid3 test, the browser might easily get under its competition’s skin.
Opera Software has come out with an alpha version of its Opera 10 that it's presenting to the browser world as a "preview". The alpha should give users a taste of Opera's new rendering engine, known as Presto and currently in version 2.2. In their press release, the company indicates that "Opera Presto 2.2 offers approximately a 30-percent-faster browsing experience as compared to Opera Presto 2.1, introduced in Opera 9.5 in June 2008."
Opera can also brag that it passed the Acid3 test with flying colors. It's easy to confirm the score by opening the Opera 10 alpha to the acid3.acidtests.org website, which will resolve to the page shown in Figure 2. Opera 10 also provides a spell-checker as you type and an auto-updating feature to the newest available Opera version.
The Opera developers, who are now expecting feedback for the alpha, are especially excited about users' possibility to render web pages supporting new technologies. Among these technologies are Web Fonts and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) files for transparent graphics that have an additional alpha channel for RGB and hue/saturation/lightness (HSL). Not least of all, Opera's Dragonfly can inspect HTTP headers and edit Document Object Model (DOM) files to help in website debugging.
The final Opera 10 should appear in 2009, exactly when isn't clear. The alpha, intended for exploratory use only, is available for download here.
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Issue 43: Getting Started with Linux – /Special Editions
Buy this issue as a PDF
News
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Linux Can Now Run on Apple’s M1 Chipset
Linux users looking to take advantage of Apple Silicon are about to get their wish with the M1 chipset.
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MX Linux 21 RC Candidate Available For Testing
The MX Linux development team has released the RC images for MX Linux 21 for testing purposes.
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Fedora 35 is Shaping Up to Be an Impressive Release
Although the beta version of Fedora’s upcoming release is behind schedule, the Linux distribution is still slotted for October and will include numerous bug fixes and some exciting new features.
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Canonical Extends Support For Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04
The company behind Ubuntu offered a much-needed lifeline to those who still depend on older versions of the open-source operating system.
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GNOME 41 Has Arrived
The latest version of the GNOME desktop environment has been released with new functionality and plenty of improvements.
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System76 Updates the 15" Pangolin with Ryzen
System76 announced they’re updating the Ryzen-powered Pangolin laptop to meet today’s need for more power.
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KDE Plasma 5.23 Promises Plenty of Subtle Improvements
The next release of the KDE Plasma desktop includes new features, numerous improvements, and plenty of bug fixes.
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GNOME 41 Beta is Now Available
The most popular open-source desktop environment is on the cusp of yet another new release, but don’t expect the massive changes found in the previous iteration.
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Debian 11 “Bullseye” Now Available
The developers of Debian have released the latest version of the operating system so many distributions depend on.
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Elementary OS 6 Odin Now Available
The developers of elementary OS have released their latest iteration which is all-in on Flatpaks and all about the user experience.