There's clearly a communications problem going on here.

The first post made by @livingpharaoh was actually in a different Opera sub-forum (Opera for Computers): https://forums.opera.com/post/164596 . In that post, he specifically stated he'd just installed Opera 58, was looking for "Themes" options, and got entangled while searching in Opera's website by a referral to "Tools" for the Themes option. He then asked if that website description was out of date. @Leo responded "yes, it is". Unfortunately, that accurate moderator reply didn't address the OPs' underlying concern of where might Themes be found in Opera 58 (actually, such as it exists, under Settings > Wallpapers and/or Appearance). However, the reply did answer the OP's specific question.

The OP then posted here in the "Forums" sub-forum with a sarcastic-toned complaint towards Opera's support, regarding what he deemed the insufficiency of the reply to his original post in the Opera-for-computers forum. Subsequently (and unfortunately), it seems everyone thereafter has been essentially talking past each other here.

Several observations occur to me:

1. The Opera websites indeed can too easily lead a user (especially one new to chromium-based Opera) down some confusing rabbit holes related to Olde Opera terminology and documentation which don't apply to New Opera. This is not the first instance of this in user posts I've seen.
2. Sometimes the most relevant, underlying nature of a problem post gets missed by a reply. I too am guilty of this at times, occasionally because of misleading language/wording/interpretation and other times by a particular mindset I may bring to my first reading of the problem post.
3. Sometimes, after a single problem post that doesn't get a (to them) 'suitable' reply, posters lose patience (and their tempers) and generate a 'snarky' post. What results thereafter is often a flame war that pulls in other attackers/defenders and alienates all involved.

I believe what's needed is patience on the part of each of us, original posters and responders alike, along with a willingness to calmly ask for and respond with more information and/or clarity when requested.

@rehmanjamshoro said in Spam advertisement:

OK sir who is responsible it. told me

This scam has been going on for several weeks. See: http://www.scam-detector.com/online-auctions-and-tech-scams/iphone-8-and-iphone-x-tester-scam

Scams like this can be difficult to trace beyond the original website you visit, since they are often the result of malicious ads running remotely on that website. Many sites don't sufficiently check out to whom they rent ad space on their sites, and sometimes ads on a site are sub-rented out to still other end advertisers by a middle man company. Such ads generate pop-ups independent of the site itself, and can be very difficult to trace back to the authors.

@rakejake said in OperaVPN is not working:

The whole dilemma can be resolved if Opera can confirm this.

If you are able to visit https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/internet-censorship-map/ , you can gain a view of the scope of censorship worldwide as of January 2020 (particularly if within that page, you set the "Show -- entries" to 100 in the nation-table part way down the site's page). Bangladesh ranks quite high for employing national censorship in that table (among the top 25 nations in the world), on a par with well-known censoring nations like Cuba, Egypt, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia but behind China, North Korea, Iran and a scattering of others.

Frankly, there is very little that Opera (or anyone else) can do about national censorship... nations are sovereign and do what they want. Why a nation blocks one site but not another has all to do with their interpretation of what they wish to block from their citizens, the technical mechanisms used in blocking, and the persistence of the personnel in the blocking agencies. If Opera's websites are reachable by ordinary browsing from most other nations in the world but not from within Bangladesh (which is the case), it stands as proof that the Opera sites are being blocked (intentionally or otherwise) within Bangladesh. There is nothing Opera can do about that. That some other VPN services might be able to penetrate the censorship speaks more to the lack of thoroughness of their blocking mechanism by Bangladesh and the ability of those VPNs to jump ahead of the censors by frequently changing their IPs or using other technical means. Bypassing national blocking is a continual (and expensive) electronic war between blockers and VPN providers, and probably goes well beyond the limited purposes Opera has in supplying a VPN option in their browser.

I don't work for Opera, but I don't see how (in practicality) Opera can conclusively determine on its own which nations are locally blocking its websites (including its VPN) since it doesn't reside physically in many of those nations and because the dynamics of who is blocking what change literally daily among nations. Moreover, nations that do block are usually very evasive about which specific sites they block for what reasons.

To some users, any record of the names or content of visited sites left in the browser may prove an "embarassment" when/if other users share the system. In a few locales, certain leftover names or content records in a browser may have fatal potential. Not knowing the poster's reasons for wanting the browser records completely cleaned upon demand, it's hard to be critical. I do share the opinion that a browser function or settings label should accurately reflect reality, and an option to 'clean browser history' should indeed clear all the forms of browing records since each of them constitutes part of its true browsing history. Only clearing some of the data under such a label forms a misleading impression of security; this is even more true if there are not co-located alternate controls for records-removal that might act to reinforce a user understanding of the incompleteness of the original function.

@coffeelover said in Can Opera be fully Trusted:

...
So... each of us has to make up our minds regarding the security of this Opera browser. ...

This. However, it applies to any browser; and it should be pondered continually and not just at browser adoption, if browser 'security' is a conscious factor in one's browser usage (though it's not, frankly, for many users). Part of the basic issue is that a browser user must necessarily entrust part of his personal data and his browsing preferences/habits to the care and competence of software designers and parent corporations which the user has never met nor really knows little about, regardless of the user's level of inquiry. Moreover, the kinds of 'insecurities' that may be knowingly ignored by one user may be considered 'catastrophic' by another, depending on how he defines "security". Truly, YMMV.

Obviously, you mentioned some past indications of questionable behavior on the part of subsidiaries of one partner in Opera's new parent ownership consortium. Whether or how those kinds of behavior might somehow ripple down or transfer into the actual design and 'security' of an Opera browser version is difficult to determine with any certainty. There is some measure of protection under Norwegian privacy laws, under which the Opera organization continues to operate. There is a greater measure of protection present in the inherent integrity and competency of Opera's software designers, since at the end of all factors, it's the designers who actually commit code to end product.

The real proof-of-the-pudding lies in the code itself. However, few modern browsers are fully open-source in every code fragment they contain... otherwise the makers risk giving away the store to competitors in how they solve technical problems and provide key features. So every browser containing closed-code presents a level of uncertainty regarding what is truly going on internally. It's part of the air which ordinary users must breathe in today's software world. In such cases, a security conscious user must remain ever alert for relevant fresh reports of insecurities within a given browser or its design operations.

Personally, I'm not unduly troubled by the revelations you list, since I believe those occurred historically in products created by entities distantly apart from the current Opera design group. In reality, the opacity of future corporate-owner influences on browser design within Opera is not much different from that characterizing Microsoft or Mozilla or most other browser makers - publicly or privately held. There are a few browser makers which seem more open in what they do (though it would be rude to discuss them in an Opera-sponsored forum), but there are no guarantees even then.

If a corporate System Engineer blocks processes from executable programs on the company-owned computer or network because of 'security problems', you may want to rethink trying to bypass his efforts. If his action reflects corporate IT security policy or efforts, bypassing or otherwise interfering with such blocking could be termed as a "career-ending move" in most organizations.

@coffeelover said in Can Opera be fully Trusted:

... I "think" (not sure so it's a total guess on my part) that most people believe coding can be more easily hidden in software than hardware so they're more willing to trust their devices than the programs they load onto them. Does it make sense? Probably not but my gut feeling is that this is how most people think.

You're right that it's how most people think (at least most people who even think about security - the vast bulk of users rarely even consider it in any depth). But since most "hardware" contains "firmware" (which is code embedded into PROMS or flash memory), there is far less difference than many folks might imagine. Discovery of backdoor code (intentionally malicious or simply heedlessly left over from factory testing access) has popped up in the news continually in everything from chips to full-blown PC boards for years.

Having worked in the digital and national security realms for 40+ years, I find no more security against spyware/malware in general code-capable parts/devices than I do in downloadable software programs, unless those parts/devices have been procured and tested against a published DoD/military QPL (qualified parts list). In reality, assuming one practices "safe hex", the key issues have more to do with who you are (your profession) and what you have to lose (in terms of secrets) than what an adversary may or may not do. In other words, if you have secrets that make you a worthwhile target or link you to a prime critical/infrastructure target, then you have reason to be super-cautious about national-origin of equipment or software. Otherwise, not nearly so much...

@vegelund said in GPU process consuming lots of RAM:

That's like saying; no point caring about your car's gas mileage, as long as you have a big enough fuel tank. Not a very efficient mindset in regard to system resources.

As with many auto analogies, that one falls short. It's not about efficiency, it's about capacity. Fuel is a significant cost factor in operating a vehicle; RAM usage is not a comparable factor in operating a computer. RAM usage by a program has to do with reducing RAM capacity left to do other things.

A better auto analogy would be that high RAM usage by a program is akin to having some of your vehicle's seats occupied by something/someone so that you couldn't haul as many other passengers. The difference in analogies is highly significant, since if you usually drive alone, what's in the other seats rarely matters... likewise for the computer user who usually only uses it to browse. On the other hand, if you normally also carry multiple passengers, having one of them take up 2 or 3 seats would cause a problem, and a RAM-heavy program presents a problem to those running multiple other RAM-demanding programs.

@leocg said in Why Use Opera?:

... So different situations, different needs.

This!!!

For many years I used Olde Opera precisely because it fit nearly all my browsing needs, just as my needs had evolved around the many features of that browser. When Opera elected to follow the Blink pathway, I was a rather ardent Opera defender for a time in Opera's old forums amidst the truly massive outcry against that change. My key point then was for users to be patient and give Opera's developers time to integrate various key features (whose losses were being loudly decried) into the new browser. As time went by, some of the key 'dropped' features needed for my work flow were indeed restored to the evolving design (bookmarking, in particular). But others were not, and even the bookmarks feature itself lacked certain sub-features that were very significant to me (eg: the ability to set bookmarks bar titles to text only, since I need 50-70 bookmarks on a given single-line toolbar and abbreviate their titles severely). During that time, I often found myself increasingly agreeing with @ayespy's postings in the old Opera forums trying to persuade the developers and posters of the need for what we viewed as better control, features, and customization capability in New Opera, but to diminishing avail. Opera's focus had shifted.

What was actually occurring was both a change in the way the Opera browser was targeted and a change in (or more accurately, my recognition of) the importance of various detail requirements of my work flow using browsers. Opera was now developing a browser for 'the marketplace', whereas I had evolved solid work patterns dependent on my having detailed control/customization of browser settings, functions, and features. Thus, for a long time, I persisted in using Olde Opera (12.18) for much of my work-related browsing and both New Opera and Firefox for my casual browsing. Fortunately, as Olde Opera became unacceptably obsolete in terms of website compatibility, Vivaldi came upon the scene. It allowed me the detailed customization and features in areas that my work flow had come to demand. It's design mantra was that it was "a browser for our friends", meaning those users who require detail browser functionality and control. Hence, it's a browser that is actually a configurable tool.

Today, I have different needs than most of the users now targeted by Opera. So I use Vivaldi for my primary browsing and New Opera for some casual browsing. And I experiment a bit with Otter. They're all good browsers given the roles they're intended to play... but they're each aimed at different user needs and priorities. Frankly, I'm glad they all exist. And they're free...

@burnout426 said in Opera won't launch on Windows 10 Enterprise - HELP!:

Same thing happen with Chrome and Vivaldi? If so, what about Firefox?

@fjuk: Given that it's Windows Enterprise, who actually supplied the OS in your 'work computer', you or your company? If your company installed it (or caused it to be installed), it's very likely they put in place some group policy kind of restrictions on what browsers can be successfully installed and which require their IT department's administrative credentials to bypass. Usually this is done to prevent user installation of Internet-facing software that would present a portal into the company network that might expose it to online hacking.

If this is the case, it's unlikely that you will find a legitimate workaround. Moreover, if that is their policy, bypassing their restrictions is probably prohibited by their employee agreements and would be considered a 'career-ending move'.

@sirdouglasmawson In all likelihood, you have picked up an adware infection on your computer itself that keeps reinserting itself into Opera. It may be lurking in the Windows Task Scheduler, in your system Startup processes, the registry, and/or elsewhere. For something like this, a good place to start is to install the free version of Malwarebytes (from their own website) and run a scan, removing whatever adware/malware it finds. A lot of this kind of thing will get past ordinary antivirus programs since they are focused more on malware than the adware a user often has a role in installing.

@isakjacobi Your report is light on technical detail. Is it just occurring on that one website? If so, could you provide the web address. Does it occur at that site with a different browser? If you are logged in when it happens, does it occur prior to logging in?

@kilonovember The best place to start is to check your Opera extensions to make sure there isn't anything unknown or suspicious there... if there is, try removing it. Adware like this often starts by adding itself as an extension and then hijacking your search engine. Depending on how the adware got onto your system in the first place, it's possible (but less likely) that its infection runs deeper into the system. If a removed extension keeps "coming back", that's a sign of a deeper infection.

@paulverizzo said in "Your connection is not private":

I do remember web designers having to accommodate all the players.

The final effect of that, though, was that web designers quickly found accommodating all the different engine designs to be too costly or bothersome for them... so they increasingly began coding and testing their sites for just a 'select' few engine designs, with all others being deemed "unsupported" by their sites. This dumped the site compatibility effort totally onto the unsupported browser developers, forcing them alone to find workarounds, patches, or engine code changes to address a constant parade of user complaints that their browser wouldn't work on sites x, y, or z. And often, those fixes were only partly successful or caused instability in other areas of the browser. As the Internet evolved, so did the site code... so overlaid on the above was a continual progression of technical and protocol improvements that impacted site code and made it even more difficult for the minor browser players to keep up with sites that only assured their compatibility with a few engine types.

Naturally, in a self-fulfilling cycle, the browser brands garnering highest user market-share quickly became the only brands appearing on many website "supported" lists and so gained even more user share... but Opera never was one of those, lacking the resources to project itself into the public eye as much as could deeper-pocket outfits like Google, Microsoft, or even Mozilla. The result was Opera ASA's eventual decision to replace its Presto engine with the widely-compatible chromium engine. And here we are today...

@felix-grucci-iii Note: The 0.0.0.0 notation shown in my previous post may not work on some older OS versions. If that happens, each entry should carry the 127.0.0.1 notation instead of the 0.0.0.0. Otherwise, both notations will achieve the same blocking result.

@felix-grucci-iii

A typical hosts file block list will include 0.0.0.0 entries to be blocked like the example below:

127.0.0.1 localhost

::1 localhost #[IPv6]

0.0.0.0 traffic.acwebconnecting.com
0.0.0.0 ad2games.com
0.0.0.0 content.ad20.net

In your case, you should probably enter the name of the Facebook portal you wish to block following the 127.0.0.1 entry, even if it's the only blocked one:
0.0.0.0 connect.facebook.net

The only question I would have (since I don't use Facebook) is whether this will block any other Facebook functionality. It will stop that computer from connecting to that web portal, but it might cause your browser to hiccup when trying to connect to Facebook otherwise. If so, simply delete the added entry to restore your system to its prior functionality.

Also note: the hosts file has no extension name. You may find Notepad or whatever word processor you use trying to add a suggested extension name when you save the file - be sure it's saved with no extension name or the file will be ignored by Windows.

@paulverizzo said in "Your connection is not private":

@blackbird71 Doesn't MS Edge also use Chrome? Did Google make it open source, or do they pay licensing fees? What is so attractive about Chrome? Opera had their own engines for years that were noticeably better the Windows Explorer, for instance.

Edge now uses a chromium engine, as does Opera - but prior to 2020, Edge instead used proprietary Microsoft engines. Google Chrome also uses a chromium engine, but it adds proprietary functionality to it.

"Chromium" refers to both a specific web browser and the open-source code first developed by Google for Chrome in 2008 but which has since been maintained and increasingly altered by the Chromium Project with inputs from Google and others. 'Chromium' is a web browser simply compiled from current chromium source code; 'Chrome' is a web browser with Google's proprietary alterations of chromium code; 'Edge', 'Opera', 'Vivaldi', 'Brave', etc are chromium-based browsers that each apply their own added code on top of the chromium codebase to insert their own features. In most cases, where the chromium code has limits or architectural constaints, those will also be seen in the various browsers - hence one can indeed refer to them all as a single class: chromium-based.

The history of web browsers and the great "browser wars" is fascinating (to some) and far too long to fully go into here. The bottom line is that once upon a time, there were differing ideas on how a browser should best render a website's coded information on a computer screen... hence differing browser designs appeared over time, not always compatible with one another. Websites began to have to include different code modules for different browsers or risk not showing up properly on various screens. But code costs money to write, test, and maintain; so websites began to limit the browser brands with which they were fully compatible. Eventually, attrition (or Google's bottomless resources) led to most code engines falling into disfavor and browsers had to either adopt a more common approach (which turned out to be chromium) or continue spending great resources maintaining their own proprietary engines. Opera originally had its own proprietary Presto engine, but felt the economic need to no longer maintain it and changed over to the chromium engine instead. Because chromium is open-source, it's essentially free and the various browser makers all have input into the Chromium Project going forward. Looking back, various engines all have their pros and cons, and that debate will probably never be resolved.

@paulverizzo said in "Your connection is not private":

@blackbird71 I've never really understood how certificates work. But I don't have issues with Chrome or Firefox, same computer, same OS.

Ok, if Chrome has no cert problems, then an obsolete Win7 cert store is not the cause... all chromium browsers work the same way on this, and both Chrome and Opera are chromium-based browsers.

@paulverizzo Opera (and other chromium browsers) use the Windows certificate store (listing) for looking up https security certificates. If you reinstalled Win7, probably you also installed the original cert store that came with the OS which contains a lot of now-obsolete certs. With an obsolete cert, Opera will be unable to match the cert to that defined by the website handshaking process, so it fails with the error message you've seen. When you bypass the error message as you describe, you tell Opera to ignore the mismatched security cert... while that allows you to then view the site, you risk navigating to malicious websites masquerading as the sites you select.

Firefox uses a cert store brought down from Mozilla's servers instead of Windows' certs, so it won't experience that particular problem.

In any case, With an old and obsolete OS like Win7, you really need to make the effort to update the Windows cert store and assure that the Win7 cert updater will automatically connect to the proper Microsoft site in the future. Win7 may no longer reliably update its cert store after reinstallation of the OS unless you take the effort to make sure the updater is pointed in the right direction.

@andrew84 said in Will Opera also ends support for Windows 7 and 8.1:

Answer regarding the Win 7/8 support
https://forums.opera.com/post/296760

The key words in that answer are: "we are aware that Chrome is dropping support for Windows 7 and 8 but we wanted to keeping those platforms updated as long as it wouldn't require lot of additional maintenance from our side." (my italics)

Probably no one knows how long that support will actually continue since no one knows the precise evolution path of the chromium codebase going forward after Win7 and 8 requirements are officially deprecated. But it's highly likely that after that compatibility is no longer required, codebase changes will occur and accumulate that seriously conflict with those Windows versions... at that point, supporting Win7 and/or 8 in a chromium-based browser will indeed require a lot of maintenance on the part of the browser developers - and that will be the end of support.