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 He then asked if that website description was out of date.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'.

@caerhays To always be on the safe side in avoiding a phish, never click on a link within an unsolicited email or text message. Instead, if you feel a need to respond, use an independently-determined link for that response. In this case, to prevent an unused account you may actually have from being deleted, simply directly log in to the Opera Forums using your account information. If you have no such account, do nothing.

@pv9685 If the experience of Windows XP's end-of-support "descent profile" is any precedent, there are some negative things you will face with Windows 7 going forward. As time goes by, increasing numbers of updated/new programs (browsers, applications, games, etc) will no longer support Win7. That means their new manifestations either may still work in Win7, may work with certain impaired functions, or fail to work at all. If you have a reasonably stable suite of user software on your present system that you don't intend to update/upgrade, this may present you no user-facing issues - for a while.

However, eventually you are likely to find that two program types in particular will give increasing compatibility problems of significance: browsers and antivirus programs. Once compatibility with Win7 is dropped by those program types, you will face immediate security risks if you intend to take that system online. In the case of browsers ending their Win7 support, you may be able to migrate to other brands still supporting Win7 for a time, but eventually you will run out of options and face the very real security risks of taking a vulnerable browser model online. Since a browser reveals its brand and model (its user agent string) whenever contacting a website, any site containing malware can immediately recognize an obsolete browser and attempt to attack its known vulnerabilities.

In the case of antivirus, a similar situation will eventually come to exist... support for Win7 will wither away, leaving you with the choice of no longer updating the AV or simply running the system "barefoot" with no AV protection.

Based on experience with XP, the time for various forms of program support to end for an obsolete OS is likely to be within a 3-10 year window after Win7's end-of-life. The longer an out-of-support system is run, the more compatibility issues will arise.

@caseyschroen said in Recovering synced data:

... What do you think about using cloud storage? How reliable is it to upload personal files there?

A lot of people use (or even rely on) cloud storage for backups; others prefer their own physical backup media. Much depends on the nature of your data, your technical proficiency, and your levels of trust.

It must be understood that the "cloud" is actually a storage drive in a physical server-computer owned by someone somewhere and accessed over the Internet. Backing up to the cloud always involves trusting a 3rd party with your data - either a backup service, a cloud-space provider, or the middlemen involved in the forwarding chain of moving the data into the cloud and recovering it back again. The trust you must extend depends greatly on the nature of your data: is it extremely sensitive (at a personal, commercial, or national level) and how vital to you is it - really?

For many ordinary users, a reputable cloud backup provider is an acceptable backup alternative, provided that the user has reasonably stable Internet access available all the time. Depending on the nature of the data, file encryption/decryption may need to be employed to better protect privacy while moving data to/from or while stored in the cloud.

For users who simply want to keep control of their data or whose data is very sensitive or mission-critical, data files should be backed up physically on a local basis, verified, and media kept safely stored - preferably with a copy in an off-site location (in case of fire/storm damage or theft). Physical storage can range from a USB thumb-drive to a full external hard-drive, depending on the amount of data being backed up.

In the case of browser data like in Opera, there is another possibility for ordinary users. Normally, important browser data consists of customized settings, history, tabs, passwords, sessions, etc. One can simply back up just the browser's user data folders to a separate location on the local drive or an external thumb drive. That provides the ability to easily restore that data should the browser or its regular data folders get hopelessly messed up.

Regardless, a key observation is that backups should be re-made as often as required to keep the backed data from becoming too stale or out-of-date. This is where many users fail... eg, they need data from within the past week, but their most recent backup data is 3 months old.

@jeremycards said in Malware redirects all my google searchs:

... I could find the file but it seems to only have the commented section with the # symbols before it... So there's not much to modify

In that case, your hosts file is essentially "generic"... that is, it hasn't been modified from the original, hence it's not the source of your malware redirection. In some malware cases, the malware writes redirection lines into the hosts file, but apparently not in your situation. The cause of the redirections lies elsewhere... perhaps Malwarebytes didn't remove all instances of the malware (not an uncommon problem, which is why usually it's best to use a couple of different removal tools in succession).

@jeremycards In a typical Win 10 system, you can find it at folder: C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc. Note that the file has no extension term, but is simply "hosts". You can open it and edit it in Notepad... just make sure to again save it without a file extension. Suggestion: before you edit it, save a copy of the original as hosts.bak, just in case something gets messed up... if it does get messed up, you can then always get back to the original.

@sunsplash Which other browsers "work"? Some browsers (eg: Firefox) use the browser-maker's certificate store (downloaded from online) to verify site authenticity; chromium-based browsers like Opera use the OS's cert store for verification. The first question to answer is whether your Windows 11 certificate store contains the proper cert. If the site can be accessed from Chrome or another chromium-based browser, then the proper cert indeed exists in the OS's store, and the failure cause lies elsewhere.

@sheilacorvin298 Regarding your battery life, from a full charge, how long does it last without Opera being used? If it's only lasting a mere half hour after full charge with Opera in use, it sounds like something is seriously wrong - probably with the computer/battery. Was the laptop purchased new?

@kathyb said in Virtual School Classes don't work on Opera:

@leocg Do I reword this? The title? All other guidelines on the list have been done, with the exception of versions and platforms. Thank you

What's missing in your report is any detailed description of what specifically happens when attempting to use Opera for virtual schools (ie: "unable to view" provides almost no troubleshooting details... hence, do they receive/send audio successfully, do they completely fail to connect to the sites involved, do they get error messages, etc, etc?). Also missing is a list of the specific "types of video platforms" involved, as well as what version(s) of Opera are involved. Finally, have you (or any student) tried the problem isolation methods listed in https://forums.opera.com/topic/43601/instructions-on-posting-about-problems-in-opera-for-windows/1 , and if so, what are the results for each of those items that have been tried?

The object in all this is to enable a helper here to try to duplicate your problem or deduce from your details what may be actually happening. Given that other browsers "work", it seems most likely that there's some setting or functionality (eg: its adblocker) in Opera that's blocking the virtual school from operating correctly. The key is to find out which one.

@fv75 See also: https://forums.opera.com/topic/53369/some-ethereum-mining-malicious-extension

It appears there's something suspicious going on related to the Rich Hints Agent internal extension or something that it accesses during its functioning.

If one is using any chromium-based browser (Opera, Vivaldi, Chrome, Edge, etc), there are multiple possible reasons for a browser installation to "slow down", "crash", "freeze", "load forever", "lose tabs", etc... only one of which involves some kind of genuine browser code "bug". Possible factors include a broken installation, interfering antivirus programs, problematic extensions, DNS issues, corrupted certificate stores, broken browser user profile files, messed up browser settings, corrupted tab storage, etc, etc. To immediately assume (and report) that a given problem is a bug in the browser code is to make a major (and likely erroneous) jump to a specific conclusion with little or no confirming evidence. Most browser flavors have limited developer resources, and they're unlikely to respond very quickly (if at all) to such reports.

While one can always jump to another browser, eventually issues may arise with that one as well, since browsers are quite dynamic in their file operations and hardware demands. One of the most common problem causes involves file corruption within the browser's reference/personal files, so a user should always try saving their browser's profile folder (by renaming it) and having the browser recreate a new, fresh one to see if the problem is affected. Also try with all extensions disabled. If one posts in a browser forum asking for help, they should always list their OS version, their browser version, and note whatever fixes they've tried (along with result details)... otherwise helpers have no idea where to start helping.