Posts made by miqwalsh

Hi, guys.

Not a complaint.....not an issue to "fix". More just a curiosity, which has got me wondering..!

I re-pack Opera - along with several other Chromium-based browsers - into 'portable', self-contained builds for the Puppy Linux community. No modifications to the code-base itself, just those which keep it all within a single directory, along with scripts to add/remove Menu entries if you want to move the thing (these will even run from a flash drive).

Anyways; my question is this. I've noticed, with this current build - standard Opera browser, v107.0.5045.36 - what appears to be part of a "gaming overlay"? Top left corner of the browser.....showing

GL xxx FPS
BLIT - VSYNC ON

Now, this is the sort of thing I might expect to see in a gaming-oriented browser, say, like Opera GX? Except that there IS no Linux build of Opera GX!

FYI, I run a discrete Nvidia GPU - nowt special, just a GeForce GT710 (the one the gamers all love to take the p**s out of) - using the last driver that supported this card (470.199.02), and I run with hardware acceleration enabled.

Do I have an oddity here, or has anybody else noticed this in the current Linux build? Possibly related to using an older driver..? This doesn't show up in any other Chromium-based browser, just Opera. (Like I said, I'm not complaining.....it's actually rather welcome!)

Ideas?

Mike.

Morning, all.

Now, this is going to sound like many other threads on the same subject, but.....it's not. I've been using Chromium-based browsers ever since Chrome first appeared - some 14 years now - and am wise to most of the tricks & workarounds for various issues by now. But I've never heard of This one before.

I've come back to Opera after a break of perhaps 5 months or so. Launching Opera 84, I now get 4 simultaneous instances of the browser itself starting up. I'm not talking about multiple processes; I know all about the tabbed, multi-process sandboxed nature of the beast after all this time. I'm actually getting 4 separate instances of the browser itself opening up, each with its own icon in the tray.

This doesn't happen with any other 'clone' that I run. Hence, why I'm asking on the browser's dedicated forum. And please, guys; don't insult my intelligence by suggesting that the subject is just like all those other threads, because it isn't.

Any suggestions/ideas will be very much appreciated. TIA.

Mike.

Hi, all.

I daresay this has probably been asked before, but what would be the likelihood of getting Opera GX ported across to Linux? Valve are working wonders with Steam for Linux these days (amongst other things), and increasing numbers of AAA titles are running better than ever under WINE, so it's not like Linux is the poor relation that it used to be anymore.

Opera has been my favourite amongst the Chromium-based browsers for a while now. It would be great to not see GX restricted only to MyCrudSoft & Crapple.....

I think a Lot of Linux users would like to see this happen.

Mike.

I re-package this into a 'portable' version for the Puppy Linux community. Portable applications work very well for Puppy's somewhat unusual method of operation.

I get libffmpeg.so & Widevine for Opera by the simple expedient of using the updater scripts supplied by Vivaldi for their browser. As noted above, it doesn't matter how you actually obtain these; what matters is that you end up with the specific version compiled to work with the particular release of Chromium that Opera has been built around.

If you run the script from your /home 'user' directory, the scripts will write the 'codecs' directory, containing libffmpeg.so, to /var/opt. You'll get a sym-link appear which you can delete; simply copy libffmpeg.so across to the location where Opera expects to find it.

Bob's yr uncle; sorted.

Mike.

(EDIT:- Apologies to anyone who wants terminal commands to do the above. We don't really use these all that much in Puppy; we tend to 'dive-in' to the file-system & physically move stuff around to suit.....and the 'portable' version doesn't use 'standard' locations anyway!)

This is quite common for the Linux version of Opera. In Puppy Linux, we modify the package to run from a wrapper-script; this allows the addition of any "switches" from the Chromium-base command line. Needs the addition of the

--start-maximized

...."switch" to the wrapper-script's exec line.

However, for the downloaded .deb package you can get the same effect by going into /usr/share/appliations, finding the opera.desktop file, opening it up with a text-editor, and doing the following:-

Change the Exec line from:-

opera %U

.....so that it now reads:-

opera %U --start-maximized

This will do what you want. (Make sure to leave a space before you add the new stuff on the end. Save, exit, then re-start the browser.)

Miq.

I was having major 'problems' getting WideVine to function at all under Opera 66 & 67; the method we'd previously used to set absolute paths for the Puppy 'portable' packages via the use of the 'tee' command was no longer working. And then it struck me.....the answer was so simple I could have kicked myself.

Bearing in mind that Puppy's 'run-as-root' model has been causing us grief for the last four years with the Chromium/'Blink'-based browsers, we run these packages as user 'spot'.....this being a restricted user with the same type of permissions as any normal user in the mainstream distros. Consequently, the whole of a Chromium-based browser's files live in the /root/spot directory.

For the 'portables', we use the 'readlink' command to set the location variable for the portable's directory, irrespective of its actual location. This allows us to create the browser's profile within that directory, and this all works very well.

However, regardless of Pup's slightly odd set-up, Opera is still looking in the locations it expects to find Widevine and libffmpeg in, as dictated by the internal coding and the .json files in /opera/resources. Bummer..!

But the answer, as I said, was very simple.

Puppy, as part of its 'frugal' install/run method, empolys what are known as SFS files (Squash File-System). These things can be loaded/unloaded 'on-the-fly' by the use of a special script which has been part of the standard Puppy build-process for well over a decade.

The simple solution was to build a wee SFS package which would 'load' libffmpeg and libwidevinecdm to the same locations as the .deb package installs them to.....and since these things CAN be 'loaded/unloaded' on-the-fly, and moved from one place to another, they are also portable.

So you put the portable-Opera in its desired location. You 'load' the Opera-extras.sfs package. You fire the browser up, go to NetFlix/Spotify/Hulu/Amazon Prime/whatever, annnd.....

.....everything just 'works'. Issue solved, and the 'portable' package remains 'portable', even if it IS now ever so slightly 'clunky' in nature.

Sorted!

Mike.

@zekemx said in Widevine and Opera:

In conclusion.. Opera doesn't work with widevine anymore (As of today), I hope the Opera Developers would explain why, but probably they don't care about linux users anymore.

@ zekemx:- That's it in a nutshell. I read somewhere, not many days ago, that Opera has been bought out by one of the 'big boys'. Expect many more annoying changes like this over the next few releases; these people have made it crystal-clear that they are only going to support Windows exclusively.....because that's where the money is.

Everybody else can go whistle. So; it looks like I, too, will be returning to Chrome again.

Bloody annoying.....but at least Big Brother doesn't give you quite this many hoops to jump through for an overall 'experience'. And everything does work, with relatively little 'pain'.

Mike.

@johnnyboycurtis :

Newbie here to the forum, though not to Linux OR to Chromium-based browsers; I've been building browser packages for the Puppy Linux community for some years. These often have to be modified from 'standard' layout to accommodate Puppy's 'run-as-root' model.

Many of my community compatriots used to be enamoured of the old Opera 12, based on the 'Presto' engine. Me, I could never get the hang of its 'quirky' way of doing things....

I regularly produce packages for Chrome itself, Iron & SlimJet, in addition to Opera, which I've only turned my attention to this last few months. I have to confess, I DO like it!

Now then; to echo nesar77 above....what is it with the current Opera 66 releases? It's the same story for any of the Chromium-based browsers since they moved to v78 onwards, and this darned WidevineCDM sub-directory, with all its associated extra crap....although I'm pleased to see that Opera hasn't bothered with it. I especially like the .json files in /opera/resources; the 'preloads' make it easy to locate stuff & configure it.

'Portable' applications are very popular with Puppy users in general, given that many of us still use hardware that a lot of you would have probably consigned to the 'tech' scrap-heap years ago.. With low system resources, being able to run things external to the system is a god-send, since in many cases we can run 'em from a flash drive.

So; in addition to others, I've recently been building Opera as a 'portable', self-contained item, with its profile and everything else internal to the portable's directory.....along with a user-triggered auto-updater for PepperFlash. It all works very well. With assistance from one or two other community members, we've been using the 'tee' command in the portable's 'launch' script, which then points to a wrapper I put together to fire Opera up. (We tried starting Opera directly as in the .deb package, but with Pup's odd way of doing things, all these Chromium-based browsers need wrappers to start 'em..!)

The 'tee' command has been used to re-write the paths in the 'resources' directory's .json files, so that Opera always has absolute paths for libwidevine, PepperFlash and libffmpeg. Remember, this is a 'portable', so can be run from anywhere. Literally. That being the case, of course, the absolute paths are going to keep changing as you move it from one location to another....

But from v66 onwards, no matter what I do, I cannot make Opera 'see' libwidevine at all. Creating /opt/google/chrome/libwidevinecdm.so was one of the first things I tried; NetFlix turned its nose up, and insisted that libwidevine simply didn't exist. Using the 'tee' command makes it virtually impossible for the browser NOT to find the item in question, because those paths are re-evaluated/re-written every time you fire Opera up.....

Curiously, examining the 'components' lists in both Chrome and Opera reveals one telling difference. In Chrome, every item in that list has a version number; if things update, the number changes. In Opera's list - which is rather shorter - everything has a version number, except WideVine. It only has 0.0.0.0 showing, no matter how many times you try to update. This is the one thing NetFlix insists you try to 'update', when WideVine doesn't function as it should.....except it ain't doing what it's supposed to do!

Sorry for the length of this missive, but NetFlix is kind of a 'prerequisite' for me. Anybody have any other ideas on this one? I'm always open to suggestions, 'cos when I get these browser builds to behave themselves, it benefits the whole community, y'see.

Mike.