Can't make Opera the preferred browser on Eee

Well, I haven't posted anything for the last three days due to my journey to Brazil. But, now I've arrived and things are settling down again and I've been able to spend some time getting acquainted with my new netbook.
I'm still enormously impressed with this little machine but I'm starting to see some of its limitations.
For example, although Opera 9.60 is installed and works fine, I can't make it my preferred browser. So, the web-apps that show up on the Desktop always open in Firefox.
I posted to the EeePC forums on this one but none of the recommendations helped me.
I subsequently posted to the Opera Linux forums but have yet to receive a reply. This seems to suggest that a solution just isn't available.

Flash in Opera 9.51

After I gave up on Intrepid Ibex (alpha 3) on the Mac a while ago, I re-installed Hardy which has worked trouble-free other than a very serious problem I had with Flash in Opera 9.51
Essentially, I couldn't play any flash videos (youtube) at all. Not only that but trying to launch a flash video invariably caused CPU usage to rise to 100% (Top attributed this to Opera). Plus, it became impossible to kill the opera process (used kill, killall and pkill) in an effort to bring the cpu usage to a reasonable value.
Indeed, the only way to get out of this (and it went on for at least 5 hours) was to reboot.
There has been quite a lot of discussion on this flash problem in the Opera forums (Linux section) where the problem seems to be attributable to the fact that Adobe are not in a rush to get Flashplayer perfected for use in Linux (although I've never had a flash problem with Firefox in Linux).
Nevertheless, this blog post proved very informative and useful on this issue.
So, I used the guide in this post to install Flash 10 Beta in Ubuntu 8.04. Now flash seems to work almost perfectly and CPU no longer goes to 100% or anything even close. I did find one youtube video which I couldn't get to play in Opera but did play without problem in Firefox. Not sure what was different about that video.
At least for the moment, everything looks good.
Just to mention that the version of Flash with which I had the major problem was 9.0.124ubuntu2 which I installed from the Ubuntu repos.

A really weird problem in Opera

I re-installed Ubuntu 8.04 on Margaret's Dell yesterday and found that Opera was behaving in a very strange manner.
What was happening was that nothing would open in Opera, even from it's own speeddial, but Firefox would open and display the page.
So, I posted to the Opera Linux forum and got a resolution.
The problem was that, for reasons I do not understand, file types htm (and similar) were set to open by Firefox. Setting this back to Opera immediately resolved my issue.
I have to say that I would have taken a very long time to figure this out on my own. TG for forums.
Anyway, now for the details:
Go to Tools>>Preferences>>Downloads and look for the line with extensions htm, html, shtml. Highlight it and click the Edit button.
Now, verify that this file type is set to open by Firefox. then click the radio button to Open with Opera and you'll be back to normal.

Error during Opera install

When I tried to install Opera 9.50 in openSUSE 11.0 today, I got this error:

error while loading shared libraries: libqt-mt.so.3: cannot open > shared object file: No such file or directory

Then I found this reference to that error here which, in summary, says

This error message means that you have downloaded a package which is dynamically linked to Qt, and either your system lacks the correct Qt version, or you haven't set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable correctly.


If you download an Opera package with Qt statically linked instead, you won't have to worry about this.

You can get the statically-linked Opera versions here.
I tried it and it works fine.
Strangely, I had always used the shared version but can't remember having had this problem before.

Buttons to websites/apps in Opera personal bar

Although I've used things like the del.icio.us buttons here for some time, I never got around to making buttons of my favourite sites.
Here's how to do it.
So, for example, I wanted to add Statcounter as a button to my Opera personal bar. First you have to open that page (statcounter) and then also open the customize dialog box for the toolbars (just right click on a bar and choose 'customize').
Then click on the buttons tab and then click on My Buttons.
Now drag the url of the page you opened (statcounter) to the My Buttons list.
Now drag the button that's formed to where you want it to live on your personal bar.
Don't worry if the button name that appears isn't what you had in mind. Just go to the button and right-click on it. Here choose properties and change the name to whatever you want.
There are very nice and convenient. I'm surprised I hadn't used them before.

Very high cpu usage due to Opera on desktop

I have noticed this problem for some time. It happens, for example, when I~m going through my Lifehacker feeds in Ubuntu on the Dell. For some, possibly most, feeds the CPU will go to almot 100% and then drp back to somethong like 5% for others.
I found that when it was high, I could turn off Java (Tools>Preferences>Advanced>Content) and the CPU usage would immediately go to 0-5%.
I've posted to the Opera forums to see if somebody might be able to suggest what's going on here.
More details (and a possible solution if anybody replies) are given in the thread.

How to pick correct Opera version to download

I had a bit of a problem today where I tried to install Opera 9.50 Beta in FreeBSD 6.3 but it wouldn't install.
It seems I had downloaded the incorrect version.
In fact I was unaware of the differences between the various versions available of the snapshots but it's all explained here.

Opera becoming very troublesome

On the Mac I've been using Opera 9.50 Beta (Bld 1800) and it's not been behaving well.
In particular, it crashes every time I open Gmail or some other pages too.
I saw in the forums that all versions of Opera 9.50 since Bld 1772 have a problem with plugins which makes it crash.
In any event it got so bad, that I decided to go back to a stable version, so I removed/purged Opera 9.50

sudo apt-get remove --purge opera

and installed the 9.26 version from a Deb.
Installation was fine, but when I tried to open Opera, the CPU sage went to 50% (presumably one processor running flat out) but never actually opened (although ps-e said opera was running.
OK, so I purged this one too and tried the same with 9.25 from the Ubuntu repos.
Same thing, big CPU usge but wouldn't open.
When I start Opera from a terminal it gives this error message

ERROR: ld.so: object 'libjvm.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object 'libawt.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)

So, right now I don't have a working Opera in Ubuntu on the Mac. I've posted to the opera forum about it and almost certainly I'll hear something there.

23/02/08: Just afetr I send the post to the opera forums about this problem (which actually never got answered) I noticed that a new build of Opera 9.50 Beta was available (Bld 1823).
So, as I was now in a situation where I had no Opera whatsoever, I decided to install this.
And, amazingly, this has worked perfectly (no crashes) since then.
So, perhaps, all's well that ends well.

Opera 9.50 Beta

I had been using Opera 9.50 Beta (Build 1786) for a while (10 days) on the Mac and never had any problems.
However, yesterday I noticed that YouTube refused to play in Opera (on Ubuntu) saying that I needed the flashplayer. However, I knew the most up-to-date version was already there. So why?
Today, Opera just couldn't handle Gmail. Anytime I opened Gmail, Opera just crashed.
So, I updated to build 1800.but no improvement -- still crashing in Gmail.
So then I deleted ~/.opera/opera6.ini and restarted Opera. No more crashing!
Not sure if I can explain this but apparently some config problem was messing up Opera.

Finally, Haiku coming to life!

Well, a lot of positive changes today.
First, I downloaded a newer version of Haiku's daily build (from 18/02/08) and found that I got an Internet (wired) connection immediately on boot. So, a huge step forward.
Then I tried to install Links (text browser) from this link (bottom of comment posted on 15-02-08) and this worked fine although Links takes a bit of getting used to for anybody accustomed to GUI browsers.
However, in the same link as above I saw that there is available a weekly-updated Haiku super-pack that is expandable to 1 GB HDD size and has quite a lot of apps and other stuff included in the package. Get this from here.
Now I did this and installed but couldn't get an Internet connection with the latest super-pack.
So I downloaded an earlier version (Feb 9) and same result--no Internet.
I noticed also that those Haiku's that gave an Internet connection (actually only one up to this point) gave a broadcast address of 255.255.255.255 while all the others gave something like 192.168.1.255.
Then I made a dramatic discovery: trying out one of the super-packs, I noticed that the network was set as Nat while the only one version that gave a connection was set at Bridged.
So, I changed from Nat to Bridged (goto Dell page, edit settings,set on Ethernet and change from Nat to bridged).
Internet connection was immediate and the broadcast address changed to 255.255.255.255

Before I discovered that the super-packs could have Internet too, I downloaded Opera (for BeOS) 3.62 in the Haikuware site (on the Mac). Then, as the file was only 2.05 MB in size, I transferred it to the Dell using cl1p.net (which is supposed to take a max file size of 2 MB but took this slightly larger one without complaint.
This was a .bin file and the way to install these is:

1) Go to directory where the .bin file is
2) chmod +x filename.bin #make the file executable
3) ./filename.bin #now it will install

So, all-in-all, a very successful day although the Opera version and that of Firefox in the super-packs are very clunky and difficult to use. What's more, you just can't get to your personal iGoogle in either browser.

Further progress on Mepis 7.0

Mepis 7.0 is working fine without any problems other than the freeze that happens when I try to rotate the CF cube. So now I have disabled this.
Nobody replying to my posts on this.
However, did see this thread in MepisLovers forum where some guy complained of a similar (but nowhere near the same) problem with Beryl and M7. He re-installed and whatever problem he had went away. I may have to do something like this.
Today I got sound working (no more than unmute verything in alsamixer. However, these settings seemed to be overwritten at every boot meaning that I had to reset alsamixer again to get sound to work). I posted to the Mepis forums and got some help. It seems that perhaps kmix is what was overwriting my sound settings. So (and this is only a tentative explanation) it seems that launching kmix once the alsamixer settings have been optimised, copies those settings to kmix which means it doesn't overwrite the sound settings anymore.
Also got video working in Opera. It seems my problem was that I was using Opera 9.25 which won't work with the latest flash (9.0.115). As I couldn't get an earlier version, I just upgraded to 9.50 build 1772 and this works fine with the latest flash. A lot of useful info about the use of flash in Opera came out of this thread.
Some guy put a package together for AWN in Mepis and was looking for testers. I volunteered and it looked pretty good although I couldn't do a full test as AWN was already fully installed on my system. However, if I get around to installing CF and AWN on Killian's computer (9 years old), I'll certainly use this method over the first one which was very amateurish.

"Could not connect to remote server"

I had started to see this error message when browsing, but only on the MacBook (the desktop didn't at all show these problems)
I saw them in 3 places:
1) When calling certain web-pages (e.g. my.opera.com)
2) Some, but certainly not all, ads on some web-pages
3) One Google gadget always gave this problem on the MacBook (Track IP Address, ISP, Country, Proxy)

The exact same problem occurred in both Opera 9.25 and Firefox 2.0.0.6
I posted to both the Opera forums and Firefox forums but nobody replied. This usually means the problem is rare or even unknown -- or it could just mean that nobody knows how to solve although even in this case somebody is likely to say just that.

I deleted ~/.opera/opera6.ini and rebooted but, while this brought things back the first time I did it, the second time it made no difference at all.

OK, so it seemed like the problem was some kind of configuration mixup on the MacBook so I decided to re-install Gutsy (Ubuntu 7.10). Note that Opera 9.25 worked fine on other OSes on the same MacBook.
So, after the re-install everything is back to normal which to me strongly indicates that this was indeed some config problem.

I'm going to summarise the other things I needed to do to get Ubuntu back to exactly where it was before I reformatted the / directory (of course, I didn't touch the /home directory).

1) Used this guide to install compiz-fusion
(Step 3 only) and then followed this thread to get fusion-icon back. I had tried another guide (mentioned in thread) that gave a funny-looking fusion-icon icon that I wanted to change.

2) Wireless was very easy to get back using this guide.
Note that I did not at all have to install either NetworkManager or nm-applet.

3) AWN came back by just using this guide. Note that for AWN to get back its launchers, you need to start the launch/taskmanager applet.

4) Before starting, I, of course, copied the famous 4 files menu.lst, sources.list. fstab and xorg.conf to the Sidux partition so I could have them after the re-install. Actually, up to now, I have only used the menu.lst file.

Problems with Opera in F8

For about the last year I've been using Opera as my preferred web-browser. What I like about it is its speed and the speed-dial/new tab facility. Of course, Firefox now has speed dial (possibly even better than Operas as you can include many more icons on the speed dial page). But, I just don't find FF to be as "fluent" as Opera.
However, I'm having very severe problems with Opera in F8.
First, none of the stable versions of Opera that I've tried have even opened for me in F8. This includes 9.25, 9.24 and 9.22
When I click on the icon, the processor usage goes immediately to 100% (presumably just one processor and nothing at all opens. Only way to get out of this is to kill opera.
If I open Opera from a terminal, again nothing happens but no error messages are given.