Misc. Ramblings

In an announcement released on Tuesday, the Opera web browser is now banner and licensing fee free. Up to now, if you didn't purchase a license you could still use Opera but they would display banner ads along the upper portion of the browser. Version 8.5 no longer includes the banners nor requires payment for a license.

The press release is silent on what business model they will be using but one has to wonder how they will stay in business.

That aside, Opera is a very fast (much, much faster in Linux than Firefox), standards compliant browser available for many different operating systems. Some of it's features can be found here. Note to Xandros users, and perhaps others, you should install the Open Motif client (motif-clients) before installing Opera. Opera will still run without it, but apparently not everything will work.

Give it try some time and see if it meets your needs. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.