The setting Sun

April 29, 2010 · by Ruari Ødegaard

In order to ensure a consistently high quality browser across our most popular desktop platforms we have reluctantly decided to drop support for Solaris. This will allow our UNIX development team to focus all of their attention on bringing Opera for Linux and FreeBSD up to final release quality, meaning that a 10.5x release for these platforms will happen as soon as feasibly possible.

Please be assured that we have no plans to drop support for either Linux or FreeBSD. These are the preferred UNIX-like environments of our development team and hence fully supporting a browser on these Operating Systems is more straightforward.

As always, the Desktop team will continue to consider adding support for further environments and/or processor architectures in the future.

Readers' comments

Comments left by My Opera members under the original post: the first 50, as archived.

MC16229. April 2010, 14:00
Solaris AND opera user?

There must be like 3 in the world.
Mark Gillespie29. April 2010, 14:01
Makes sense, I am assuming here, Opera know precisely how many people use Opera on Solaris (and indeed all platforms), due to the download numbers (and number of unique IP update checks).
Megaf29. April 2010, 14:06
Why??

Is that forever? will you develop for Solaris again? =/

Ok... What about add support for HaikuOS? Haiku is getting better day by day. There are many nice libs for Haiku, Qt 4, OpenGL...

You could use Qt to run Opera on Haiku. Haiku is source compatible with BeOS and is using gcc4, just like Linux.
Robson29. April 2010, 14:06
Oracle kill Opensolares. Fail!
Pfelelep29. April 2010, 14:06
noted. I guess that makes sense.
Note that I am a windows and Linux Ubuntu opera's user.
Daniel Aleksandersen29. April 2010, 14:09
What? No sunset illustration to go with the post?!
beholder-again29. April 2010, 14:12
this is good news. Now just upgrade the quality of your releases for the most used platforms.
Mark Gillespie29. April 2010, 14:58
Any news on the forthcoming Opera Opensource Announcement that was hinted at in Haavards twitter feed?
Roman29. April 2010, 15:06
oh.. so i can delete my opensolaris partition
johann sorel29. April 2010, 15:11
oh ... a shame, it's so stable and fast (especialy for Java).
David29. April 2010, 15:12
Good idea to sharpen the focus a bit. This will free up time for devs to spend on platforms that are more important in my opinion.
edupav29. April 2010, 15:15
Good news for Linux user
Kap4 Lin29. April 2010, 15:24
Originally posted by Ruari:

Please be assured that we have no plans to drop support for either Linux or FreeBSD

Did you forget a ", yet!" at the end of that sentence?

Nah, I am just kidding. I certainly appreciate the effort you guys are putting into this. I sincerely hope the wait for linux platform is worth it!
sebt29. April 2010, 15:26
Maybe this will free up some manpower so that the printing functionality in Opera (letter and word spacing garbled, fonts wrong, preview not scrolling properly etc.) can finally be fixed?! (old) bug-345159

Seb
mlouis29. April 2010, 15:28
Cool if it allows you to focus on other unix releases, I guess there was not a lot of solaris users ^^
Just hope it wont happen for linux
Abhinav29. April 2010, 15:51
Matt Keenan29. April 2010, 15:52
Real Shame, really love OpenSolaris... decisions like this will only encourage the powers that be to not invest in OpenSolaris going forward.
scottywildcat29. April 2010, 15:57
"Linux or FreeBSD... are the preferred UNIX-like environments of our development team."

So what you're actually saying is that this isn't a business-driven decision at all, but that you just can't be bothered learning how to use Solaris.
Tenno Seremel29. April 2010, 16:02
I smell a scottywildtroll here
pios29. April 2010, 16:02
what is this solaris everyone is talking about
John29. April 2010, 16:07
well, requesting to drop Unix and Mac support will not get me many friends here, so I don't want to argue about that.

It's just that the Windows is the most used one and I think the Windows version should get the most focus and development effort.

Just think about how many Unix and Mac users there are and how many use Opera^^

No offense, just focus on Windows!
john
celiochido29. April 2010, 16:08
is a shame but if this happens for the greater good, I think it's okay
cncminustv29. April 2010, 16:22
Too bad for Solaris users.
I believe it would be ideal to code once and run on anyplatform, no matter the percentage of userbase etc But that's not easy with such a complex software.

Anyway, I hope this means that we will have a working Opera on Linux soon.
since version 10.10 I'm dissappointed by opera.
vipin kumar29. April 2010, 16:29
So we can now expect the pace to increase more? And Opera 10.53 being released tomorrow?

PS-Just wondering what we can expect when opera moves closer to 11!! Any new features? When is the announcement related to open source going to be?
Michel Budnyatsky29. April 2010, 16:29
So, all you rest to do is update http://snapshot.opera.com/ page where we can still see a Solaris tag.
MeanEYE29. April 2010, 16:39
I think Opera might continue to work on Solaris (only might)... but Opera Team won't support it or make specific changes for that OS.
vipin kumar29. April 2010, 16:44
Originally posted by danaleks:

What? No sunset illustration to go with the post?!

The sun has already set!!
www.nenelinux.tk ®29. April 2010, 16:56
open the code for solaris people

or make a open opera version of open source people
nephros29. April 2010, 16:56
A shame. One less decent browser for Solaris Desktops.

I guess we will be stuck with Netscape 4.7 and only slightly less outdated versions of Firefox and Seamonkey.
iPristy29. April 2010, 17:05
I'm guessing probably is PPC next on the list of extinct species?
Brian29. April 2010, 17:20
How do the desktop versions of opera make money again? Just curious...
gtirloni29. April 2010, 17:31
Thanks for letting people know support for Solaris is being dropped. If Opera was called Oracle/Sun you would probably just change a PDF somewhere and let people figure it out.. and when asked questions you would ignore them.

It's nice when companies are transparent and come clean regarding their plans and reasons.
Olli29. April 2010, 17:32
Originally posted by italianjob44:

I'm guessing probably is PPC next on the list of extinct species?

I think yes, Firefox already killed support for it as well I think...
Tenno Seremel29. April 2010, 17:33
2 John: You don't seem to understand they cannot do that. Opera works on many platforms and makes money out of it.
Patrick O'Reilly29. April 2010, 17:34
I wouldn't be so sure that the number of Opera for Windows users is much greater than the number of Opera for Linux users. (That would be an interesting statistic to see) The Opera/Linux combination is preferred by most virus writers.
Solaris has become a shadow of what it once had the potential to be. Focusing on just for 4 OS's for the desktop version makes sense. I'm sure if there is a Solaris renaissance it won't be hard for the Opera dev's to port the *nix version over to Solaris once again.
Olli29. April 2010, 17:36
Originally posted by Haruka aka Seremel:

2 John: You don't seem to understand they cannot do that. Opera works on many platforms and makes money out of it.

Aaah, I'm ALWAYS asking myself. HOW DOES OPERA MAKE MONEY? With what? There is no advert in the browser, just a few search engines. So with what does Opera earn its money?
Charlie Clark29. April 2010, 17:37
Originally posted by Eclesia:

oh ... a shame, it's so stable and fast (especialy for Java).

Well, you can always use Opera Mini!

Oracle is killing Solaris for the desktop. Blame them.
Maurizio Oliveri29. April 2010, 17:38
That's really a shame, I've been an Opera user since 9.0 for Windows, and I was really looking for the new js engine... I don't get it though, is it really that hard to make it run it for Solaris? Whatever, I guess it's time to move to Firefox with Flash 10...
Tenno Seremel29. April 2010, 17:46
2 Olli: it's one layout engine everywhere. Like, say, on Wii. Adobe used it in some products AFAIK. Something like that.
Olli29. April 2010, 17:48
Originally posted by Haruka aka Seremel:

2 Olli: it's one layout engine everywhere. Like, say, on Wii. Adobe used it in some products AFAIK. Something like that.

But then they don't earn anythin with the desktop versions?
marcorion29. April 2010, 17:49
Originally posted by megaf:

You could use Qt to run Opera on Haiku. Haiku is source compatible with BeOS and is using gcc4, just like Linux.

Opera 10.5 is not dependent on Qt.
Tenno Seremel29. April 2010, 17:52
2 Olli: With desktop it's probably money from search engine providers (default search), I think. And self advertisement of their own engine (the fact it works and how i works). Don't know anything else
Aylons Hazzud29. April 2010, 17:54
Users of Opera for Solaris are already arranging a meeting to mourn the decision. As they are scattered all over the world, it will be a conference call (you know, these corporate guys love conference calls).

The number of participants isn't a problem, my conferece call room may has plenty lines for everyone: 5! We may even call the press!
Steve29. April 2010, 18:04
Solaris was originally the OS used on Sun workstations (originally using the SPARC processor). They were known at the time for being graphics workstations - video development and so on. Later they went to Intel processors ... and eventually Sun decided to open-source Solaris, which was a slow process ... (they had some proprietary code they had to work around to get an open version).

I'd say they lost too much ground during the conversion to "OpenSolaris" because of the long delays in development, from there the writing was on the wall. If you want to say that Oracle is killing Solaris ... from my perspective it looks like a mercy killing.

As far as other platforms and processors ... two obvious ones that come to mind are the ARM processor (used in many netbooks and smartphones) and Android platform. As Android is based on Linux, that one shouldn't be hard - but that's not really "desktop".
Matheus29. April 2010, 18:13
Originally posted by megaf:

Ok... What about add support for HaikuOS? Haiku is getting better day by day. There are many nice libs for Haiku, Qt 4, OpenGL...

You could use Qt to run Opera on Haiku. Haiku is source compatible with BeOS and is using gcc4, just like Linux.

+10000
Shawn29. April 2010, 18:15
I'm using Chrome on Ubuntu. Fire Fox still doesn't pass the acid3 test and it's slow as a snail. Chrome releases both Windows and Linux updates, upgrades and patches simultaneously.

When Opera decides to start giving the Linux project 100% I'll start supporting it on my Linux platform.

Opera is my browser of choice on Windows but unfortunately Linux is my daily work station.
Rafael Luik29. April 2010, 18:19
Common folks, this decision isn't definitive. If Solaris become a more popular OS it's going to get new versions of Opera again, it's simple.

Originally posted by megaf:

Ok... What about add support for HaikuOS?

The rules are the same for HaikuOS (BeOS), if it become more popular... the desktop team will opera it!
Shawn29. April 2010, 18:26
Well, you guys could always use Safari... whoops, I mean Konqueror.
Phạm Nguyễn Trường An29. April 2010, 18:34
Sad for solaris user, but fine by me.
And according to the comment there's not much objection, an indication for the small number of solaris users still left on Earth.
marcheschi29. April 2010, 18:48
That's great and I must say that you didn't do a great job on opensolaris , every time I use it on Opensolaris I have to revert to the old good firefox.
You tried And it is good to admit your difficulty in following several platform.
I hope in a better work on linux.

Paolo