How to get Opera 10.5x (beta) to run on TC

[maro]

I was curious of how the new "Qt-free" Opera would shape up, and to find out I downloaded the latest beta version (BTW, announcements of new versions are made on this blog.

To test it one should only have to extract the archive (e.g. tar xjf opera-10.52-6306.i386.linux.tar.bz2) and then start the application (e.g. cd opera-10.52-6306.i386.linux ; opera &). But that resulted in the beginning just in some nasty crashes.

In theory this latest version is meant to be independent of GTK, but in practice I initially could only run it after installing gtk2.tcz. After a fair bit of "trial and error" I found two "bugs", which I'd like to share with those that want to keep to a truly minimal system:
(1) Even though the result of ldd lib/opera/opera does not show it, the application depends on fontconfig.tcz.
(2) To be able to actually "see" (and move past) the license acceptance screen one would need GTK, but a simple work around is [ -d profile ] && mkdir profile ; printf "[State]\nAccept License=1\n" > profile/operaprefs.ini

A bit more testing shows that this beta release is still "fairly raw": e.g. it crashes when trying to check out the preferences (e.g. "Ctrl-F12") on a "GTK-free" system, and it will only be able to run again after "resetting" the profile" (see (2) above). A simple "flash test" with a short YoutTube video can lead to an unwelcome "sound, without a video" experience.

So at least at this stage of the development I would not expect too much. But if others want to give it a try, you might have a better time.