Opera Software debuted an all-new concept browser called Opera Neon yesterday.
Neon is fast, blingy, and a little bit gimmicky, but does some neatnew stuff that has gotten a lot of people quite excited.
Sadly, Neon wasn’t made available to downloadon linux.
And now we find out that it won’t be.
Like, ever.
We reached out ourselves to Opera ourselves a number of times to try and glean some sort ofword, waffle or a whisper about Linux support.
Hey @Opera , are there any plans for a #Linux version of #OperaNeon ? (Like this tweet if you want to see one too! :heart: ) https://t.co/a8DGj82Vbg
― OMG! UBUNTU! (@omgubuntu) January 12, 2017
Operacouldn’t be arsed to reply to us.
The companydid ―thankfully― reply to someone else who asked about Linux support. And theiranswer ― brace yourselves ― is a negative: there won’t be a Linux version:
@TuxICT No, sorry not this time
― Opera (@opera) January 13, 2017
What’s interesting is the reason why Opera saywon’t be a Linux build. It seems,in spiteofa positive reception by the press (something Opera doesn’t get much of), that Neon is just a one-shot :
@TuxICT Right now Neon is a fun project that our developers were working on & we're not planning to develop it further.
― Opera (@opera) January 13, 2017
“Right now Neon is a fun project that our developers were working on & we’re not planning to develop it further,” the company says in a tweet, and add that they plan “to add the best features to the regular browser so they’ll also be available for all Linux users”.
Which is someway encouraging, I guess.
Those of us on Linux aren’t short of alternative web-browsers. Aside from Opera, Chrome/ium and Firefox we have Epiphany (GNOME Web), Midori, Qupzilla, Min, Vivaldi, Rekonq, the Ubuntu web-browser app… and so on.
If you took Neon for a spin on windows and/or macOS let us know what features you hope to see Opera port over.
