Opera is available in a Snap on Linux
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Opera is far from the most popular web browser, but it has its loyal fans. Now, if those fans also happen to be Linux desktop users, Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company, and Opera SA have made it easier than ever to install it on almost any Linux distribution.
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They've done this by packing Opera into a Snap in the Snap Store. The Opera snap is supported on Debian, Elementary, Fedora, Linux Mint, Manjaro, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions.
Snaps are containerised software packages. They're designed to work securely within any Linux environment across desktop, the cloud, and IoT devices. Thousands of snaps have been launched since 2016. Users like them because they come with automatic updates and roll-back features.
Snaps also are a bit more secure than most Linux apps. They make it easier for developers to roll out their programs. When your program in encased in a Snap, you don't need to worry about the distribution's native packaging or whether the desktop distro includes a vital library your application needs.
Opera's pleased to be available as a snap: "We are happy to say that the installation of our browser on Linux just got easier than ever before," said Krystian Kolondra, Opera EVP of browsers in a statement.
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Want to see it for yourself? Want to try it? Install the snap service on one of the supported Linux distributions, which includes Arch, Debian, and Linux Mint. Then run the following command from your Linux shell:
$ sudo snap install opera
Enjoy!