Update - 29/05/20 : Follow the LINK to current packages
As you all know, I've recently packaged a number of other browsers as portables, including Opera. In some ways, this showed every sign of becoming the replacement for my long-term favourite, Chrome. However; NetFlix is a prerequisite for me, so any browser that can't provide it without issues quickly gets kicked into touch.
As is the case with Opera, unfortunately. Those of you running the portable Opera I built will have noticed by this point that the Menu icon in the top-left corner has now got a red background; Opera want you to update..!
There have been three updates of Opera since I built that package. I haven't released any more, because with each one, Widevine has been irrecoverably 'broken'....and I won't release a package that isn't 'fully functional'. The guys on the Opera Forums are tearing their hair out over this, and have tried every 'workaround' & 'fix' you can think of (and then some). This is, however, going to be the case from now on, as Opera's controlling 'share' (this is a private company, remember; it's all closed-source code in here) has been bought out by a Chinese 'consortium', Qihoo 360.....one of China's top mobile & internet 'security' firms, who, it appears, have a reputation for dirty tricks & foul play.
https://www.tenforums.com/browsers-emai ... inese.html
These guys have also made it crystal clear that they have every intention of only supporting Windoze development for the browser from now on, since that's where the money lies. Everybody else can go whistle. The fact that a big part of the Opera development team quit over this back in November is rather telling.....
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And this is why I've been looking at Vivaldi. It's developed by a bunch of original Opera staff, and has quickly gained a reputation as one of the most (if not the most) highly-configurable Chromium-based browsers there is. I looked at it a couple of years ago, but wasn't that keen on it. Having looked at it again, it's made big improvements in many areas.....especially that of 'themes', which in the earlier versions I found to be very 'garish' and 'in-yer-face'.
Widevine has proven very easy to implement in the 64-bit version, since the WidevineCDM folder is a direct sym-link to the one in Google Chrome; thus, a simple matter to swap the sym-link for the actual item. Seems to function fine.
32-bit Widevine, well; it's the same old problem I've had in every other Chromium-based browser recently. No matter how you try to implement it, it simply doesn't 'see' it. Makes me wonder if it's related to Big Brother being determined to push everybody to 64-bit only. Could be, could be.....they do basically 'underwrite' Chromium development, after all. It's their browser R & D department, at the end of the day.
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So; since the 32-bit version won't function 100%, I'm following my personal rule, and am only going to publish the 64-bit version. For anybody who's interested, you can find it here:-
Vivaldi 64-bit 'portable' - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LWSmYf ... sp=sharing
MD5 - facb36e529de6f9778c5060ae8c2de49
Sha256 - ac1484fcc993e9284832516cf0c45358ff5c4d67ac6834c10b61187f874a3fff
As always, unzip, put it anywhere you want. Click to enter, click 'LAUNCH' to fire it up. Simples!
[I've built & uploaded a 32-bit version, but I won't publish it unless there's a demand, since to my mind, it's not fully functional.]
Have fun.
Mike.
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