Opera Mobile for Ubuntu

Opera Mobile 11.5 is the latest version of Opera Software’s browser for mobiles and tablets. Its a touch friendly mobile browser for Tablets or Tablet PC computers, the Linux version  for the browser is originally released for Meego based Tablets and Tablet PCs.

Opera Mobile is Flash capable; comes with Opera Link – a bookmark/speed dial/notes synchronisation service -  and Opera Turbo – a web page compression service using Opera servers that reduces  bandwidth consumption by up to 80%. (So its a must have if you have slower Internet connections while roaming).

Apart from being touch friendly Opera Mobile 11.5 works smoothly with Mouse and keyboard unlike the version 11 of the Browser, you just need to change the user agent from Tablet to Desktop and disable the on screen keyboard in settings for better performance with mouse and keyboard.

Installing Opera Mobile 11.5 on your Ubuntu desktop.

Since the Linux version of Opera  Mobile is available in RPM package, you first need to download the alien and fakeroot utilities from apt repositories, to convert the rpm file into a deb installer.

• $ sudo apt-get install alien

• $ sudo apt-get install fakeroot

Once you are done with the above steps, you are ready to install Opera Mobile 11.5 on your Ubuntu desktop.

You can download the rpm package for Opera Mobile from here.
Change to the download directory, issue the following command to convert the rpm package into a deb installer.

•  $ fakeroot alien Opera_Mobile-Labs-MeeGo-11.50-39.i386.rpm

After a while, you will get the converted deb installer for installation.

• $ sudo dpkg -i opera-mobile-labs-meego_11.50-40_i386.deb

After a successful install you can find the Opera Mobile browser in the Internet section of your menu Items. 

Opera Mobile might not be a very great browser for day to day browsing on your laptop but it can serve you as a very handy tool while moving or traveling (with Opera Turbo enabled) with slower Internet connections.

Happy Browsing :)