Opera@CD – specialized portable distribution

I’ve covered in detail what makes software portable and from personal experience few titles qualify as true portable. Still there are some projects that take concept even further by making it run from read-only media (like CD/DVD discs).

Opera@CD is one of such – as step to the side from Opera@USB.

What it does

Opera@USB is typical Opera installation with launcher to make it portable. Its @CD mod is bit less than that. I hadn’t found full list but M2 mail client is mentioned as one of disabled features. Meaning it probably took RSS and IRC support with it. Bookmarks are not much use if you can’t save them, etc.

Possible usage

• site suggest “HTML presentation” as target usage;
• would fit very well on tech kit discs (being unaffected by viruses is strong advantage over using flash drives);
• potentially good for Windows-based LiveCD s as well;
• being optimized for read-only medium also means it is probably suitable for tightly locked PC environments.

I had an idea that it might be close to perfect private browsing but running it with Process Monitor showed that cache files still go to system’s temporary folder – traces may stay.

Overall

Interesting build I will be closely watching and exploring. Less than full Opera experience but with some cool advantages as well.

Home&download http://www.opera-usb.com/operacd.htm

Opera update

By the way Opera just got 9.63 security update . Opera@USB and Opera@CD are getting updated later so watch my sidebar or software updates RSS feed for those.