Vivaldi zombies after clean installation.
 

I've used Opera for years and found out about Vivaldi yesterday. Downloaded and installed it, but it just zombies. Got on their forum but have had no replies. Has anyone else used it, successfully or otherwise, or had issues with it?

I'm using Debian 8.2 with LXDE; customized, but pretty standard. Here's the post on the forum:
__________________________________________

I've been using Opera for years and just found out about Vivaldi. Downloaded the 32-bit deb (VERY quick) into my Debian 8.2 installation and ran dpkg which reported dependency errors. Opened Synaptic and clicked to fix broken packages which installed the dependencies. Synaptic now reports the package as installed.
When I invoke ># vivaldi at the commandline it hangs without any result, and running ># ps ax gives:

2373 pts/10 Sl+ 0:00 /opt/vivaldi/vivaldi-bin --ppapi-flash-path --ppapi-flash-version
2380 pts/10 S+ 0:00 cat
2381 pts/10 S+ 0:00 cat
2388 pts/10 Z+ 0:00 [vivaldi-bin] <defunct>
2389 pts/3 R+ 0:00 ps ax
qbx:~>#

Could someone please assist? Thanks for any replies.

I used Vivaldi (both the last Beta release and the 1.0 release). It wasn't bad, especially if you like Chrome/Chromium (I came at it from the Firefox direction, so that would factor into any review I would make). Clearly, it had some need of maturing, but there weren't any major show-stoppers - at least, not if you can deal with the refusal to handle XML.

Sorry - forgot to mention. This was on Fedora 23 and KDE.

Sorry for asking (I'm a wee bit long in the tooth now), but what on earth does "zombies" mean in this context?

Things that eat "b-r-a-i-i-n-s! ... b-r-a-a-a-a-i-i-i-n-s!" ... accompanied by beautiful music? ;)

:)

Very possibly. I'm still trying to figure out how Vivaldi could come back from the dead and try to kill other programs. Perhaps it auto launches the default music player as well? ;)

I sorta, kinda thought that tekra meant that Vivaldi went "brain dead" after a bit of use.
But yeah, it would be great if it played beautiful music while doing that.

A zombie is a process (program) that is inactive or unresponsive but still in memory. Sorta like George W Bush.

The things you learn. Thanks tekra. Have you solved the problem yet?

1.3.537.5 behaves weird here, it seems to be running, but is invisible on the screen. It is not zombie, it can be killed with SIGHUP. 1.2.490.35 runs fine.

> The things you learn. Thanks tekra.

Yeah, find the same meself, and I'm a certified geriatric.

> Have you solved the problem yet?

Nope. Most Lx activity has moved on to the mobile arena, and it's getting more difficult to fix things.

> 1.3.537.5 behaves weird here, it seems to be running, but is invisible on the screen. It is not zombie, it can be killed with SIGHUP. 1.2.490.35 runs fine.

Thanks for that. Hadn't thought about trying earlier versions. Mine is vivaldi-stable_1.2.490.43-1_i386.deb Might try something earlier and see what gives. BTW I CAN kill it with ># kill s9 so I guess something in there is still alive. Mutant lifeform?

Posted back to the Vivaldi forum: https://vivaldi.net/en-US/forum/viva...-defunct#68938

Note to Emerson: might have attracted the interest of a Vivaldi developer, see here:

https://vivaldi.net/forum/vivaldi-br...g-vivaldi-dead

It's useful to bear in mind that Vivaldi is closed-source, in case this is a factor for anyone thinking of using it.

Actually, the term "zombie process" has a very specific meaning in Linux/Unix: it is a process that has terminated (or died), but that has not yet been "reaped" by its parent (or by init, if the parent has died).

This final little "dance of death" sequence exists solely so that the parent can collect ending-status from the child, and to be able to do so for any number of child processes in a simple loop, without any possibility of race-conditions. Once final status has been collected (or ignored), the child's process-table entry is finally disposed of.

A true "zombie" is neither "inactive" nor "unresponsive": it is dead.

Processes can be "stuck in infinite wait," e.g. due to a deadlock or other programming bug, and not be "zombies."

> Actually, the term "zombie process" has a very specific meaning in Linux/Unix

Thanks for that. Always assumed it was just convenient slang, not part of the tech lexicon.

> It's useful to bear in mind that Vivaldi is closed-source, in case this is a factor

And for that. Yes, a put-off for me, which leaves the fate of Opera as a pertinent question. Anyone have any info about the Chinese buyers and their intentions?