I have noticed that installations of the old browser 8.x or 9.x which are
older than the latest version will not properly install (seg fault) on my
linux system whereas they did correctly install and function while they
were "new" or the latest version at the time.

Using debian etc btw.

Would I be right in thinking that opera may be connecting to
opera.com/wherever and checking to see if it is the latest version and if
it is not then it is "instructed" to fail? It certainly seems so to me.