
Chrome Now Available for Mac or Linux : Hackers Only - datums
http://blog.chromium.org/2009/06/danger-mac-and-linux-builds-available.html
======
biotech
I installed Chromium on my Ubuntu box the other day. It is missing many
features (plugins, bookmarks weren't working right, options missing, etc), as
I expected from an alpha build.

It looks pretty good so far, though:

\- It's really fast (compared to Firefox and Konqueror - yes I use KUbuntu)

\- The UI looks similar to the Chrome on Windows (which I really like), except
that it has an extra title bar.

\- It didn't crash as I spent a few hours using it instead of firefox.

\- It was really, really easy to install: Simply add the repositories to your
/etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb <http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu> jaunty main

deb-src <http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu> jaunty main

Then:

aptitude update && aptitude install chromium-browser

Can't wait till they get plug ins and extensions working... Then I won't miss
Firefox at all.

~~~
icefox
And the big selling point for this browser is missing on Linux:

\- You don't get the each tab in its own process.

~~~
agl
Erm, yes you do. The assignment of tabs to processes is the same as on
Windows.

~~~
icefox
I stand corrected, my local chromium-browser from just a few days ago had them
all in a single process, but after upgrading I see that they have something
working and it is spawning several processes for ever tab I open.

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thristian
I was surprised to see that Google's automatic-update system for Linux is to
just hook into the native packaging system (for Ubuntu/Debian this is APT, it
sounds like they're planning Yum integration for Fedora, etc.)

I'm not sure whether to be annoyed that their installer messes with my system
configuration, or to applaud them for not re-inventing the auto-update wheel
yet again.

I suppose the advantage of Firefox's update mechanism is that the browser can
present nice 'please shutdown now' dialogs; on the other hand, Ubuntu already
refuses to upgrade Firefox while there's a firefox process running, so maybe
this is a net win after all.

~~~
agl
Chrome should soon be able to update without going horribly wrong. (This is
more difficult than you probably suspect since we exec new processes for new
tabs much of the time).

We certainly don't want to reinvent auto-updating when we don't need to.
Sticking a new apt source into your system config is a /little/ freakly, but
not nearly as bad as assuming that user processes are going to update system
binaries.

~~~
grandalf
sounds like you're working on Chrome -- it's awesome! Great job.

------
mcav
For those of you who have been using the daily Chromium dev builds, this build
seems identical except for the minor branding change (Chrome vs Chromium).

~~~
agl
It's cut from the same tree of course. However, the official builds have crash
reporting and auto updating.

Unless you're actually building from source and writing patches, please use
the official builds. We do look at the crash reports!

------
ars
Does it have to be called chromium?

Because there is a game by that name already
<http://www.reptilelabour.com/software/chromium/> and it'll be a little weird
to have both installed at the same time.

I see the binary and deb package are called google-chrome - is that intended
to stay that way, or is it temporary at that name?

Also, if you are making a native package you don't need to put stuff in /opt -
I don't even have a /opt. Put it in /usr/share/google-chrome instead (or
/usr/share/chrome if the package name won't have google).

And finally, I'm not so sure I like the cron.daily and the postinst messing
with the apt/sources.list - unless I missed it, I didn't even see it ask
first.

I do understand the desire to update frequently, but I think you would do much
better to go in reverse:

Instead of download a deb and install it, ask people to put the repository in
the source.list, and install it that way. Then you are assured that the
repository is there.

You don't even need a link to download it, make the repository the only
official way to get it. (And include a .tar.gz for those that need it.)

~~~
agl
It's called Chromium - that ship sailed a long time ago. The distribution
packages will probably call it chromium-browser. The official releases are
google-chome.

Since this isn't a distribution package, /opt is the correct place for it.

The cron script is unfortunate, but there's a good reason for it (see the
comments at the top). We're doing the best we can with a non-distro package.

Unfortunately, having people configure their sources list fails for the same
reason (it gets overridden by dist-upgrade sometimes).

------
s3graham
Anyone know if the fonts are a "known issue" or on purpose (Linux)? They seem
very unreadable/not-using-my-AA-settings compared to FF.

Nice and snappy though!

~~~
thristian
Here, they tend to be 'not drawn at all', or all heaped up in a corner. I'm
also getting a lot of messages like:

    
    
        ERROR: unable to open font '0'
        ERROR: unable to open font '101'
        ERROR: unable to open font '402'
        ERROR: unable to open font '101'
        ERROR: unable to open font '603'
    

...and none of the links are clickable.

~~~
agl
Opps! That's a renderer failing to open font files. At this stage we have lots
of bugs so that is probably just something which I'll keep at the back of my
mind for the future.

However, if you're willing to put some work into debugging it, please free
feel to file a bug at crbug.com.

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chriskelley
Doesn't work with 10.4.11 (cross post from other thread)

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DrJokepu
Any chance of having an .rpm release at some point? Or even just a plain
binary .tgz? I know it's perverted but I prefer Fedora over Ubuntu.

~~~
mattyb
_Support for other Linux distributions is planned; unpacking the .deb files by
hand may work._

------
cookiecaper
These builds have been around for a little bit, but Chrome is much faster.
Finally we have respectable JS performance on Linux; the first few tests of
Dromeao run 4x faster on the Chromium nightly v. Firefox nightly. Excited to
see more progress here.

------
nixy
Good stuff. Thank God the Mac version doesn't have that awful blue color that
Chrome has on Windows. When Chrome is ripe with all features and add-ons like
AdBlock Plus, Firebug and GreaseMonkey -- FF will have to shape up.

~~~
icefox
Oh just you wait, the blue will come. And even better on Linux they plan on
painting for own windows borders (they don't like your window manager) so it
looks like Vista in the name of branding.

~~~
agl
No we don't. Fitting in with different windows managers is probably going to
be a case of distributions skinning Chromium based on their default WM.

But we have bigger fish to fry for the moment.

~~~
agl
Having said that. It would be hilarious, so it might be an option :)

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tlrobinson
Looking great. Though I find it amazing that they haven't implemented command-
arrow hotkeys for forward/back. That's approximately the 2nd feature I would
implement, after the actual browser engine.

~~~
swaroop
Alt+arrow keys works fine here for forward/back. On Linux.

------
swaroop
Honestly, this thing is stabler than the latest Firefox on Linux!

And on top of that, it takes 1-2 seconds to open up vs. 14 seconds for
Firefox.

(My PC has 3GB RAM, 2GHz Intel Dual core 2 processor, Ubuntu 8.10)

------
c00p3r
Oh, same shit again. They wants ia32 libs on x86_64 systems. Same with Android
SDK, Earth and so on. Is it so difficult to rebuild the sources?!

~~~
agl
This issue with Chrome is that V8 is a 32-bit code generator. 64-bit support
is coming and, as soon as it's ready, we'll have real 64-bit packages.

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miguelpais
Why do I think this will fail on the Mac?

