
Google Chrome for Linux goes stable - igorgue
http://blog.chromium.org/2010/05/google-chrome-for-linux-goes-stable.html
======
MikeCapone
If anyone from the Chrome/Chromium team is reading this, I want to say a big
"Thank you". Chrome is great software, and it's making my life better (I
probably spend something like 50-60 hours a week in it). I'm sure it's the
case for many others too. Keep up the good work!

~~~
agl
You're welcome :)

~~~
nailer
Also triple thankyou for actually producing packages of your work rather than
'here's a tarball, or wait 6 months for your distro to do it' like Firefox
does.

~~~
avar
Those packages are great, my only complaint is that they (at least the Debian
ones) don't include a changelog file. It would be great to see what's new
through the standard Debian facility when they release new versions.

~~~
ars
They also install in /opt - which is wrong when you are using the packaging
system for your distribution. They also make a number of other changes to the
system.

Much better to install the official debian ones - they are less likely to mess
with your system, and whoever is releasing them seems to keep up with the
releases, so you are not behind.

<http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/chromium-browser.html>

~~~
heresy
/opt is the correct place to install if the package is not strictly speaking
an officially sanctioned package.

Less chance of interfering with an overlapping package supplied by the
distribution.

At least, /opt is part of the FHS, to which Debian adheres.

<http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/amd64/apcs02.html>

~~~
ars
My understanding is that /opt is for programs that do not use the package
manager. For example if you download a .tar file, and it has an installation
script.

If it uses the package manager it goes in /usr like a regular program.

~~~
epochwolf
Actually that's what /usr/local is for.

~~~
ars
That's for packages you install manually without an install script.

------
JulianMorrison
Adblock on Chrome is still seriously imperfect, for two reasons

1\. It takes a while to hide things (it also has a "hide too much, and un-hide
later" mode, but that's barely an improvement).

2\. The big one: it still downloads things. Let me be clear here: I don't want
to have to wait for doubleclick to get off its ass and serve me an ad. I want
the page all the way loaded when the bits I'm going to see are there. Which
does not include adverts. I assume this is pending on Chrome adding a "pretty
please may I?" hook to URL fetching - does anyone know when this will be here?

~~~
KERMIT
Browsers should just display content. Filtering proxies should filter out ads
and other unwanted content before it ever gets to the browser.

~~~
fierarul
Filtering proxies don't know Javascript or Flash. I also don't want to worry
about the parsing and semantic differences between the proxy and the browser:
a lot of differences might arrise.

Putting ad-blocking inside the browser seems the most logical part, especially
since you get the DOM already made so you know you look at the same data.

------
roryokane
It’s also finally stable for Mac: [http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-
chrome-stable-release...](http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-chrome-
stable-release-welcome-mac.html)

~~~
stuntmouse
The stable Mac version has better idle CPU usage. Doesn't cause my MBP fans to
crank up so often.

------
Raphael_Amiard
IMHO chrome is the first and only serious linux web browser. It doesn't have
this sluggish feeling that firefox linux has. The situation certainly isn't
the same on windows, where firefox graphic performance is decent.

All in all, a big thank you to the chrome devs from a linuxer

~~~
ondra
I'm a fan of Konqueror myself. For some reason nobody seems to use it.
Konqueror is stable, fast, doesn't use much memory and renders everything just
fine.

------
chasingsparks
Given Chrome's tab and menu positions, Chrome feels great with XMonad.

(Posted via Chrome x86_64 :))

~~~
Periodic
I was quite happy with Firefox + Vimperator. All I show is a tab bar on the
top and status bar on the bottom. It was great for XMonad.

I'll try out Chrome + Vimium for a bit, see how it works with my workflow and
the muscle-memory of Vimperator keybindings.

------
zppx
I'm a recent convert from Firefox (I still use Firefox sometimes), I use
Chrome on all three systems that I use every week, I just wish Chrome had
something like about:config from Firefox.

~~~
jokermatt999
The main thing I miss is the powerful addons. I'd love TreeStyleTabs and a
fully featured Vimperator (command line included) for Chrome, but it's just
not possible.

~~~
stanleydrew
I talked with a Windows UI designer on the Chromium team at Google I/O who is
working on tree tabs. Should at least be an option pretty soon in the dev
channel.

~~~
jokermatt999
This is excellent news; thank you. I'll go see what I can find on that. If you
talk to them again, let them know there's definitely interest in that.

~~~
stanleydrew
There is probably some discussion around this on the chromium-dev or chromium-
discuss lists in the chromium.org Google groups. I haven't checked though.

------
maw
How much work would it be, maybe through an extension and maybe not, to
arrange for individual tabs to suspend and resume after being idle for a
period of time? On Linux and OSX, at least, this might be done via SIGSTOP and
SIGCONT, or perhaps using a more sophisticated scheme. Although it'd come at
the cost of Chrome's responsiveness, I expect that it'd be a net win.

For now, I use a script to kill the helper processes and reload the ones I'm
interested at the time. Effective, but a blunter tool than I'd like all the
same.

------
pohl
Has anybody been able to pin this down to a particular version number?

~~~
js2
5.0.375.55

------
ibejoeb
I use Chrome on Linux every day, and I love it, but I'm skeptical. In fact,
just yesterday it chewed up my profile and I have yet to be able to recover
it. Right now I'm leaning toward a corrupt SQLite database.

~~~
paulsmith
Weird, that just happened to me, too. No history, no cookies, and won't
populate them, either (eg., no "most visited thumbnails" in the home page).

------
jz
As a BSD user, I recall some of the porting problems were because of the
reliance of ALSA instead of OSS. Anybody know offhand if it still uses ALSA?

~~~
agl
Yes, sound on Linux is still using ALSA. The BSD work is all from
contributions I believe. We have a 'media/audio/openbsd', but the contents
appears to just be a stub.

------
rufugee
Yet for me, the developer console still won't show Ajax requests for
inspection. This is on 64-bit Ubuntu Lucid. Anyone else have this problem?

~~~
stanleydrew
Never had that problem. It's always just worked. Has it ever worked for you,
or have you seen it work on someone else's chrome install?

~~~
rufugee
It worked in the past, but at some point stopped. I made use of it quite
often, but only noticed last week it had stopped. I uninstalled/reinstalled,
but no dice. Appears a few others are having it as well
(<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=40987>). I'm going to
blow away ~/.config/google-chrome and see if that fixes it.

------
artaak
What about integrating Adobe PDF? Does Adobe Reader still requires dances
around to show something besides a gray screen?

------
Dirt_McGirt
Great. Now if there was a flashblocker that actually works, maybe I could
switch.

~~~
telemachos
The FlashBlock extension works well for me. Give it a try:

[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gofhjkjmkpinhpoi...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gofhjkjmkpinhpoiabjplobcaignabnl)

~~~
Dirt_McGirt
It blocks like maybe 25% of all flash for me. Not adequate at all.

~~~
pavs
Something is wrong with your setup. I have been using that flash blocker for
2-3 months now and it blocks 100% flash objects for me both on mac and
Windows, haven't tried it on Linux yet.

~~~
Dirt_McGirt
Well, I've tried it on Mac, Linux and Windows and it only blocks a minority of
all flash files I've encountered. It seems especially bad with youtube and
vimeo files embedded in blog posts.

In fact, I don't think it really can work in any real sense as an actual
blocker since chrome doesn't provide an API for that. As I understand it, the
best it can do is to remove the flash after the page has rendered.

~~~
lftl
There are at least 3-4 competing extensions on Chrome so I'm sure there's a
variability in the quality of them. This one has worked well for me:

[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/cdngiadmnkhgemki...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/cdngiadmnkhgemkimkhiilgffbjijcie)

But what you've said is true, FF's FlashBlock has much better control over
Flash because of the control it has via the API. Chrome doesn't offer the same
level of control to extensions, so they're all just going rewrite the page on
load. That's been good enough for me though.

~~~
DrSprout
The point of Flashblock and NoScript is security without sacrificing usability
on trusted sites. Yes, it lets you ignore the Flash, but it doesn't actually
protect you because the Flash is still loaded.

------
smcdow
Where the stable version for RHEL-5?

~~~
c00p3r
What is the reason to use RHEL _as a desktop_ instead of Fedora?

~~~
dagw
RedHat enterprise support with long term stable updates that won't disappear
and force you to upgrade in a few month time?

~~~
c00p3r
Some people argued that there is Sun's enterprise support for Solaris and
blah-blah-blah. =) Where is the [Open]Solaris now? (Do not even try to tell
that it is alive - no activity, no community support, no device driver updates
or even patches - the very dead. =)

two hints: There is the CentOS, which have a much cheaper support (free
updates + community support). =)

Fedora 12 (even 13) is pretty stable and actively supported system. They got
less hype than Ubuntu (they don't have so much money for promotion and
advertisement) but it is not just a testing branch of RHEL (look at RHEL6 beta
- it is Fedora 12), it is probably the best distro available. (Think about it
to become a RHEL with maturation - this is the main advantage over ubuntu
which will become only yet another ubuntu. =)

------
teilo
Also, Chrome for Mac is now stable.

