6 ms·

Chrome is basically crippling Chromium's features

54 points by r3bl 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Insanity 10y ago
Out of curiosity, why did you switch to Chrome? I have been using Chromium on all my machines, a Ubuntu one being my main machine and experienced no issues with it whatsoever. I do experience some issues with the Signal chrome app, it when I log in on my deskop it replays message notifications which I have already seen on my phone. But I am not sure if this is a chromium issue, and even if it is, it's a very minor one.
- rfz 10y ago
  That's just the Chrome Signal app playing catchup - not Chromium's fault. It's not the best app in the world. Really can't wait for the next iteration that isn't in Chrome form.
  - r3bl 10y ago
    This affected every single Chromium app I had installed. Signal is just one of them, which was easiest to spot. Pocket, Kindle Cloud Reader, Duolingo, and Floating for YouTube are also gone.
  - Insanity 10y ago
    Oh thank you rfz, I did not know that. Signal is the only chromium app that I am using. Are they making a stand alone app?
    - rfz 10y ago
      Evidently all Chrome apps are being phased out for Windows/Linux/Mac, so I can only assume they will. Not that Signal is a very feature-filled app or concept (it doesn't need to be), but it could definitely stand to be a bit more polished. http://www.omgchrome.com/not-joke-google-killing-chrome-apps/ http://www.omgchrome.com/not-joke-google-killing-chrome-apps...
      - Insanity 10y ago
        Ah yeah, I completely forgot about this.
      - r3bl 10y ago
        Ah, I didn't even know that this was happening. Thanks for sharing!
      - lima 10y ago
        I hate this. Chrome Apps are nicely sandboxed within Chrome's sandbox. Now everyone is porting their stuff Electron, which has no sandbox. Deprecating Chrome Apps is hurting users by making their systems less secure.
        angry_octet 10y ago
        I am contemplating extracting the bits of chromium required to just make it an app container, so I can continue to run Chrome apps on the desktop. Since Chrome apps will still exist for Chromebooks it should keep working.
        lima 10y ago
        I fear that app developers would abandon their Chrome apps in favor of Electron.
        rfz 10y ago
        Seems to me that devs would only be smart (read: not in our favor or best interest) to go where the people are; what's the ChromeOS userbase compared to that of other OSes?
        angry_octet 10y ago
        I don't care about ChromeOS, it's cross-platform, offline capable, secure and sandboxed applications I want. How much easier to distribute just the Chrome App engine to hundreds of varying Windows boxes, than the individual apps?
- r3bl 10y ago
  I didn't, just wanted to try it out. Now I'm kind of stuck where I have to use Chromium + Chrome apps, which is definitely not the end result I was hoping for.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/349/ https://xkcd.com/349/
nl 10y ago
Can't you fix this using multi-profiles? https://www.chromium.org/developers/creating-and-using-profiles https://www.chromium.org/developers/creating-and-using-profi...
devoply 10y ago
Google no longer cares about Linux. They are even abandoning the kernel for Android in favor of a homegrown kernel. To expect good support for Linux going forward is just like expecting good support from any other vendor that does not care about the small community of Linux users.
- rfz 10y ago
  Good riddance. Plenty of other options out there that don't solely exist to harvest our data.
- dorfsmay 10y ago
  Given their complete lack of support for google drive for Linux... I believe you. Happy to give money to pcloud.com, as they provide a viable and affordable alternative (Dropbox ends up being too expensive for a family).
- lima 10y ago
  That's FUD. Fuchsia is a research project and it was never stated that it was intended to replace Linux. All of their servers run Linux. Chrome OS runs on Linux. Most of their workstations are Linux. "Google no longer cares about Linux" makes no sense.
  - gsnedders 10y ago
    Also the lack of coordination across different parts of Google is blatantly obvious in plenty of ways: you have parts pushing hard against any type of browser-specific code while others make things that are Chrome-only; you have different parts making competing messaging apps; etc. To pretend Google is acting in a coordinated way against Linux seems highly dubious given the lack of any coordination in general.
r3bl 10y ago
Since this is on the homepage and my VPS is rather small, here's a mirror: https://medium.com/@r3bl/chrome-is-basically-crippling-chromiums-features-c08c6e684531 https://medium.com/@r3bl/chrome-is-basically-crippling-chrom...
- metalmanac 10y ago
  Just curious, what are the specs of your VPS?
  - r3bl 10y ago
    2.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB storage, 1 TB bandwidth. Surprisingly, it's handling the traffic just fine.
    - discreditable 10y ago
      Seems like you're running Jekyll. If that's the case I'm not surprised. Static sites handle load amazingly well.
KyeRussell 10y ago
Well that headline definitely isn't sensationalist.
amelius 10y ago
Video sites quite often do not work on chromium, but do work on chrome. Both on Linux.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Yes, that's because Chrome includes proprietary codecs, while Chromium doesn't. I believe there are some ffmpeg bindings available on most distros to solve that.
  - amelius 10y ago
    Okay, thanks. I still think that Chromium needs better error reporting; it's difficult to figure out what is wrong when a video is not displaying (often, I think it is just not loading); and which codec is missing.
    - majewsky 10y ago
      AFAIK that's sort of the website's fault. The HTML5 video support allows the website to query the browser's codec capabilities in order to determine which video file to show to the user (for those sites where videos are available in multiple codecs), so if the website's JS does not find any matching codec, they should show an appropriate error message. Now of course, to most users of the average video site, an error message involving the words "supported codecs" would just be gibberish, so I can see why many video sites just show a generic "Something went wrong" error (or nothing at all, since it's plainly obvious that something went wrong when the video's not playing).
CommanderData 10y ago
Chromium's Web Speech API 'ServiceURI' attribute was removed recently allowing you to specify your own speech recognition service instead of the default Google's Speech service. Last Wednesday, I tried searching for a work-around, it would seem I'd have to build something with WebRTC to achieve similar responsiveness. The attribute was available until 49. I don't know the reason behind its removal. There isn't anything to suggest Google is forcing you into their speech service (which is expensive) but it would be nice to ASR on your own server and have the attribute back as per the specification or not be forced into using Cloud Speech or reinvent the wheel. Spec: https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/speech-api/raw-file/tip/speechapi.html#dfn-serviceuri https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/speech-api/raw-file/tip/speechapi.htm... Others seem to have noticed: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/chromium-dev/web$20speech$20api/chromium-dev/mUe4NM5xEzk/uRHvuZdSBQAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/ch...
- gsnedders 10y ago
  The commit mesasaging dropping it: "Reverting serviceURI since it is not supported anymore." That at least implies it was already unsupported, and the code diff doesn't seem to change anything notable. Looking through history I can't find any evidence of serviceURI ever being hooked up to anything? Are you sure setting serviceURI ever actually did anything?
infodroid 10y ago
> Chrome is basically crippling Chromium's features The article doesn't even rule out the obvious possibility that the problems are just due to a bug in Chromium, and not some malicious behaviour on the part of Chrome. After all, both Chrome and Chromium share a common code base and it's highly plausible that there might be some issues with running them side by side. Also, part of the problem might be due to the fact the author didn't purge Chrome with `dpkg -P` but only removed the package with `dpkg -r`, leaving Chrome conffiles intact, which then broke Chromium. So until there is at least some indication that the problem isn't just due to one or more bugs in Chromium, the author's claims are seriously exaggerated and the article is effectively clickbait. The best way to deal with such problems is to engage with Ubuntu, Chrome, or Chromium support systems and community forums.
- nl 10y ago
  Exactly. It's pretty clear that this is an attempt to keep the profiles compatible between the two, but it's probably an untested combination of rarely used features. Chromium + Linux + Using (specific?) Chrome Apps + Installing version of Chrome after Chromium = not many people have done this. It seems to me "just a bug", and probably easily worked around (as I posted below) by using multiple profiles. Annoying though I guess.
BlackLotus89 10y ago
The author seems rather incompetent and obviously doesn't know what he is talking about. I could rip apart pretty much every second paragraph, but since being helpful is more... You know helpful here one tip: For signal change it back to chromium and pair it again. The desktop client doesn't delete the history on an unpair and a re-pair will show your old history

54 points by r3bl 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Out of curiosity, why did you switch to Chrome? I have been using Chromium on all my machines, a Ubuntu one being my main machine and experienced no issues with it whatsoever. I do experience some issues with the Signal chrome app, it when I log in on my deskop it replays message notifications which I have already seen on my phone. But I am not sure if this is a chromium issue, and even if it is, it's a very minor one.

rfz 10y ago
That's just the Chrome Signal app playing catchup - not Chromium's fault. It's not the best app in the world. Really can't wait for the next iteration that isn't in Chrome form.
- r3bl 10y ago
  This affected every single Chromium app I had installed. Signal is just one of them, which was easiest to spot. Pocket, Kindle Cloud Reader, Duolingo, and Floating for YouTube are also gone.
- Insanity 10y ago
  Oh thank you rfz, I did not know that. Signal is the only chromium app that I am using. Are they making a stand alone app?
  - rfz 10y ago
    Evidently all Chrome apps are being phased out for Windows/Linux/Mac, so I can only assume they will. Not that Signal is a very feature-filled app or concept (it doesn't need to be), but it could definitely stand to be a bit more polished. http://www.omgchrome.com/not-joke-google-killing-chrome-apps/ http://www.omgchrome.com/not-joke-google-killing-chrome-apps...
    - Insanity 10y ago
      Ah yeah, I completely forgot about this.
    - r3bl 10y ago
      Ah, I didn't even know that this was happening. Thanks for sharing!
    - lima 10y ago
      I hate this. Chrome Apps are nicely sandboxed within Chrome's sandbox. Now everyone is porting their stuff Electron, which has no sandbox. Deprecating Chrome Apps is hurting users by making their systems less secure.
      - angry_octet 10y ago
        I am contemplating extracting the bits of chromium required to just make it an app container, so I can continue to run Chrome apps on the desktop. Since Chrome apps will still exist for Chromebooks it should keep working.
        lima 10y ago
        I fear that app developers would abandon their Chrome apps in favor of Electron.
        rfz 10y ago
        Seems to me that devs would only be smart (read: not in our favor or best interest) to go where the people are; what's the ChromeOS userbase compared to that of other OSes?
        angry_octet 10y ago
        I don't care about ChromeOS, it's cross-platform, offline capable, secure and sandboxed applications I want. How much easier to distribute just the Chrome App engine to hundreds of varying Windows boxes, than the individual apps?
r3bl 10y ago
I didn't, just wanted to try it out. Now I'm kind of stuck where I have to use Chromium + Chrome apps, which is definitely not the end result I was hoping for.
- majewsky 10y ago
  Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/349/ https://xkcd.com/349/

nl 10y ago

Can't you fix this using multi-profiles? https://www.chromium.org/developers/creating-and-using-profiles https://www.chromium.org/developers/creating-and-using-profi...

devoply 10y ago

Google no longer cares about Linux. They are even abandoning the kernel for Android in favor of a homegrown kernel. To expect good support for Linux going forward is just like expecting good support from any other vendor that does not care about the small community of Linux users.

rfz 10y ago
Good riddance. Plenty of other options out there that don't solely exist to harvest our data.
dorfsmay 10y ago
Given their complete lack of support for google drive for Linux... I believe you. Happy to give money to pcloud.com, as they provide a viable and affordable alternative (Dropbox ends up being too expensive for a family).
lima 10y ago
That's FUD. Fuchsia is a research project and it was never stated that it was intended to replace Linux. All of their servers run Linux. Chrome OS runs on Linux. Most of their workstations are Linux. "Google no longer cares about Linux" makes no sense.
- gsnedders 10y ago
  Also the lack of coordination across different parts of Google is blatantly obvious in plenty of ways: you have parts pushing hard against any type of browser-specific code while others make things that are Chrome-only; you have different parts making competing messaging apps; etc. To pretend Google is acting in a coordinated way against Linux seems highly dubious given the lack of any coordination in general.

r3bl 10y ago

Since this is on the homepage and my VPS is rather small, here's a mirror: https://medium.com/@r3bl/chrome-is-basically-crippling-chromiums-features-c08c6e684531 https://medium.com/@r3bl/chrome-is-basically-crippling-chrom...

metalmanac 10y ago
Just curious, what are the specs of your VPS?
- r3bl 10y ago
  2.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB storage, 1 TB bandwidth. Surprisingly, it's handling the traffic just fine.
  - discreditable 10y ago
    Seems like you're running Jekyll. If that's the case I'm not surprised. Static sites handle load amazingly well.

KyeRussell 10y ago

Well that headline definitely isn't sensationalist.

amelius 10y ago

Video sites quite often do not work on chromium, but do work on chrome. Both on Linux.

icebraining 10y ago
Yes, that's because Chrome includes proprietary codecs, while Chromium doesn't. I believe there are some ffmpeg bindings available on most distros to solve that.
- amelius 10y ago
  Okay, thanks. I still think that Chromium needs better error reporting; it's difficult to figure out what is wrong when a video is not displaying (often, I think it is just not loading); and which codec is missing.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    AFAIK that's sort of the website's fault. The HTML5 video support allows the website to query the browser's codec capabilities in order to determine which video file to show to the user (for those sites where videos are available in multiple codecs), so if the website's JS does not find any matching codec, they should show an appropriate error message. Now of course, to most users of the average video site, an error message involving the words "supported codecs" would just be gibberish, so I can see why many video sites just show a generic "Something went wrong" error (or nothing at all, since it's plainly obvious that something went wrong when the video's not playing).

CommanderData 10y ago

Chromium's Web Speech API 'ServiceURI' attribute was removed recently allowing you to specify your own speech recognition service instead of the default Google's Speech service. Last Wednesday, I tried searching for a work-around, it would seem I'd have to build something with WebRTC to achieve similar responsiveness. The attribute was available until 49. I don't know the reason behind its removal. There isn't anything to suggest Google is forcing you into their speech service (which is expensive) but it would be nice to ASR on your own server and have the attribute back as per the specification or not be forced into using Cloud Speech or reinvent the wheel. Spec: https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/speech-api/raw-file/tip/speechapi.html#dfn-serviceuri https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/speech-api/raw-file/tip/speechapi.htm... Others seem to have noticed: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/chromium-dev/web$20speech$20api/chromium-dev/mUe4NM5xEzk/uRHvuZdSBQAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/ch...

gsnedders 10y ago
The commit mesasaging dropping it: "Reverting serviceURI since it is not supported anymore." That at least implies it was already unsupported, and the code diff doesn't seem to change anything notable. Looking through history I can't find any evidence of serviceURI ever being hooked up to anything? Are you sure setting serviceURI ever actually did anything?

infodroid 10y ago

> Chrome is basically crippling Chromium's features The article doesn't even rule out the obvious possibility that the problems are just due to a bug in Chromium, and not some malicious behaviour on the part of Chrome. After all, both Chrome and Chromium share a common code base and it's highly plausible that there might be some issues with running them side by side. Also, part of the problem might be due to the fact the author didn't purge Chrome with `dpkg -P` but only removed the package with `dpkg -r`, leaving Chrome conffiles intact, which then broke Chromium. So until there is at least some indication that the problem isn't just due to one or more bugs in Chromium, the author's claims are seriously exaggerated and the article is effectively clickbait. The best way to deal with such problems is to engage with Ubuntu, Chrome, or Chromium support systems and community forums.

nl 10y ago
Exactly. It's pretty clear that this is an attempt to keep the profiles compatible between the two, but it's probably an untested combination of rarely used features. Chromium + Linux + Using (specific?) Chrome Apps + Installing version of Chrome after Chromium = not many people have done this. It seems to me "just a bug", and probably easily worked around (as I posted below) by using multiple profiles. Annoying though I guess.

BlackLotus89 10y ago

The author seems rather incompetent and obviously doesn't know what he is talking about. I could rip apart pretty much every second paragraph, but since being helpful is more... You know helpful here one tip: For signal change it back to chromium and pair it again. The desktop client doesn't delete the history on an unpair and a re-pair will show your old history