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Let's hope this also means that a Linux version of Chrome is around the corner.

by kylec 17y ago

tc 17y ago
Since they say they're implementing a new windowing environment for this project, there may not be a lot of porting overlap between Chrome for Chrome OS and Chrome for your normal Linux distribution.
- swolchok 17y ago
  It would have to be Windowsy, unless Chrome has its own internal windowing layer that's a suitable general abstraction. I assumed that "windowing environment" meant "window manager" not "GUI toolkit" anyway.
aita 17y ago
They should have bought plan9.
cdibona 17y ago
If you haven't tried out the chromium nightly desktop builds, they're actually quite nice. The team is still nailing down the plugins, but the browser itself is wicked fast and pretty stable (given its alpha nature)
- buugs 17y ago
  I think stable for a web browser these days requires flash/java support, I don't know if this has been fixed or not in the builds though. Probably less on the java side and more on the flash.
- markbao 17y ago
  If you're a Mac user, you can also download the latest nightly build here: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-mac/ http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-ma... (scroll all the way down to the latest build directory) And yes, it is wicked fast. On my system, it doesn't even bounce in the dock before opening. It just opens. Plugins aren't supported yet, but I just open any sites that require Flash in Safari.
  - pygy 17y ago
    It's so fast OS X is unable to register it as a recently launched application for the magic folder in the dock... Anyone knows why?
    - chaosmachine 17y ago
      Just a guess, but maybe the weird process-per-tab thing.
  - dchest 17y ago
    > On my system, it doesn't even bounce in the dock before opening. I think it doesn't bounce for a different reason. For example, Firefox doesn't bounce when it autoupdates. Everything should bounce for at least one time in normal conditions.
- trezor 17y ago
  Even for a minimalistic web-browser Chromium is still rather lacking. While what used to be butt ugly font-rendering has gotten better, at least to the point of readable, as far as I can tell there is still no plugin support. The only way you can fully configure the browser is still trough running gconf-editor for some parts, and configuring Firefox and then importing settings from there. That being said, my biggest issue with the current chromium builds is that performance is truly horrible and majorly unstable. Sometimes things just works, snappy, as expected. But in more than 50% of the cases when opening a new page the entire browser locks, for what can be periods of up to 5 to 10 seconds. Wasn't process isolation supposed to fix this? If this browser is going to be the "OS" for the web, in it's current state its closest equivalent would be Windows 3.11. IMO Firefox 3.5 is a much better browser, while peak performance being somewhat slower, at least it performs predictably.
  - davidw 17y ago
    > horrible ... unstable Wow - completely opposite from my experience. What are you running on? I'm on Ubuntu 8.10 right now, using the nightly builds. I've had a tab lock up once or twice, but in general it's very nice, way faster than FF 3.0, and pleasant to use. The key bindings are the only thing that seems a bit wonky, but I'm generally happy and at some point may start using it as my main browser, if FF 3.5 isn't significantly better.
    - trezor 17y ago
      I'm running this on a Asus EEE 901 with Ubuntu Netbook remix running the nightlies. My biggest issue is how the latency of the browser seems to vary between milliseconds and two-digit seconds. Performance is randomly varying over three orders of magnitude and that kind of performance instability is worse than performance being consistently "slow". As for Firefox 3.5: It is much better.
    - emhc 17y ago
      Also the complete opposite of my experience. I used the nightly builds almost exclusively for over a week on Ubuntu 9.04 and I had no performance issues. Things are certainly incomplete but I was slightly disappointed to go back to the poorer performance of Firefox. I should probably place that blame on the Flash plugin but I think Chrome will handle this problem much better.
10ren 17y ago
Chrome wasn't built in a day. Though you'd think if they're announcing a linux-based operating system, centered on their web-browser, making their web-browser run on linux would be trivial. OTOH, could it be the diversity of linux distributions that's making it difficult for them?
- rythie 17y ago
  I don't get the impression that is actually a significant problem for anyone. Most distributions include the same libraries, recent kernels with similar options and even put things in similar places. Packaging is the major difference - though that's a job best left to the distributions anyway.
- icefox 17y ago
  They have been working on the linux port for only 9 months porting what was essentially a native windows application written in Visual Studio. The fact that they got this far this fast shows that they have a pretty good team.

Let's hope this also means that a Linux version of Chrome is around the corner.

by kylec 17y ago

Let's hope this also means that a Linux version of Chrome is around the corner.

tc 17y ago

Since they say they're implementing a new windowing environment for this project, there may not be a lot of porting overlap between Chrome for Chrome OS and Chrome for your normal Linux distribution.

swolchok 17y ago
It would have to be Windowsy, unless Chrome has its own internal windowing layer that's a suitable general abstraction. I assumed that "windowing environment" meant "window manager" not "GUI toolkit" anyway.

aita 17y ago

They should have bought plan9.

cdibona 17y ago

If you haven't tried out the chromium nightly desktop builds, they're actually quite nice. The team is still nailing down the plugins, but the browser itself is wicked fast and pretty stable (given its alpha nature)

buugs 17y ago
I think stable for a web browser these days requires flash/java support, I don't know if this has been fixed or not in the builds though. Probably less on the java side and more on the flash.
markbao 17y ago
If you're a Mac user, you can also download the latest nightly build here: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-mac/ http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-ma... (scroll all the way down to the latest build directory) And yes, it is wicked fast. On my system, it doesn't even bounce in the dock before opening. It just opens. Plugins aren't supported yet, but I just open any sites that require Flash in Safari.
- pygy 17y ago
  It's so fast OS X is unable to register it as a recently launched application for the magic folder in the dock... Anyone knows why?
  - chaosmachine 17y ago
    Just a guess, but maybe the weird process-per-tab thing.
- dchest 17y ago
  > On my system, it doesn't even bounce in the dock before opening. I think it doesn't bounce for a different reason. For example, Firefox doesn't bounce when it autoupdates. Everything should bounce for at least one time in normal conditions.
trezor 17y ago
Even for a minimalistic web-browser Chromium is still rather lacking. While what used to be butt ugly font-rendering has gotten better, at least to the point of readable, as far as I can tell there is still no plugin support. The only way you can fully configure the browser is still trough running gconf-editor for some parts, and configuring Firefox and then importing settings from there. That being said, my biggest issue with the current chromium builds is that performance is truly horrible and majorly unstable. Sometimes things just works, snappy, as expected. But in more than 50% of the cases when opening a new page the entire browser locks, for what can be periods of up to 5 to 10 seconds. Wasn't process isolation supposed to fix this? If this browser is going to be the "OS" for the web, in it's current state its closest equivalent would be Windows 3.11. IMO Firefox 3.5 is a much better browser, while peak performance being somewhat slower, at least it performs predictably.
- davidw 17y ago
  > horrible ... unstable Wow - completely opposite from my experience. What are you running on? I'm on Ubuntu 8.10 right now, using the nightly builds. I've had a tab lock up once or twice, but in general it's very nice, way faster than FF 3.0, and pleasant to use. The key bindings are the only thing that seems a bit wonky, but I'm generally happy and at some point may start using it as my main browser, if FF 3.5 isn't significantly better.
  - trezor 17y ago
    I'm running this on a Asus EEE 901 with Ubuntu Netbook remix running the nightlies. My biggest issue is how the latency of the browser seems to vary between milliseconds and two-digit seconds. Performance is randomly varying over three orders of magnitude and that kind of performance instability is worse than performance being consistently "slow". As for Firefox 3.5: It is much better.
  - emhc 17y ago
    Also the complete opposite of my experience. I used the nightly builds almost exclusively for over a week on Ubuntu 9.04 and I had no performance issues. Things are certainly incomplete but I was slightly disappointed to go back to the poorer performance of Firefox. I should probably place that blame on the Flash plugin but I think Chrome will handle this problem much better.

10ren 17y ago

Chrome wasn't built in a day. Though you'd think if they're announcing a linux-based operating system, centered on their web-browser, making their web-browser run on linux would be trivial. OTOH, could it be the diversity of linux distributions that's making it difficult for them?

rythie 17y ago
I don't get the impression that is actually a significant problem for anyone. Most distributions include the same libraries, recent kernels with similar options and even put things in similar places. Packaging is the major difference - though that's a job best left to the distributions anyway.
icefox 17y ago
They have been working on the linux port for only 9 months porting what was essentially a native windows application written in Visual Studio. The fact that they got this far this fast shows that they have a pretty good team.