7 ms·

64-Bit Chrome for Windows

81 points by Garbage 12y ago

scrollaway 12y ago
As a Linux enthusiast, I cringe every time I read "year of the Linux desktop". (Bear with me, this is on-topic) Linux is a very usable OS today. Windows, comparatively, is a much less usable OS. USB drivers that need 3 minutes to set up every time I plug my mouse in a different port. More issues with sound than there are with Pulseaudio. And, yes, this is a huge peeve of mine: Only a tiny fraction of windows software is ever ported to 64 bit. WTF? Almost all linux software is readily available on 64 bit, as 64 bit; this includes Chrome/Chromium from the very, very early days. So now, a major web browser was released as 64 bit on Windows. Congratulations. Maybe 2014 will be the year of the Windows desktop.
- stinos 12y ago
  Windows, comparatively, is a much less usable I wouldn't call it much less usable, depends on what you're used to I guess.. Actively using both, each for their own task, I find them on par with each other. But I don't expect Windows too give me a super easy to setup server with a mighty commandline, and I don't expect Linux to give me a super smooth Desktop UI that can be used as a digital audio/video workstation, for instance. Cause they both suck at those tasks equally as it's far from their target experience. And I also don't have the WTF feeling you have as I never had the problems you talk about: three minutes? Really? More issues than Pulseaudio? Almost sounds like you try to run Windows 7 on an old pentium with crap drivers :P
  - scrollaway 12y ago
    I'm running Windows 7 on a current top of the line box. Speaking of that, when I swapped out my old motherboard for a new one, Windows refused to boot, giving me a bluescreen every time. I googled around and found that this was, in fact, a very common issue and the only solution is a full reinstall. Woah. More issues than Pulseaudio, yes. In fact, I have zero issues with Pulseaudio and plenty of issues with Windows. Not like stuttering, but devices not being recognized and a terribly confusing UI when it comes to, for example, switching sound playback devices (getting sound to work on my TV has been an awful experience). Every time I have to boot into it it's an awful, awful experience. Here is just ONE reason why: https://superuser.com/questions/33142/ctrlbackspace-inserts-a-small-box-instead-of-erasing https://superuser.com/questions/33142/ctrlbackspace-inserts-...
    - pling 12y ago
      If you sysprep generalize the machine before you swap the board it'll work afterwards. It's like moaning that your brain transplant resulted in you not being able to move your arms or something similar.
      - 4ad 12y ago
        The analogy is unsound, you can do this with any Linux/BSD/Solaris system just fine. It's Windows who requires a more complex procedure here. So yes, it's user's fault, but the point is that in this particular instance Linux is more user friendly compared to Windows. The user needs more knowledge and expertise to do the same operation with a Windows machine compared to a Linux machine.
        pling 12y ago
        I disagree. If you take the disks out of a Dell and stuff them in an HP machine with the same chipset, Linux gives you no guarantee the Ethernet ports will be the same order on startup. It's just different and you see the differences as misfeatures.
        scrollaway 12y ago
        > Linux gives you no guarantee the Ethernet ports will be the same order on startup Systemd does.
        pling 12y ago
        a) Debian stable, Ubuntu, rhel6 don't have systemd. So no our servers don't. b) it can't assume heuristics like that if the vendor changes so no it can't. This was based on a complete data transplant.
        scrollaway 12y ago
        When I complain about Windows, I'm expected to complain about things that are still present in the latest version of windows (8.1 currently), not things that are no longer an issue since XP. In return, I expect you to do the same when complaining about Linux. This is a solved problem and systemd is coming to debian as well.
  - WorldWideWayne 12y ago
    I always thought that Windows gave me a super easy to setup server too because of the fact that I don't have to use the command line. With Linux server setup, if I haven't done something in a while - I must go and hunt down the information on what files I need to configure and commands that I need to run. Sometimes it takes hours of reading. With Windows I can usually take a look at the standard management interface provided with the server software and just figure it out or be guided through it.
- quotient 12y ago
  Your use of the fact that "almost all Linux software is readily available on 64 bit" (to imply that Windows developers are doing a bad job of porting software to 64bit) is misleading: there is far, far more software for Windows than there is for Linux. Of course it's not all ported to 64bit. Windows developers also seem to generally respect the notion of backwards compatibility, so I am prepared to cut them some slack. I think you're being a little bit unfair. (My personal preferences are not flowing into this assessment: I am a Linux enthusiast and in the past two years have only ever used Windows to play video games.)
  - JetSpiegel 12y ago
    > Of course it's not all ported to 64bit. Pretty much none is ported to 64bits, including software that is available on Linux 64 bits since ever.
    - Omniusaspirer 12y ago
      This is probably because many major developers say they at best would gain ~1% more performance out of the change for a decently large investment of man hours. The opinion of those devs (whether you or I agree with them or not) is that time can be better spent making other improvements to their codebases.
    - lttlrck 12y ago
      "Pretty much none"? It's more likely that "pretty much" every application that would actually benefit from being 64 bit is already ported.
      - monochr 12y ago
        Yes, like chromium, something I've been using as a 64bit native app since 2009 on Linux.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  So when will GNU/Linux work properly with hibernation on Laptops? What about energy friendly scheduling and hardware resource management with application level APIs like Mac OS X and Windows do?
  - monochr 12y ago
    In 2009 or so.
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      Doesn't look like that in 2014. Using GNU/Linux since 1995.
      - monochr 12y ago
        And? I was using windows from 1995-2005 and I still didn't know half the things it could do. If you're interested in getting this working (which I doubt since you sound like you'd much rather whine about it) you can read how to do it here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop_Mode_Tools https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop_Mode_Tools
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- insky 12y ago
  Ah well, I have issues with all the major OSs. I was surprised after I installed Windows 8 (64 pro or business or whatever it's called), and found Firefox and Chrome to both be 32bit, haven't checked Internet Explorer yet. Now I'm not sure if it even that is even an issue or not? It bugged me anyway. I've been running a 64bit Linux OS for years now, and the most irritating thing about it was Flash plugin support. Some people deem an OS that can't play iPlayer or some such, as unusable. Anyway flash support is reasonable for me under Chrome these days (didn't Adobe say they'd abandon 64bit support on Linux?) The missus has Windows 8 on her lappy, and both Chrome and Firefox frequently crap out, she has just gotten used to it.
  - Spittie 12y ago
    >didn't Adobe say they'd abandon 64bit support on Linux? No, Adobe abandoned NPAPI Flash, the one used by Firefox. Flash on Chrome uses PPAPI, which is still officially supported (my guess is that it's maintained/developed mostly by the Chrome guys, but it's just a guess).
    - insky 12y ago
      Thanks for the clarification.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  I'd really hesitate to mention pulseaudio as a good thing. It's the first thing to go after I install a new machine.
  - stephen_g 12y ago
    What is this, 2008? PulseAudio was quite unstable when Ubuntu shipped it by default before it was fully-baked, but it's been stable for years now.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      No, it's 2014. Must be my bad luck then, I had yet another instance of pulseaudio inspired madness a few weeks ago on a brand new install of Ubuntu.
- ancarda 12y ago
  Linux is completely unusable for me. For instance, I've never found a good replacement for Calendar on OS X. The nicest calendar program I used on Linux had no CalDAV support (WTF?) and required me to use increment/decrement buttons to input the start/end times of my events. On top of that, it lacked any organisational features such as colour coding or a 5/7 day week view. It felt like a toy. On OS X, I spend a significant amount of time in the command line but the occasional times I need a GUI, Linux just isn't usable. Most graphical programs lack even the most basic functionality or consideration for user experience. Linux is great for headless environments but it's awful when I occasionally need a GUI.
  - dbg31415 12y ago
    > I've never found a good replacement for Calendar on OS X It's funny because iCal is like the shittiest calendar out there. Use Outlook or even Google Calendar. Let's say you want to do something simple like... find out if your team members are busy before sending a meeting. Oh, in Outlook I just click the Invite tab and find a time, but in iCal they've simplified it so all I have to do is email the entire team to ask if the time is acceptable and then hope nobody re-books during the time it takes to pick a time. "Insanely inefficient!" Or let's say I want to manage multiple calendars, one with read, one with write access... wait, Mac users (and I'm one of them) don't do businessy things... hipsters don't have jobs! Want a bonus? If your Mac crashes repeatedly due to kernel panic and you take it in to the "geniuses" at the istore... they tell you to uninstall all 3rd party software. Seriously that's their solution here. "Oh I see you're running 3rd party software, you need to uninstall this." I was at a loss for words. It wasn't, "Hey Office causes some issues..." it was, "You're running 3rd party software," said with a serious sneer. That guy needs to join the ranks of the unemployed. Mac used to be really great, now they just have good hardware. But no, Outlook has hands down the best calendar tools out there. No question. Everything else is a poor copy.
    - ancarda 12y ago
      I agree Outlook is the best for business use cases but for a college student, iCal is great. I have a colour for each subject, an "events" calendar (non-academic, recurring) and a "significant" calendar for important events such as exams. The setup works great for me but I can see why it wouldn't scale. >That guy needs to join the ranks of the unemployed. I've never dealt with the Apple "Geniuses" but I know a lot of people have and didn't like it at all. To be honest, the only time I've had kernel panics were caused by Little Snitch (now fixed). After an update about a year ago, I've never had one since. For me, OS X is extremely reliable.
reidrac 12y ago
Chromium blog (the actual source) explains why 64-bit windows version is interesting: http://blog.chromium.org/2014/06/try-out-new-64-bit-windows-canary-and.html http://blog.chromium.org/2014/06/try-out-new-64-bit-windows-... TL;DR: This version improves on speed (processor optimizations related), security (windows features only available in 64-bit) and stability (they don't say why, could be related to windows itself).
- userbinator 12y ago
  crash rates for the the renderer process (i.e. web content process) are almost half that of 32-bit Chrome I wonder how many of those crashes are due to running out of memory, because it otherwise seems quite odd that the 32-bit version would "crash more", unless they (accidentally?) fixed some bugs in the porting process. Realistically, this means a browser that can use more than ~3GB of RAM, and that has its advantages and disadvantages.
  - Already__Taken 12y ago
    The real advantage is that is the address space randomisation that goes on for security has a way higher pool of address' to use or not use. Actually then using more ram is a bonus.
    - easytiger 12y ago
      Thanks, I've never heard of address space randomisation before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomizat... Is there a potential initial performance impact for a system with lots of RAM and long lived processes? I imagine for general dekstop use its negligible.
      - Already__Taken 12y ago
        I can't imagine why it's not like RAM has to move some read head around. Maybe in the future it could mean large ram devices can't power down disused chips to safe power but I'm sure smart people will solve that kind of this. I barely understand it myself.
wfunction 12y ago
How is NaCl going to fare in the 64-bit version, given that segmentation isn't available in x64 mode?
- sanxiyn 12y ago
  They wrote a paper about that in 2010. http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35649.html http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35649.html
- leorocky 12y ago
  Why is segmentation important to Native Client?
  - sanxiyn 12y ago
    Native Client uses segmentation on x86 32-bit. Quoting from the paper: http://research.google.com/pubs/pub34913.html http://research.google.com/pubs/pub34913.html "The main contributions of this work are: ... using x86 segments for ... reduced overhead."
- justinschuh 12y ago
  Actually, segmentation isn't available on 64-bit Windows kernels (rather than just in x64 mode). So, NaCl already used a different type of sandbox model, where the validator enforces read/write masking.
cyounkins 12y ago
I thought the main problem with porting software to 64-bit was the bad practice of developers assuming the sizes of types. Since this was Google and the project is relatively recent, I'm assuming that is not the reason. Why couldn't you take the chromium source (and dependencies) and compile them for x64 months ago?
- spatz 12y ago
  As the blog post says, the linux version has been 64-bit since 2009. So the problem must be windows API, not type sizes.
  - lloeki 12y ago
    A bit of history: osx [0] and windows [1] IIRC most issues revolve around plugins and performance (notably V8), possibly not directly because of type sizes but similar low level stuff that hampers JS-to-the-metal optimisations. Still waiting on OSX though. [0]: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=8606 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=8606 [1]: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323
  - rsynnott 12y ago
    Linux, MacOS, and nearly all other Unix-y things use LP64 (int is 32bit, long is 64bit). Windows x86_64 uses LLP64 (int is 32bit, long is 32bit). This can make porting a pain.
higherpurpose 12y ago
I'm guessing they finally did it now because ARMv8 hardware is coming, and they wanted to have Chrome for Android with 64-bit support for the improvement in performance and crash rate. So they decided they might as well do it for all operating systems now.
- justinschuh 12y ago
  There were numerous factors, but that wasn't one of them. The biggest delays were things like the build toolchain and logistics. For example, Microsoft's toolchain couldn't even build a working, optimized, 64-bit Chrome binary until sometime last year.
unexistance 12y ago
offline version URL, DEV https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/index.html?extra=devchannel&standalone=1 https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/index.html?extra=devch...
ComputerGuru 12y ago
Nitpick correction for many of the comments here: if I'm not mistaken, Chrome already does/can use more than 3 GiB of RAM with the 32-bit binaries in Windows. Because of how its process sandboxing feature works, it is each helper process (ie tab) that is restricted to 3 GiB, plus the master process that manages (but does not render) them. That's why they've been able to get away with not making the jump to 64-bit for all these years.
- wil421 12y ago
  Very interesting, I wonder what kind of tab could be 3GB? Do you know why they had a 64-bit Chrome for Linux since 2009? Why wouldnt they want to switch for Windows/Mac sooner. I bet the user base is greater.
  - Igglyboo 12y ago
    The only thing I can think of is something that's doing heavy WebGL rendering, or some sort of js memory leak.
    - IgorPartola 12y ago
      Also a tab that is playing a short low resolution clip using Flash Player.
  - pornel 12y ago
    1. It's not always single tab. JS heap may need to be shared between multiple tabs due to sharing of objects via `window.opener` and other leaky cross-frame hacks. 2. The process will sooner run out of addresses in the 3GB space rather than actual memory. After running for a while a process may end up with objects allocated all over the address space, so that there isn't enough contiguous address space free for new allocations, even though there's still plenty of free memory in small chunks between live objects.
    - mason55 12y ago
      Wouldn't surprise me if Chrome defragments individual tab heaps
bhouston 12y ago
This is huge for us. Desktop 3D applications were one of the first to move to 64 bit. We have been suffering with 32 bit limitations with http://Clara.io http://Clara.io and while it works, getting access to more than 1 GB of ram for JavaScript would be amazing.
euank 12y ago
What would be great is if Google supported other 64-bit browsers on windows. Mozilla doesn't really officially support it, but they've provided 64-bit nightly builds for quite a while now. For example, the current nighly 64-bit can be found here: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-central/firefox-32.0a1.en-US.win64-x86_64.installer.exe https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/late... Flash, Java, Silverlight, and so on all have 64-bit variants which work, but there's just no way to get the Google Talk and Hangouts plugin to work on those builds of Firefox. Seeing the title gave me a bit of hope until I thought "No, of course, Google just bundles the plugin anyways... not like they'll publish a download link for a 64-bit build". I wouldn't even care if you had to click through several "Other system / Select custom download" links, if only it were available at all. I feel like we have a chicken-egg problem. Firefox isn't offering 64-bit prominently because plugins have terrible support for it, and plugins don't support it because it doesn't exist yet... But, unlike Firefox, plugins can offer 64-bit compatible versions without angering a large number of users. Really, the ball should be in their court, Google included, to provide the options.
ulfw 12y ago
Kind of ridiculous how late this comes. Also with Chrome not working well with Windows' HiDPI settings, I am not sure why folks on Windows would go with Chrome over Firefox frankly.

81 points by Garbage 12y ago

As a Linux enthusiast, I cringe every time I read "year of the Linux desktop". (Bear with me, this is on-topic) Linux is a very usable OS today. Windows, comparatively, is a much less usable OS. USB drivers that need 3 minutes to set up every time I plug my mouse in a different port. More issues with sound than there are with Pulseaudio. And, yes, this is a huge peeve of mine: Only a tiny fraction of windows software is ever ported to 64 bit. WTF? Almost all linux software is readily available on 64 bit, as 64 bit; this includes Chrome/Chromium from the very, very early days. So now, a major web browser was released as 64 bit on Windows. Congratulations. Maybe 2014 will be the year of the Windows desktop.

stinos 12y ago
Windows, comparatively, is a much less usable I wouldn't call it much less usable, depends on what you're used to I guess.. Actively using both, each for their own task, I find them on par with each other. But I don't expect Windows too give me a super easy to setup server with a mighty commandline, and I don't expect Linux to give me a super smooth Desktop UI that can be used as a digital audio/video workstation, for instance. Cause they both suck at those tasks equally as it's far from their target experience. And I also don't have the WTF feeling you have as I never had the problems you talk about: three minutes? Really? More issues than Pulseaudio? Almost sounds like you try to run Windows 7 on an old pentium with crap drivers :P
- scrollaway 12y ago
  I'm running Windows 7 on a current top of the line box. Speaking of that, when I swapped out my old motherboard for a new one, Windows refused to boot, giving me a bluescreen every time. I googled around and found that this was, in fact, a very common issue and the only solution is a full reinstall. Woah. More issues than Pulseaudio, yes. In fact, I have zero issues with Pulseaudio and plenty of issues with Windows. Not like stuttering, but devices not being recognized and a terribly confusing UI when it comes to, for example, switching sound playback devices (getting sound to work on my TV has been an awful experience). Every time I have to boot into it it's an awful, awful experience. Here is just ONE reason why: https://superuser.com/questions/33142/ctrlbackspace-inserts-a-small-box-instead-of-erasing https://superuser.com/questions/33142/ctrlbackspace-inserts-...
  - pling 12y ago
    If you sysprep generalize the machine before you swap the board it'll work afterwards. It's like moaning that your brain transplant resulted in you not being able to move your arms or something similar.
    - 4ad 12y ago
      The analogy is unsound, you can do this with any Linux/BSD/Solaris system just fine. It's Windows who requires a more complex procedure here. So yes, it's user's fault, but the point is that in this particular instance Linux is more user friendly compared to Windows. The user needs more knowledge and expertise to do the same operation with a Windows machine compared to a Linux machine.
      - pling 12y ago
        I disagree. If you take the disks out of a Dell and stuff them in an HP machine with the same chipset, Linux gives you no guarantee the Ethernet ports will be the same order on startup. It's just different and you see the differences as misfeatures.
        scrollaway 12y ago
        > Linux gives you no guarantee the Ethernet ports will be the same order on startup Systemd does.
        pling 12y ago
        a) Debian stable, Ubuntu, rhel6 don't have systemd. So no our servers don't. b) it can't assume heuristics like that if the vendor changes so no it can't. This was based on a complete data transplant.
        scrollaway 12y ago
        When I complain about Windows, I'm expected to complain about things that are still present in the latest version of windows (8.1 currently), not things that are no longer an issue since XP. In return, I expect you to do the same when complaining about Linux. This is a solved problem and systemd is coming to debian as well.
- WorldWideWayne 12y ago
  I always thought that Windows gave me a super easy to setup server too because of the fact that I don't have to use the command line. With Linux server setup, if I haven't done something in a while - I must go and hunt down the information on what files I need to configure and commands that I need to run. Sometimes it takes hours of reading. With Windows I can usually take a look at the standard management interface provided with the server software and just figure it out or be guided through it.
quotient 12y ago
Your use of the fact that "almost all Linux software is readily available on 64 bit" (to imply that Windows developers are doing a bad job of porting software to 64bit) is misleading: there is far, far more software for Windows than there is for Linux. Of course it's not all ported to 64bit. Windows developers also seem to generally respect the notion of backwards compatibility, so I am prepared to cut them some slack. I think you're being a little bit unfair. (My personal preferences are not flowing into this assessment: I am a Linux enthusiast and in the past two years have only ever used Windows to play video games.)
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  > Of course it's not all ported to 64bit. Pretty much none is ported to 64bits, including software that is available on Linux 64 bits since ever.
  - Omniusaspirer 12y ago
    This is probably because many major developers say they at best would gain ~1% more performance out of the change for a decently large investment of man hours. The opinion of those devs (whether you or I agree with them or not) is that time can be better spent making other improvements to their codebases.
  - lttlrck 12y ago
    "Pretty much none"? It's more likely that "pretty much" every application that would actually benefit from being 64 bit is already ported.
    - monochr 12y ago
      Yes, like chromium, something I've been using as a 64bit native app since 2009 on Linux.
pjmlp 12y ago
So when will GNU/Linux work properly with hibernation on Laptops? What about energy friendly scheduling and hardware resource management with application level APIs like Mac OS X and Windows do?
- monochr 12y ago
  In 2009 or so.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Doesn't look like that in 2014. Using GNU/Linux since 1995.
    - monochr 12y ago
      And? I was using windows from 1995-2005 and I still didn't know half the things it could do. If you're interested in getting this working (which I doubt since you sound like you'd much rather whine about it) you can read how to do it here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop_Mode_Tools https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop_Mode_Tools
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
insky 12y ago
Ah well, I have issues with all the major OSs. I was surprised after I installed Windows 8 (64 pro or business or whatever it's called), and found Firefox and Chrome to both be 32bit, haven't checked Internet Explorer yet. Now I'm not sure if it even that is even an issue or not? It bugged me anyway. I've been running a 64bit Linux OS for years now, and the most irritating thing about it was Flash plugin support. Some people deem an OS that can't play iPlayer or some such, as unusable. Anyway flash support is reasonable for me under Chrome these days (didn't Adobe say they'd abandon 64bit support on Linux?) The missus has Windows 8 on her lappy, and both Chrome and Firefox frequently crap out, she has just gotten used to it.
- Spittie 12y ago
  >didn't Adobe say they'd abandon 64bit support on Linux? No, Adobe abandoned NPAPI Flash, the one used by Firefox. Flash on Chrome uses PPAPI, which is still officially supported (my guess is that it's maintained/developed mostly by the Chrome guys, but it's just a guess).
  - insky 12y ago
    Thanks for the clarification.
jacquesm 12y ago
I'd really hesitate to mention pulseaudio as a good thing. It's the first thing to go after I install a new machine.
- stephen_g 12y ago
  What is this, 2008? PulseAudio was quite unstable when Ubuntu shipped it by default before it was fully-baked, but it's been stable for years now.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    No, it's 2014. Must be my bad luck then, I had yet another instance of pulseaudio inspired madness a few weeks ago on a brand new install of Ubuntu.
ancarda 12y ago
Linux is completely unusable for me. For instance, I've never found a good replacement for Calendar on OS X. The nicest calendar program I used on Linux had no CalDAV support (WTF?) and required me to use increment/decrement buttons to input the start/end times of my events. On top of that, it lacked any organisational features such as colour coding or a 5/7 day week view. It felt like a toy. On OS X, I spend a significant amount of time in the command line but the occasional times I need a GUI, Linux just isn't usable. Most graphical programs lack even the most basic functionality or consideration for user experience. Linux is great for headless environments but it's awful when I occasionally need a GUI.
- dbg31415 12y ago
  > I've never found a good replacement for Calendar on OS X It's funny because iCal is like the shittiest calendar out there. Use Outlook or even Google Calendar. Let's say you want to do something simple like... find out if your team members are busy before sending a meeting. Oh, in Outlook I just click the Invite tab and find a time, but in iCal they've simplified it so all I have to do is email the entire team to ask if the time is acceptable and then hope nobody re-books during the time it takes to pick a time. "Insanely inefficient!" Or let's say I want to manage multiple calendars, one with read, one with write access... wait, Mac users (and I'm one of them) don't do businessy things... hipsters don't have jobs! Want a bonus? If your Mac crashes repeatedly due to kernel panic and you take it in to the "geniuses" at the istore... they tell you to uninstall all 3rd party software. Seriously that's their solution here. "Oh I see you're running 3rd party software, you need to uninstall this." I was at a loss for words. It wasn't, "Hey Office causes some issues..." it was, "You're running 3rd party software," said with a serious sneer. That guy needs to join the ranks of the unemployed. Mac used to be really great, now they just have good hardware. But no, Outlook has hands down the best calendar tools out there. No question. Everything else is a poor copy.
  - ancarda 12y ago
    I agree Outlook is the best for business use cases but for a college student, iCal is great. I have a colour for each subject, an "events" calendar (non-academic, recurring) and a "significant" calendar for important events such as exams. The setup works great for me but I can see why it wouldn't scale. >That guy needs to join the ranks of the unemployed. I've never dealt with the Apple "Geniuses" but I know a lot of people have and didn't like it at all. To be honest, the only time I've had kernel panics were caused by Little Snitch (now fixed). After an update about a year ago, I've never had one since. For me, OS X is extremely reliable.

reidrac 12y ago

Chromium blog (the actual source) explains why 64-bit windows version is interesting: http://blog.chromium.org/2014/06/try-out-new-64-bit-windows-canary-and.html http://blog.chromium.org/2014/06/try-out-new-64-bit-windows-... TL;DR: This version improves on speed (processor optimizations related), security (windows features only available in 64-bit) and stability (they don't say why, could be related to windows itself).

userbinator 12y ago
crash rates for the the renderer process (i.e. web content process) are almost half that of 32-bit Chrome I wonder how many of those crashes are due to running out of memory, because it otherwise seems quite odd that the 32-bit version would "crash more", unless they (accidentally?) fixed some bugs in the porting process. Realistically, this means a browser that can use more than ~3GB of RAM, and that has its advantages and disadvantages.
- Already__Taken 12y ago
  The real advantage is that is the address space randomisation that goes on for security has a way higher pool of address' to use or not use. Actually then using more ram is a bonus.
  - easytiger 12y ago
    Thanks, I've never heard of address space randomisation before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomizat... Is there a potential initial performance impact for a system with lots of RAM and long lived processes? I imagine for general dekstop use its negligible.
    - Already__Taken 12y ago
      I can't imagine why it's not like RAM has to move some read head around. Maybe in the future it could mean large ram devices can't power down disused chips to safe power but I'm sure smart people will solve that kind of this. I barely understand it myself.

wfunction 12y ago

How is NaCl going to fare in the 64-bit version, given that segmentation isn't available in x64 mode?

sanxiyn 12y ago
They wrote a paper about that in 2010. http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35649.html http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35649.html
leorocky 12y ago
Why is segmentation important to Native Client?
- sanxiyn 12y ago
  Native Client uses segmentation on x86 32-bit. Quoting from the paper: http://research.google.com/pubs/pub34913.html http://research.google.com/pubs/pub34913.html "The main contributions of this work are: ... using x86 segments for ... reduced overhead."
justinschuh 12y ago
Actually, segmentation isn't available on 64-bit Windows kernels (rather than just in x64 mode). So, NaCl already used a different type of sandbox model, where the validator enforces read/write masking.

cyounkins 12y ago

I thought the main problem with porting software to 64-bit was the bad practice of developers assuming the sizes of types. Since this was Google and the project is relatively recent, I'm assuming that is not the reason. Why couldn't you take the chromium source (and dependencies) and compile them for x64 months ago?

spatz 12y ago
As the blog post says, the linux version has been 64-bit since 2009. So the problem must be windows API, not type sizes.
- lloeki 12y ago
  A bit of history: osx [0] and windows [1] IIRC most issues revolve around plugins and performance (notably V8), possibly not directly because of type sizes but similar low level stuff that hampers JS-to-the-metal optimisations. Still waiting on OSX though. [0]: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=8606 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=8606 [1]: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323
- rsynnott 12y ago
  Linux, MacOS, and nearly all other Unix-y things use LP64 (int is 32bit, long is 64bit). Windows x86_64 uses LLP64 (int is 32bit, long is 32bit). This can make porting a pain.

higherpurpose 12y ago

I'm guessing they finally did it now because ARMv8 hardware is coming, and they wanted to have Chrome for Android with 64-bit support for the improvement in performance and crash rate. So they decided they might as well do it for all operating systems now.

justinschuh 12y ago
There were numerous factors, but that wasn't one of them. The biggest delays were things like the build toolchain and logistics. For example, Microsoft's toolchain couldn't even build a working, optimized, 64-bit Chrome binary until sometime last year.

unexistance 12y ago

offline version URL, DEV https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/index.html?extra=devchannel&standalone=1 https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/index.html?extra=devch...

ComputerGuru 12y ago

Nitpick correction for many of the comments here: if I'm not mistaken, Chrome already does/can use more than 3 GiB of RAM with the 32-bit binaries in Windows. Because of how its process sandboxing feature works, it is each helper process (ie tab) that is restricted to 3 GiB, plus the master process that manages (but does not render) them. That's why they've been able to get away with not making the jump to 64-bit for all these years.

wil421 12y ago
Very interesting, I wonder what kind of tab could be 3GB? Do you know why they had a 64-bit Chrome for Linux since 2009? Why wouldnt they want to switch for Windows/Mac sooner. I bet the user base is greater.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  The only thing I can think of is something that's doing heavy WebGL rendering, or some sort of js memory leak.
  - IgorPartola 12y ago
    Also a tab that is playing a short low resolution clip using Flash Player.
- pornel 12y ago
  1. It's not always single tab. JS heap may need to be shared between multiple tabs due to sharing of objects via `window.opener` and other leaky cross-frame hacks. 2. The process will sooner run out of addresses in the 3GB space rather than actual memory. After running for a while a process may end up with objects allocated all over the address space, so that there isn't enough contiguous address space free for new allocations, even though there's still plenty of free memory in small chunks between live objects.
  - mason55 12y ago
    Wouldn't surprise me if Chrome defragments individual tab heaps

bhouston 12y ago

This is huge for us. Desktop 3D applications were one of the first to move to 64 bit. We have been suffering with 32 bit limitations with http://Clara.io http://Clara.io and while it works, getting access to more than 1 GB of ram for JavaScript would be amazing.

euank 12y ago

What would be great is if Google supported other 64-bit browsers on windows. Mozilla doesn't really officially support it, but they've provided 64-bit nightly builds for quite a while now. For example, the current nighly 64-bit can be found here: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-central/firefox-32.0a1.en-US.win64-x86_64.installer.exe https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/late... Flash, Java, Silverlight, and so on all have 64-bit variants which work, but there's just no way to get the Google Talk and Hangouts plugin to work on those builds of Firefox. Seeing the title gave me a bit of hope until I thought "No, of course, Google just bundles the plugin anyways... not like they'll publish a download link for a 64-bit build". I wouldn't even care if you had to click through several "Other system / Select custom download" links, if only it were available at all. I feel like we have a chicken-egg problem. Firefox isn't offering 64-bit prominently because plugins have terrible support for it, and plugins don't support it because it doesn't exist yet... But, unlike Firefox, plugins can offer 64-bit compatible versions without angering a large number of users. Really, the ball should be in their court, Google included, to provide the options.

ulfw 12y ago

Kind of ridiculous how late this comes. Also with Chrome not working well with Windows' HiDPI settings, I am not sure why folks on Windows would go with Chrome over Firefox frankly.