When Google released its Chrome web browser for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X users were left out in the rain, without the ability to enjoy all the goodness that is Chrome. Thanks to the relentless porting efforts of the Chromium team, we now have daily builds of the Chrome/Chromium web browser, and I decided to take a look where the Linux version stands.
Installing Chrome/Chromium is easy, but it starts with the decision which variant you want: Google’s Chrome,or the brandless Chromium. Chromium builds are updated daily, while Google Chrome builds are more irregular. I opted for Google’s Chrome, but installing either of them is as easy as 1-2-3; Google offers a .deb package which will not only install Chrome (you can pick either 32bit or 64bit), but which will also add a repository so Chrome gets updated automatically.
Both Google Chrome and Chromium do not yet have Flash support enabled by default, but it’s quite easy to enable said support with minor CLI magic; you need to create a plugin directory in Chrome’s directory, and then create a symbolic link to libflashplayer.so within this directory.
sudo mkdir /opt/google/chrome/plugins/<br />
cd /opt/google/chrome/plugins/<br />
ln -s /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so
All you need to do now is add the --enable-plugins argument to the Chrome command. If you’re an idiot like me, don’t forget to add this argument to all your shortcuts, including any possible ones in your panel, or you’ll be left wondering why the argument works from a terminal but not from the panel, and waste 10 minutes of your life trying to hunt down what’s going on.
In any case, after all is set and done, you’ll get the full Chrome experience on your Linux box, and I must say, the browser has made tremendous strides forward lately. Not only has the browser become a lot less crash-prone (no crashes yet, in fact), the browser itself also feels a lot snappier than the last time I tried it (a few months ago). Rendering is considerably faster, but the user interface responsiveness has also been kicked up a few notches, and the subtle animations have been improved too.
Support for themes is a very welcome addition, especially the magic button which will set Chrome to use your Gtk+ theme’s colours and icons, making Chrome feel much more like a part of your desktop. In my case, Chrome did pick the wrong window border colour; for some reason, it picked my highlight and icon colour (red) instead of my window border’s colour (black). Also, the main Chrome window lacks the Compiz shadow, even though its dialogs do have the shadow. A minor niggle, but annoying nonetheless.
Overall, development is continuing at a very brisk pace, and because of it, I can finally start using Linux more often again. Ever since I switched to Chrome (the day of the first release, actually), I missed Chrome dearly on other operating systems, so much even that I started using them less and less often. With Chrome shaping up on Linux, I can finally start giving it some more time.
…or is it just that your Compiz lacks configuration to identify Chrome as something that needs to be rendered a shadow?
Arch had only a 32-bit version so I tried it and it was ok. Really like it adapting to the GTK-theme (although I’m using KDE). It even supports my mouse’s extra buttons. Beats Konqueror if anything.
Edited 2009-08-13 19:54 UTC
It’s the same in KWin: no shadow. Other windows that draw their own special borders, like Audacious, have the same problem. I’m not too bothered myself.
A bigger problem is that it seems to think I want to move the window when I click the title bar to focus it, and I have to click again to drop the Window.
Odd to read these comments as the shaddows work for me with Compiz on KDE4
NO shadow is a result of Chrome using its own rgba colormap (so it can draw the window border itself with transparent rounded corners)…
Any gtk window that does the same (use its own rgba colormap) does not get a shadow, in both Compiz and metacity as far as i know.
I still can’t use it on Windows. The installer won’t let me install from behind a proxy.
would this link be of interest to you then?
http://nemethe.blogspot.com/2009/01/installing-google-chrome-behind…
I decided just now to try it too, after a while, only to be greeted with this article:)
I don’t like Chrome that much but the Linux version is indeed becoming surprisingly snappy.
A welcome addition showing up in Chromium is that elements of the new tab page can be hidden. Although the order of the thumbnails of most visited pages should settle after a while using the browser, I find the ‘Speed Dial’ approach better in that the thumbnails can be freely reorganized and they don’t move away by themselves, supporting spatial memory. So an empty new tab is more comforting in Chrome.
I wonder how the extension system will stand against Firefox’s and how much it will invalidate the irony of the ‘Chrome’ name. I suppose it will be more of a constrained, walled garden like theme support, but still a fresh breath after the static nature of 1.x and 2.x, and a better fit for its philosophy.
Got to say it is a nice, lean & mean browser.
EDIT: Oops, I’m just seeing that thumbnails became movable and can be sticked in place. Hmm, very slick.
Edited 2009-08-13 21:25 UTC
I like Chromium a lot (minus the missing Adblock) but KDE’s Arora is starting to look quite promising, too. No idea when/if it will replace Konqueror, though.
Arora looks nice and works well with KDE but it is NOT a KDE browser.
You are right. It says nothing about KDE in the About box, It is just a Qt app.
Strange – it was set up as a default browser at some point in one of Kubuntu Karmic’s KDE 4 betas…
My bad, sorry guys/gals for this misinformation.
Arora was the default browser for Kubuntu Karmic Alpha 3.
Ubuntu Karmic Alpha 4 has just appeared on Distrowatch, but not Kubuntu as yet. When it does I will download the .iso and let people know if Arora is still the default browser.
It is a reasonable choice. Konqueror is gettting left behind by stubbornly clinging to KHTML, although Konqueror does still have an adblock-style mechanism that Arora (or Chrome for that matter) still lacks.
Apparently, KHTML is an integral part of KDE and cannot be removed without substantially damaging the user experience.
Out of sight, out of KDE, eh? Changing Konqueror to use WebKit instead of KHTML doesn’t mean every other KDE app should drop KHTML too. Konqueror != KHTML.
Wooooosh. Really? So they can’t keep KHTML for binary compatibility for applications that use it, add WebKit API support later (real desktops make sure they have sane APIs for their developers, you see?) and allow applications to move to it without substantially, materially and totally damaging the ‘user experience’? Wow. I had no idea.
You can download Kubuntu alpha 4 here:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/karmic/alpha-4/
I’ve got the link, thanks.
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05624
Distrowatch updated their page on the Alpha 4 release a few minutes after I had posted.
I’m still waiting for RPM packages (for EL5 preferably) or static tarballs (a la Mozilla).
Arora is nice, but not yet “there”.
Don’t know about EL5, but for fedora it is enough to create a new repo with following content:
[chromium]
name=Chromium Test Packages
baseurl=http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/F$releasever/
enabled=1
then, “yum install chromium” (or using your favorite package manager)
May be it will work in EL , too.
Edited 2009-08-16 09:14 UTC
I dig chrome but I won’t say it has such a huge impact on me that I can’t use other browsers.
FF still satisfies my needs on linux and MAC (even the new safari is adequate for MAC)
I have the opposite issue. I’ve come to rely on certain firefox addons so much that using chrome is annoying. Usually, people only mention adblock and noscript, but there are actually a ton of really, really useful addons. greasemonkey alone is invaluable (for me). Right, now I’ve got about 15 firefox addons installed and probably 5 that I really would not want to do without.
Until chrome can replace that functionality, it’s simply not worth switching. I guess I also don’t understand the main benefit (speed) because web browsing is really not slow at all for me. I have a fast computer and the only delays I ever see are due to networking, not javascript or rendering.
Apart from Adblock, I use BBcode and download helper.
BBcode is a boon for making HTML or BB (like OSNews) rich text posts.
Then there are all the search engine options. There is a nice set of Firefox searches for the Arch Linux wikis and forums, for example.
Firefox 3.5 is not that far behind Chrome in terms of speed, but with little extensions like these available for Firefox it beats any other browser for usability IMO by quite a long way.
Looks like Greasemonkey is coming to Chrome, at least;
http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/user-scripts
MAC standing for…?
(see “I have a MAC” at [The 10 Most Annoying Things in Internet Comments](http://www.osnews.com/story/21944/The_10_Most_Annoying_Things_in_In…))
(^_-*)/
I’ve been using Chromium a lot lately.
While I miss some of the FF extensions, Chromium feels a lot snappier.
It’s nice that they added a “use system title bar and borders” option, because tabs on the title bar just didn’t feel right.
BTW I don’t remember having to symlink anything to get the flash plugin to work :/
This version of Chrome seems more stable than previous version that I have recently tried. It is noticeably quicker at starting up than Firefox, and web pages seem to render slightly faster. What is nice, is that first new tab is utilised to show your favourite web pages as thumbnails instead of just a blank page.
I was almost tempted to change my default browser to Chrome, but until there is an adblock extension (amongst other extensions) for this browser I will continue to stick with firefox.
I did notice as well that the scrolling of pages doesn’t seem as smooth as firefox, but this could be down to my intel drivers as it has caused a problem with firefox in the past (e.g. switching between UXA or EXA).
Another small gripe is not having a menu bar on the interface, as I find the menu bar to be useful and consistent with other applications. I realise it is now fashionable for browsers to not have a menu bar, but IMHO Chrome would look better with one – call me old fashion
Anyway, I am really glad there is another browser on the scene as this will hopefully give rise to even more competition and hopefully push firefox along at a faster pace than we have witnessed with the 3.5 release.
Edited 2009-08-14 07:37 UTC
I’ve been using it on and off on Kubuntu Jaunty since they started providing beta builds. I didn’t have to do the symlinking, just –enable-plugins and it worked.
Sometimes it craps out and a tab can crash, forcing you to hit Reload. Flash eats CPU like a mad man as always, but that’s not Chrome’s fault. I do miss printing since I just got a new printer, but they’re working on bringing that to the Linux version.
Just wish there was a simple KDE-esque WebKit browser I could use instead. Arora provokes some bugs in the Oxygen style and has issues with e.g. GMail currently, and Rekonq is not mature enough.
But Chrome is good when I sometimes get sick of Firefox’ sluggishness (yes I’m using latest 3.5.x, it’s still sluggish).
EDIT: That I don’t have to use the symlinking thing might be because I’m using the beta channel and not the dev channel like Thom.
Edited 2009-08-14 07:44 UTC