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CodeWeavers Package Google Chrome For Linux and Mac

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the not-to-be-forgotten dept.

jfbilodeau writes "The fine folks at Codeweavers performed an 11 day experiment in getting Google Chrome working on Linux and Mac. Their efforts resulted in the Chromium proof of concept. 'Not only does this give Mac and Linux users a chance to see what all the hype is about, it also lets the world see just how far Wine has come and how powerful it truly can be. In just 11 days, we were able to bring a modern Windows application across to Mac and Linux.' Caveat: their implementation is free as in beer but not free as in speech."

17 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Works pretty well for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've been playing with it (and am using it to post this response). On the plus side: it actually runs gmail and youtube usably. On the minus side: it has a number of cosmetic and speed issues. It will be interesting to see how long it takes the Wine community to fix the remaining bugs. Disclaimer: I'm a Wine developer, so I'm biased.

  2. Google Earth is native! by dkegel · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dangit, I wish people would stop spreading the false meme that Google Earth has anything to do with Wine! It's native!

    1. Re:Google Earth is native! by david@ecsd.com · · Score: 4, Informative
      It may be native, but it still looks like wine. I can't understand why, since it's compiled against QT, that it can't pick up my widget styles.

      At least then it'd feel native.

    2. Re:Google Earth is native! by Grishnakh · · Score: 2, Informative

      I realize Google didn't create the .kml standard (k is for "keyhole" after all), but it defies reason that I can stick a bunch of markers on Google Earth, save that as a .kml file, then try to open that up with Google Maps, and it doesn't work. I'm only using Google products here.

  3. Please help with the port by dkegel · · Score: 5, Informative

    If anyone has some free cycles, please come help get the Linux port going. There's lots to do. See http://dev.chromium.org/

  4. First impressions by wigaloo · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just downloaded the Mac OS X version from the link in TFA, and am using it to submit this post. It works, although the response seems a little slow, particularly with scrolling and window resizing. The amazing thing is that I never would have known this was done under Wine -- there was nothing else to install beyond the browser package itself. Very impressive.

  5. 11 days? by eternalelegy · · Score: 2, Informative

    It may have taken 11 days for code weavers to package it (that really isn't supposed to be flaming code weavers, i have nothing against them.) but it didn't take near that long to have a working Chrome in wine. It was drastically less than 48 hours after release in actuality. I was one of the early ones working towards a solution with bug reports, and i remember waking up to an AppDB report of a functional browser albeit with a few tweaks, but working nonetheless. Just saying, Thanks to the awesome community of Wine users, this application was usable (not for the feint of heart) in 2 days, and i thought they should get credit for that :)

  6. Oh, yes, it did! by dkegel · · Score: 2, Informative
    Codeweavers was behind a lot of the patches that got it to the point you describe. And, importantly, they went further and managed to get gmail working. If they hadn't insisted on getting that working, they could have packaged it in two days. You might not have noticed their contributions because most of the improvements went straight into the public winehq tree.

    That said, the wine community in general did contribute a lot to this, too.

  7. Re:For those of you using Firefox on linux.... by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Yup, works for me, I'm using it right now. And fast enough, sure. But I'll need all the functionality of my Firefox Add-Ons before I'd consider switching..."

    Is the gist of what I'd written, before I hit 'Submit', and it crashed (Taking my internet connection, requiring a restart!).

    --
    "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
  8. More technical details by jeremy_white · · Score: 5, Informative

    In case anyone is interested, the important parts of this work are available in a Free form, one way or the other. We're using a build of Wine equivalent to WineHQ of about mid week last week, along with a few patches that haven't been committed yet. I've sent along a few more details to the Wine devel mailing list.
    Cheers,
    Jeremy

  9. Re:For those of you using Firefox on linux.... by jeremy_white · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just posted the tips to get all of the relevant sauce . And, as another poster reports, it's been running fairly well with Wine for at least 9 days; it just took us a bit longer to get https working properly.
    Cheers,
    Jeremy

  10. Re:For those of you using Firefox on linux.... by David+Gerard · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wine 1.1.3, it sorta worked in a crashy sorta way. Wine 1.1.4, it installed and mostly worked except SSL. I expect a fully working Chrome in Wine 1.1.5 or 1.1.6. Here's to fortnightly releases!

    Really, I'm amazed just how good Wine is these days - and when it isn't yet, how easy it is to add support for a new whizbang app when you really need to.

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk
  11. Re:I would pay by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 2, Informative

    Is there anything that you would want to use chrome for? I think firefox ( or iceweasel if you are so inclined) does, or has plugins that do everything you listed. So someone who wants those features could pay some company to modify Chrome, or they could just download a working version for free. Anyone want to take any guesses as to which is more likely to happen?

    --
    Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  12. Re:Predictable, Really. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    It breaks privacy with default install options. No need to review code for such action. Even German Government warned their citizens about it.

    I looked it up and that's not what the German's Federal Office for Information Security warned about.

    The Federal Office for Information Security warned internet users of the new browser Chrome. The application by the company Google should not be used for surfing the internet, as a spokesperson for the office told the Berliner Zeitung. It was said to be problematic that Chrome was distributed as an unfinished advance version. Furthermore it was said to be risky that user data is hoarded with a single vendor. With its search engine, email program and the new browser, Google now covers all important areas on the internet.

  13. Re:Predictable, Really. by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 3, Informative

    Windows shares BSD roots with it's TCP/IP stack.

    That used to be true. The Vista one is all new code.

  14. Re:It's a hack! by blumpy · · Score: 2, Informative

    it's just really a hack. I mean, as good as Wine is, it will never compete with a browser which is designed to run natively on a platform.

    WINE is an implementation of the Windows API. This implementation is native, so you can say that applications are in fact running natively.

    Copy and pasted from Wine faq:

    4.3. Is Wine slower than just using Windows?

    Actually, Wine is sometimes faster. The speed of an application depends on a lot of factors: the available hardware and their drivers, the quality of the code in the APIs the application uses, and the quality of the code in the underlying operating system.

    Driver code matters a lot. If you're running a graphics-heavy application using a video card with very poor drivers such as an ATI card under Linux, performance will degrade substantially. On the other hand, Linux has superior memory management, and comes out ahead of Windows in many CPU-related tasks; see benchmarks for more information.

    Sometimes, bugs in Wine can make applications excessively slow; see Performance-related bugs.

  15. Re:or you could just follow the docs.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Right now, the Mac build is a work in progress that is much closer to the start than the finish. No application that renders web pages is generated at the end of these instructions!

    The TestShell project does not fully build, but many of its dependencies (listed below) do. We're working on it.

    Wow yeah, that's real useful. Thanks...