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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."

2 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Predictable, Really. by mfh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Google's vision isn't truly understood by everyone, IMHO. Google knew that the Open Source community would fork and port Chrome anyway and that freed up time for developers to work out the system bugs and get the thing live. Releasing the source code is a redeemable action from the many gripes that flooded about Google not offering Linux or Mac support in Chrome on launch, among other things.

    Now I personally would like to see a fork that would upgrade Chrome to remove any significant Windows reliance. I don't trust Microsoft to put my interests first and therefore I don't like the idea of a browser that relies so heavily on Microsoft for security.

    --
    The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
  2. Re:"just" 11 days? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, like a lot of
    Windows apps Chrome does some, uh, interesting things that you might not expect a them to do :) For instance it does all the multi-process and security stuff. But then it also does what a lot of Windows programs do these days and replace the standard window management stuff as well. It relies on parts of Internet Explorer as well (like the HTTP library).

    If you want an example of the sort of fun they had making things work, the bug this patch fixes was "Chrome URL bar has a black background" yet the fix is to the low level assembly generated by Wines build process. That's because Chrome shims BeginPaint/EndPaint by patching the in-memory system DLL headers, so it can muck about with the Windows richedit control internals and the Chrome IAT patcher didn't support Borland style imports.

    For a program that has such complicated interactions with the OS, and is so heavily reliant on it for functionality, 11 days is remarkably good actually. A good sign of Wines increasing maturity.