Slashdot Mirror
CodeWeavers Package Google Chrome For Linux and Mac
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."
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.
Giving Google all your data is not just for Windows users anymore!
There ain't no such thing as a free beer!
...if Codeweavers stuff was licensed for google to put Chrome out for Linux/Mac before the native versions are done, considering he Linux versions of Google Earth and Picasa are actually just the windows versions wrapped in with compatability code (either from wine or Codeweavers).
Good job getting it to work with wine, and verily I say that wine has come a *long* way since I started using it six years ago, but we all know what we'd really like to see: a native port of the application.
I'm against picketing but I don't know how to show it.
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.
Dangit, I wish people would stop spreading the false meme that Google Earth has anything to do with Wine! It's native!
to have done that in 11 days.
'In just 11 days, we were able to bring a modern Windows application across to Mac and Linux.'
How long would it take to send it back?
If anyone has some free cycles, please come help get the Linux port going. There's lots to do. See http://dev.chromium.org/
Hello, non-Windows world! We greet you with our awkwardly modified code that NONETHELESS runs on your systems!
BTW, we don't care about your hippy licensing schemes yet. Try back in 10 years.
Doesn't work for me. "wine ChromeSetup.exe" gives
fixme:advapi:CheckTokenMembership ((nil) 0x12a078 0x33f930) stub! fixme:process:SetProcessShutdownParameters (00000280, 00000001): partial stub. fixme:ole:CoInitializeSecurity ((nil),-1,(nil),(nil),6,2,(nil),64,(nil)) - stub! fixme:winhttp:WinHttpOpen ((null), 1, (null), (null), 0x0): stub
Good for Crossover!
How 'bout you actually try the Crossover packages then like you were supposed to? http://www.codeweavers.com/services/ports/chromium/
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.
You expect me to pollute my Mac with Chromium?
Living in New Jersey, there's more than enough of it around, thankyouverymuch.
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 :)
Because I'm curious.
Linux: no video!
That said, the wine community in general did contribute a lot to this, too.
Why does it take 11 days to get Chromium to work under Wine? Why doesn't it just run?
I wish CodeWeavers would go and get Google SketchUp, their "easy 3D drawing" program, to work on Wine for Linux. Because that's the only way to make models to export into Google Earth (Earth does have a Linux version, SketchUp does not).
There's all kinds of crashing problems with SketchUp on Wine in simple things like opening/saving/exporting files, corrupted cursors and icons, which a team like CodeWeavers could probably straighten out pretty quick. Since Google hasn't shown any progress towards releasing a Linux version of SketchUp, someone else has to do the work.
--
make install -not war
Duly impressed in their success in porting in less than two weeks, I downloaded the Mac port. Alas, the joy is short-lived. It's terribly slow, locked up for short periods a couple of times, and had a generally poor user experience. It was not dock-aware, had odd-looking widgets that looked poor compared to Firefox or Safari, and didn't integrate with the OS at all. I suspect that's par for the course for a Wine-ported app, but the end experience is worse than running Chrome in Parallels desktop in Coherence mode.
- Vincit qui patitur.
"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"
The other day, the news was Chrome did not install properly under Wine. :P
Today news is that Crossover have hacked a bit wine so they are able to run Chrome.
Posting from Chrome@ubuntu Hardy AMD64.
I'll stick with Firefox, thought
It's interesting what sort of secret sauce CodeWeavers is using to make it work, and more interesting to see how long it'll make it back into the main Wine code base.
Although predictable (they did the same with Picasa...), 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. I am curious to see benchmarks on JavaScript performance and stability, for example. If Chrome wants to be a real competitor in the browser war for Macs and Linux, it can only be it with real, officially supported versions. Otherwise it's just a pointless showcase.
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
I was able to install it in openSUSE with Wine 1.1.3.
http://lizards.opensuse.org/2008/09/04/google-chrome-on-opensuse/
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
My 3D editor will have Google Earth export in the next couple of weeks.
I'm told it works on Wine but a native Linux version could happen anyway.
No sig today...
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
Of course this is all a useless exercise for the purposes for which Chrome would really be useful: running google apps. Without SSL support working in Wine, I can't even log in. Until SSL works, chrome under wine is a mere curiosity, and a wine technology demo as Codeweavers says.
Is it just a big game of whack a bug? Fix whatever shows up in stderr until it Just Works? Either way thank you for not making it so that I didn't have to install it on my wife's laptop--she's...sensitive about me installing stuff and changing around the icons on her desktop...
It's slow, slow to redraw, the fonts run off the buttons, etc. Try using gmail, or using Slashdot's javascript commenting system, and you'll hate yourself. I'm glad I saw coworkers running it, and I've run it in virtualization -- otherwise I'd think Google Chrome sucks. I'm glad to see that CodeWeavers made some strides with it -- when I tried, I finally got it to run, but it wouldn't load any sites -- but it really is just a proof of concept. I hope that the native port picks up some steam.
Now I, a poor Linux user, can give Google my confidential business data, bank account details, medical information, personal preferences in pornography and DNA code! And it'll all be entirely confidential between me and their marketing department!
But they're still not evil. If they were evil, I'd have to search using Windows Live.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The problem with that is that the moderation of those posts are still taken into account. If you log on and post too many anonymous trolls within a certain period, then you may get the "You've posted too many times/posted too many low-scoring comments" warning and your account will be banned from posting for the day.
That's why I stopped compulsively posting Frist P$0t trolls(Unless the article has to do with Macs! ^_^ ).
At least on the URL bar. I just downloaded and tried out their Linux port and the font in the URL bar looks like ass.
Case in point: http://img140.imageshack.us/my.php?image=chromeox9.jpg
Ah well. I guess it'll give me something to play with until Google puts out an official Linux build.
There's also this:
http://www.arnold.se/chris/2008/09/howto-run-chrome-on-freebsd-70/
Pretty sure all of the steps are close enough for anyone wanting to run chrome in wine to follow.
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
Since I can't code my way out of a wet paper sack I would pay to have some changes made to Google's browser.
1. Use OS widgets/themes/colors. Apps should ALWAYS follow the OS UI!
2. Have a title bar that acts like a title bar.(goes with above)
3. Status bar. I want to see every URL before I click on it.
4. More options for javascript (like turn off 3rd party scripts)
5. Ability to turn off plugins and crap. (I hate flash!)
6. Remove Google crap (google updater, etc)
7. Add the ability to start chrome with last sessions tabs/windows
I'd pay say $50 (US Check) to the group. Now if we can get others on this band wagon, that can be some good cash!
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
It's like the trash in your collage apartment; let it start stinking first and then someone will take it out. I give it about three days.
It's like the trash in your college apartment. Let it start stinking first and then everyone will continue to ignore it until the neighbors complain of the flies.
I give it about 3 weeks.
There, fixed it for you.
Impetuous! Homeric!
No good in Linux.
In just 1 day I had an Adventure: Colossal Caves port for Win16 running on Wine, by telling Wine to run it. Wine has come far when you don't need to make a whole dev team spend a week and a half fucking with it to make a single app work.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I have the Windows version of Chrome installed in my .wine directory and have dabbled a bit with it to see if some websites I built render OK on it. Chrome under wine runs, albeit somewhat haphazardly - it crashes quite often and has abysmal font rendering (a Wine problem, really). For fun I just installed the Crossover version of Chromium and tried it. The experience between these two is very similar: it looks the same (except for the Google-branded coloring of the Windows-version vs. the unbranded coloring of the Crossover version), has the same font rendering problems, crashes frequently. This is of course to be expected but it raises the question of the value of a winelib 'port' vs. running the Windows binary using the wine runtime. I prefer the latter, as that does not give anyone the illusion that the winelib port should be seen as a viable 'native' port for Linux and Mac (I guess, but for lack of a Mac (and the lack of desire to get one) I can not state this with any type of authority). Wine can help in getting rid of Windows, but winelib does not help in getting rid of Windows-isms. Code ported with winelib still feels alien, and acts in ways which do not fit in. Linux (and Mac) are in many ways better than Windows, but not by being 'a better Windows'. In many cases they are better because they are not like Windows at all.
--frank[at]unternet.org
Astounding how anyone would want to emulate Windows.
Did the thought occur that emulating windows might be one of the best ways to provoke its downfall? As to motivations less sinister; windows native is the default for software these days, despite repeated "years of linux on the desktop". I use OS X most of the time now, Windows for gaming, Linux for playing.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
No kidding.
I'm just disappointed with WINE. 10 years ago I was SURE that I'd be able to just run Windows apps in Linux - heck, I was able to run the two most IMPORTANT Windows apps - Minespeeper and Solitaire.
Nowadays I try to run Linux on my work desktop, but sadly WINE in my case stands for Wine Is Not Enough. So I use the much heavier VMWare when I need real Windows apps.
WINE seems like it was catching up, but then there was WinXP (and OfficeXP) and then Vista (and Office 2007) etc etc. Just not happening.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Free beer still tastes the same.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, aside from the fact WINE is NOT emulating, ever think you need to run an application that is ONLY available on Windows?
Happens all the time in business. You can rant and rave all you want about alternatives or boycotting, or demanding a *nix port, but the reality is you have your business to attend too.
Sure, still push for that alternative, but you still gotta be running TODAY, not someday, and WINE can often do that for you and still let you ditch Windows along the way..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did you even read the blog entry? About how they had a guy implement a whole new DLL in a week so they could access HTTPS sites?
"Sufferin' succotash."
SO if Chrome is built on WebKit, and Safari is built on WebKit... where exactly does this take me?
-- NSY - SY OOT - Doric signs on local shop doors.
wow, chrome is cool, but NONETHELESS all in caps aligns really funny on this ported version. It almost looks like when you type LaTeX
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
You're looking at it wrong. Wine will not truly shine (I made a rhyme!) until developers start thinking of it as a tool for porting their programs to Linux/Mac OS X. For this, Mac and Linux markets becoming large enough is a natural and slightly lofty prerequisite. Wine itself only has to reach adequate compatibility status.
During porting, large studios will use Wine to simplify and speed up the job. Rather than changing their code to make it compatible with Wine deficiencies, it will make more sense to submit fixes back to WineHQ. When you get a 100 random studios doing this at once, Wine development will absolutely fly.
Until we hit that point, Wine will only be a good tech demo for most applications. There is no possible way to keep up with the Windows API realistically as is. There needs to be commercial muscle behind the project looking out for their own interests.
With Wine 1.0, I do personally think Wine has reached adequate compatibility status. I also think the Mac OS X market share surge is getting developers interested again in alternative platforms. Wine working on Mac OS X is delicious cake. Google using Wine for some of it's apps is actually a very very good sign....
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
$50 is not enough for your changes. You can open a ticket on Rentacoder.com if you really want to get those changes done and it would cost you between $150 and $2100 USD, depending on the level of quality. (and weather you got screwed)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I assume when you say Chrome is a "privacy killer" you have read the whole source or at least monitored network traffic while browsing.
Serious defenders of online privacy do exactly the latter by testing software on a honeypot behind a proxy, reading the proxy's log, and reporting the result on a blog.
Mine's a Macallan 12-year-old.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The core of Chromium isn't already cross platform. There are numerous win-only functions in the so called 'core'.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Since Chrome uses WebKit, couldn't you have just used Midori or some other Linux-native WebKit browser?
Your annoyance is misplaced.
The speech/beer convention was devised as a patch for a bug in the English language. One word, "free", has two distinct meanings. Normally people deal with these cases by using context ("Some atoms are ionized but most are unionized" vs. "Plumbers in many areas are unionized") but in this case both meanings are plausible. The two types are free are distinct, software could be free in either sense, yet English (unlike most other languages) gives us only one preferred word for both meanings.
This resulted in numerous exceedingly tedious flame wars that ended, if at all, with a lame "Oh, that's not what I thought you meant--why didn't you say so in the first place?"
Clarifying which homonym is intended right up front may annoy you, but trust me, it is far, far better than the alternative.
--MarkusQ
Wow yeah, that's real useful. Thanks...
Sure I could, but Chrome is not just Webkit. It is Webkit plus whatever Google did to it, with a different backend (skia) and a different javascript runtime. A browser is more than just the rendering engine...
--frank[at]unternet.org
Downloaded and installed it from Google when it was released right away... and now there's a background process trying to send data to google every few minutes. That would be the first thing that should have been removed on a port of Chrome to another platform.
I'm still trying to figure out where you get free beer.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Google Update can be used to download and install an application without any user intervention at all, by request of the webpage being viewed, using the undocumented "_GU_*()" calls in both IE and Firefox. The security model is not documented anywhere. And Google has declined to respond to questions about it.
WebKit is the core. It runs on plenty of platforms, the GUI which uses WebKit does not.
If you look at the amount of code in WebKit compared to the rest of Chrome, I think you should be able to determine that the GUI and OS wrapper around it can not possibly be considered 'the core'
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
No, webkit is just a rendering engine. Google heavily modified webkit additionally for process isolation using in some cases, win32 only functions. If you don't believe me, look at the sourcecode yourself. I have.
Chrome uses a unique javascript library, unique ajax controls etc.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I hate to point out the obvious ... but ... the rendering engine IS THE CORE OF A WEB BROWSER.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Fine, for arguments sake I will agree. My points still remain:
Webkit has modified to the point that it currently relies on certain windows features to do it's process segregation and a few other things. Google's fork of Webkit cannot be compiled without extensive modifications to make it work the same way on other platforms.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.