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Chrome On the Way For Mac and Linux

Posted by timothy on from the oozing-brightly-into-all-corners dept.

TornCityVenz writes "I've seen many complaints in the feedback on Slashdot every time an article on Google's Chrome browser hits; the calls for true cross platform availability have struck me as a valid complaint. So now it seems Google is answering your calls, promising in this article on CNET a deadline for Mac and Linux support." I'd really like to not care about the name of the browser I'm using, but the mental cost of switching could be high for someone used to particular Firefox extensions, unless or until they can all be expected to work seamlessly with Chrome.

7 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A firm date from Google? by Savione · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google "hopes to release versions for Mac OS X and Linux by the first half of the year". That's the closest thing TFA gives to a date, and Google hardly promises anything. The summary is somewhat misleading.

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  2. Re:Why is it taking so long? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They wrote a Windows wrapper around cross platform libraries. Then they had the nerve to deny it, even when anybody who looked at the source code immediately after initial release could see the truth of the matter.

  3. Re:Market Share by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Informative

    The browser shell is raw win32. No abstraction or other platform considerations.

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    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  4. Re:What's the rush? by icebraining · · Score: 5, Informative

    Except that StarOffice is a paid version of OpenOffice, while Chrome doesn't use many (if any) code from Firefox, not even the rendering engine. Besides, Mozilla isn't "owned" by Google, they receive funds in exchange of providing Google as the default search engine.

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  5. Re:FireFox extensions by lilmunkysguy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Have advertisers sued VCR manufacturers, Tivo, etc?

    Yes.

    NBC, ABC and CBS filed a lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in California against Sonicblue, claiming the ReplayTV 4000 would violate their copyrights by allowing users to distribute copies of programs over the Internet. The networks also complained that technology in the personal video recorder can automatically strip out commercials. In a joint statement, the networks said the device "violates the rights of copyright owners in unprecedented ways" and "deprives the copyright owners of the means by which they are paid for their creative content and thus reduces the incentive to create programming and make it available to the public."

    http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/11/48065

  6. Re:Why is it taking so long? by cryptoluddite · · Score: 5, Informative

    Chrome codebase is not "cross platform", in that you can't just go ahead and compile it for Linux. They are still implementing a Gtk ui - see

    Or, to put it another way, Google's entire contribution to the Chrome browser was a non-crossplatform, non-portable UI. V8 and WebKit were done by others and are cross-platform. Google knows their browser is just polish on other people's success with WebKit and V8 which is why they stole the name "chrome" from Mozilla.

    There's basically one thing that makes Chrome special and that's running tabs in a separate process (for plugins, nspluginwrapper already does this).

    Google gets a lot more credit for Chrome than they deserve. If it wasn't done by Google it would be hardly even notable.

  7. Re:What's the rush? by jbolden · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google is a customer / partner of Mozilla. Mozilla offers a service (default search engine) and Google pays a fee for that service.