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Google Chrome For Linux Goes 64-bit
Noam.of.Doom writes "The Google Chrome developers announced on August 19th the immediate availability of a new version of the Google Chrome web browser for Linux, Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Google Chrome 4.0.202.2 is here to fix a lot of annoying bugs (see below for details) and it also adds a couple of features only for the Mac platform. However, the good news is that Dean McNamee, one of the Google Chrome engineers, announced yesterday on their mailing list that a working port of the Chrome browser for 64-bit platforms is now available: 'The v8 team did some amazing work this quarter building a working 64-bit port. After a handful of changes on the Chromium side, I've had Chromium Linux building on 64-bit for the last few weeks. I believe mmoss or tony is going to get a buildbot running, and working on packaging.' Until today, Google Chrome was available on both 32- and 64-bit architectures, but it appears that the latter was running based on the 32-bit libraries. Therefore, starting with Google Chrome 4.0.202.2, 64-bit users can enjoy a true x64 version!"
Come on. This is Linux, not some WIMPy GUI-based OS like Winders or Suckintosh.
I run the results of wget through a custom Perl script and then parse the results and feed image URLs back through wget and into libjpeg.
Why do I need a bloated web browser when I have such an elegant Unix solution?
Chromium is an open source browser project. Google Chrome is a browser from Google, based on the Chromium project.
And "Chromium" still doesn't have things like flash and printing, at least not in a stable, usable form.
And if we are lucky, there will soon be a privacy-enabled version here:
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_download.php
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Google really hit a home run with Chrome on Linux.
It's as lighting quick on Linux as it is on Windows. And it's just as lighting quick days after heavy use unlike that outdated piece of crap Firefox.
What is puzzling about Chrome/Chromium on Linux is why Google made it look like modern desktop app and not the usual 'designed by a blind person with bad taste using Windows 95 UI widgets' that appears to be the standard.
I can't really see using a closed-source browser when there are plenty of perfectly good open-source ones available. I'd be interested in trying chromium (the open-source version of chrome), but the last time I checked, it didn't seem mature enough to want to mess with. When it shows up in the ubuntu repos, I'll certainly be interested in giving it a spin. The thing is, Firefox is very feature-rich, and I've gotten used to/dependent on a bunch of its features, including mathml, ad blocking, flash blocking, and emacs keybindings (the firemacs add-on). I can see how chrome or chromium could be fun to play with if you're interested in browsers as technology, but for everyday use, what's the attraction...?
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The terms x86-64 and x64 are often used as vendor-neutral terms to collectively refer to x86-64 processors from any company.
Can someone explain the particular benefits of having a 64-bit browser? I particularly appreciate the fact that Firefox currently can't hog all of my RAM when something (oftentimes Flash) spirals out of control. Do web developers use memory beyond the 4 gig limit, and is this a godsend for them?
You zap the moderators with a wand of humor! The moderators resist!
In cases like these Wikipedia is always your friend. Never forget! Have a read.
Some quick research revealed that there are some missing features with regard to privacy that stopped me from checking it out :-( YMMV.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
From common sense: Editing the wikipedia doesn't automagically change reality.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The "The names x86-64 or x64 are sometimes used as vendor-neutral terms to collectively refer to the two nearly identical implementations." line has been included in the article since at least October 1st, 2006.
OK, I don't know a lot of background and politics of this all. I just downloaded and installed it (kubuntu jaunty 32bit). It works. Clicking on "About Google Chrome" in the settings pop-up menu (clicking the little wrench), it shows the "About" screen with the "Google Chrome" name. It mentions "made possible by the Chromium Open Source project...".
And, by the way: yes flash plugins can be enabled as described in the posts above. Testing a single youtube video it worked. However, the first flash ad on slashdot crashed! Remarkably, this didn't bring down the browser (still typing this post), just the ad (feature?). Looks like a nice programming job!
The "The names x86-64 or x64 are sometimes used as vendor-neutral terms to collectively refer to the two nearly identical implementations." line has been included in the article since at least October 1st, 2006.
What you quote as the "since 2006" phrasing is "sometimes used", which is certainly true (I've certainly heard people use the term "x64"), but the phrasing you originally used was "often used", which is a quite different. Personally I've only ever heard "x64" from microsofties, but it does seem fairly widespread there, at least in MS development.
If looking for a term which is generally understable, however, "x64" doesn't really work, as it seems to be in widespread use only in certain communities. "x86-64" is a bit better since it has an obvious connection with the term "x86", which is much more widespread than either of the others; so it stands a better chance of being understood even by someone who hasn't seen it before.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
I believe it's the JIT engine for javascript, which by it's very nature needs to generate native code and is therefore not so simple to port. The rest of it should compile cleanly on 64, at least webkit does anyway.
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I dont know about this "Chrome for linux" thing, but Chromium is not a windows app with any kind of compatibility layer, or wrapper. Its a native linux browser that actually works REALLY well (unlike all of the other apps that google
'ported' to linux)
An advertising company wants to install software on your computer. They profit by data aggregation and accumulation by seeing where on the map you are interested in going, what friends you chat with, what all the files on your computer are and how you search for them, and oh, everything you look at on the internet. Click here to install.
Chrome supports user scripts, and scripts for all of those things already exist. Check out http://www.adsweep.org/ for one. And it is still "just another browser" like Fx, Opera, IE, etc.
I wish there were a way to compare the average level of online discussion today with what it was about 20 years ago.
I used to complain that mainstream society ignored the Internet because its value was not recognized. Oh, how I now miss those days!
I hate printers.
"We are so, so happy with Google Chrome," mumbled Mozilla CEO John Lilly through gritted teeth. "That most of our income is from Google has no bearing on me making this statement."
Microsoft was unfazed. "Browsers don't need to be integrated with online apps," said marketing developer Ian Moulster. "Certainly not like the operating system ... I'll just get back to you."
Google's new browser will give you their web and email services, photo processing, mapping, office applications that will run in said browser and will make you a cup of tea. This is all paid for by personally-directed text ads in your tea leaves, based on analysing a DNA sample taken when you sip the tea and sending your genetic code back to Google for future targeting.
Pichai stressed that Google would maintain complete confidentiality within the marketing department of whatever the browser accessed concerning your confidential business data, bank account details, medical information and personal preferences in pornography. "We're Google. We know where you live. In a completely not evil way. Sponsored link: Get Chrome Browsers on google.com. Or we'll make you use Bing."
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Right, so you're going to make a machine-code emitting JIT emit code that works on two different architectures without porting? wow! i'd love to see that.
Kind of silly to be missing this feature...
What is puzzling is that cross platform GUI toolkits have been available for 10 years or more, yet developers still insist on coding their own which looks and operates differently to everything else, wasting loads of RAM in the process.
This is 2009, and people are still developing/releasing for 32-bit before 64-bit? I'm typically a bit behind the curve on new processor adoption and I went AMD64 nearly 3 years ago. Do they even make 32-bit desktops anymore? This makes no sense. This headline should read "Google Chrome backported to 32 bit."
For the record: Google Earth and Google Sketchup have true native ports to Linux. Google Picasa used Wine for its port; it's the only one that uses any kind of compatibility layer, I think. (Disclaimer: although I work on Chrome, and worked on Picasa, I'm speaking for myself, not the company.)
For how many years has the "vendor-neutral" term been Intel compatible? It would only be fair to call this architecture for AMD compatible CPUs.
Cool: now I can surf the tubes *twice* as fast as my old 32-bit browser :-)
What is puzzling about Chrome/Chromium on Linux is why Google made it look like modern desktop app and not the usual 'designed by a blind person
Yeah, fuck GTK and 10 years of building a GUI toolkit full of accessibility aids. Who cares about disabled people anyway?
Obviously not Ben Goodger.
I speak from *experience* in x86-64 assembly programming and profiling. Don't you?
In in-order execution CPUs (i.e. not OoOE), such as most ARM CPUs used in phones (not the Cortex OoOE ones), and videogame consoles (R3000, R4400, R5900, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, Cell) there is *huge* advantadge by having 32 registers, because of the total lack of register renaming in the case of primitive ARM and MIPS CPUs, to the light renaming register pool of the modern in-order execution MIPS, ARM, and PowerPC.
unless its for the 68060 or amiga or parisc or alpha or sgi then its true 64bit else nothing but 8bit liers. x86 is 8bit good grief -that is what the term x64 really means and true 64 for linux means 64bit-dam liers
Because most of the cross platform toolkits available look like arse, thats why. And not the good kind of arse, either.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
... it took Adobe, what, about 7 years for a 64-bit Linux version of Flash?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
You're a fucking idiot. GCC doesn't magically compile code for any architecture you want. Someone has to port it first.
Time makes more converts than reason
Qt looks very nice on all platforms, and Google even uses it for some of their other products (Google Earth for example). Even if "most" of them look like crap, you only need one good one to make that argument moot. Also, the custom solutions that many develop usually look worse than the arse-like toolkits.
It took Google long enough to get the Mac version out...
Chrome takes roughly exactly half as long to start on my system as Konqueror, which is puzzling, as I'm running KDE4. Same with new windows.
I haven't tested the RAM it's wasting, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was using less RAM, even after running Google's toolkit on top of GTK+.
Of course, Konqueror does more, so far -- it's got built-in adblock, for one. But the extension API, while in development, already works and has already been used to build an adblocker. It's not Firefox, but I'm typing this into a Chrome window, and I'm thinking this stands a strong chance of becoming my default browser in the near future.
No, what's really puzzling is why they don't seem to be linking against Webkit. I'm essentially running one version of Webkit in Chrome, and one version of KHTML in Konqueror, and another version of Webkit is built into Qt4. Why?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It is 64bit, it is all matters. The bugs will automatically fix themselves thanks to the exposed extra registers and extra commands.
If you remember the real purpose of 64bit computing besides the archaic Intel x86 getting extra registers, it is post 4GB processes. Sorry if I joke about the obsession with 64bit browser while it doesn't really work on anything other than x86, being the only x86 only browser on planet.
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=firefox+using+too+much+memory&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
(996.000 results for me)
Eh, Apple Safari for OS X (and Windows?) comes with third party cookies disabled by default, it is a huge deal if you think it is the default browser for OS X. Do they get 1% of community support Chromium gets? What is the issue with Safari? It is too simple looking, simple used, doesn't have extension capability right? Oh, it is from Apple, it is the main reason.
It is getting more absurd since Chrome is built on Webkit which is evolution of KHTML/Konqueror which gets the real zero community/nerd support.
None of the advances made by Chrome matter to me until it has Adblock or something as capable (and which doesn't require more effort to set up than firefox+adblock). It looks very interesting and when I tried it, seemed to be a nice browser, but as soon as I noticed all the ads again I closed it and went back to firefox.
And yes I realize Google are an ad company - but no amount of shiny features will make me browse the web without an ad blocker.
* Several monkeys are here, playing banjos and wearing small hats.
Wrong. While still 'un-official', a developer preview of Google Chrome for Linux has been out for a long time, freely available.
32- or 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04 or later, or 32-bit Debian 5. Support for other Linux distributions is planned;
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Why is this even news? What is it about application designers that they completely ignore that the 64bit systems have been around for 20 years and are now a mainstream platform across all OS'? Are they so myopic that they can't tool up-front and save all the 'port' hoopla, pain and angst?
I'm very happy with the current build for x64 so far. it has come a long way. it runs incredibly fast as well. it is already my default browser despite its instability.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
My question is, has it been released (or does it compile without problem) on a BSD yet?
Constitutionally Correct
Chrome runs about the same speed as Opera on my machine. Firefox is a bit of a dog these days and I gave up using IE for anything other than testing web pages a long time ago. To me, Firefox feels like IE with most of the confusing graphics and stupid menu options taken out. Opera feels like Firefox with the graphics replaced with impossible to read, badly rendered text, though I prefer to use Opera for browsing as it seems to render actual pages better. One thing that annoyed me with Google Chrome is that they suddenly decide to design this Chrome OS thing based on Linux, yet Chrome browser seems to be continuously stuck on some kind of preview version and Windows version is always bang up-to-date. What's the deal here? Surely if you were going to build an OS linked to your browser technology you would develop for your primary OS base.
To me, Firefox feels like IE with most of the confusing graphics and stupid menu options taken out.
Well, and with more security. And decent support for web standards. And a huge collection of addons.
I mean, I agree with the disadvantages, but I don't agree that it's anywhere near as bad as IE.
One thing that annoyed me with Google Chrome is that they suddenly decide to design this Chrome OS thing based on Linux, yet Chrome browser seems to be continuously stuck on some kind of preview version and Windows version is always bang up-to-date.
Well, if the Linux version is anything like Android, I don't blame them. Android uses a non-standard libc, and it just gets weirder from there -- it's not X, for instance. Chrome OS is likely going to be very different than Linux -- at least as much as any one distro is from another, probably much worse.
There's a few things they've done very well with the Linux version:
First, it's actually open source. If you really don't like it, there's always Chromium. Example: I'm typing this on a 32-bit Google Chrome, because I decided to get it directly from Google. But Chromium already has a 64-bit version out.
Second, they actually made a Debian package. Just about every other piece of proprietary software for Linux is either a zip/tarball (which I can tolerate), or a script/executable, which is just irritating. I guess non-Debian distros will be annoyed...
And finally, rather than include some crappy auto-updater of their own, on Linux, they simply provided a repository -- thus integrating with system updates.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!