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Google Upgrades Chrome To Beta For OS X, Linux
wkurzius writes with this nugget from Mac Rumors: "As anticipated, Google has finally released an official beta version of its Chrome browser for Mac. The initial beta version, termed Build 4.0.249.30, requires Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard, and is only compatible with Intel-based Macs."
And hierofalcon writes with word that Chrome has also been made available as an official Linux Beta.
Let me know when it gets adblock
Set up the PPA on my Ubuntu box in sources.list back in Sept/Oct
https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa
Current version shows 4.0.266.0 (Ubuntu build 33943)
No sig for you!!
I have been running one of the Chrome nightly builds on Leopard for several weeks and I am extremely impressed with its speed and stability. I have never had a single tab crash on me. I'm sure that people will complain about the lack of support for extensions compared to Firefox, and rightly so. But if you don't need many extensions, I highly recommend trying out Chrome.
Wai!
oogly boogly!
Well, no version for MY Linux. I am on CentOS, but I need a zip/tar file that I can install into $HOME. Not ever installing random shit as RPMs, duh.
In my limited testing with it this morning... I think it is very promising... but I won't quite be switching from Safari on Snow Leopard just yet.
My main gripe? Scrolling smoothness. It's a small thing... but the jarring scrolling of Chrome is enough to keep me on Safari.
Other than that I really like the tab tear off system (much better than Safari since you can _reattach_ tabs back into the main window) and the integrated search / location bar (which seems to be able to read my mind...).
Other than that they are very similar... can anyone spot big differences somewhere? I mean, these days, most browsers are the same. I used to use Firefox for the plugins... but now Firefox, Safari and Chrome all pretty much include the stuff I was using plugins for... so I go with Safari for how well integrated it is with OS X.
I am glad Google is building a good browser... it will keep everyone on their toes (especially since Microsoft has pretty much bowed out of the next-gen browser market with their unwillingness to implement standards in a timely fashion).
On Windows & OS X, it was fairly easy to find the API calls that turn on your system's cameras and microphones, but on Linux, those devices are all over the place so it took Google longer to figure out how to turn them on when you're running their browser.
You mean Adobe Flash?
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Beware that the first time you run Chrome, it will install their Keystone auto-update facility, with which Google feels free to update whatever they want, whenever they want and however they want. Even when you're not running the browser, as the Keystone agent will launch itself automatically at system boot.
You have been warned.
Now it's time for the Iron devs to get cracking.
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
If you don't want to be spied by google every second, download the Iron browser. It's based on Chrome code base, but has spying disabled.
The main big issue, is how the company doesn't have an official policy towards local app development.
When it comes to Google's web apps, you can expect AJAX, DHTML, clean and simple look, etc. OTOH, they local apps all look developed by different companies. They are developing apps in .net (which doesn't make any sense considering where google is standing right now, specially towards microsoft). Their so called "ports" are pathetic. All they do is recompile their apps with the WINE libs. Picasa is an example. And they didn't even test it before releasing, or at least disable the functions that don't work in wine. For example, on Picasa for GNU/Linux, when you click on "make movie" it throws the error "function not available on Windows 2000". They didn't even bother to disable it. If I wanted to run Picasa on Wine, I would just do so. If you provide a port, provide an actual port.
What really doesn't make sense to me is ... why write applications in non-portable languages/frameworks, and then port them? Why not just go GTK or QT and port it everywhere?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
./chrome: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9' not found (required by ./chrome)
libnss3.so.1d => not found
libnssutil3.so.1d => not found
libsmime3.so.1d => not found
libssl3.so.1d => not found
libplds4.so.0d => not found
libplc4.so.0d => not found
libnspr4.so.0d => not found
even if I symlink the existing libraries to the names it wants above it'll still bomb on the GLIBCXX_3.4.9 error. http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=13425 . No big deal though. Without support for firefox plugins Chrome is pretty much worthless for me.
Go nuts with Bing then and have yourself labeled as a queef stain.
Its almost like they don't care, I mean I get OSX to a degree, but whats up with no Linux support? Is that going to "surprisingly" happen once ChromeOS comes out?
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
No bookmark manager (!), many other features missing. What reason is there to compel a Mac user to use this over Safari, which uses the same rendering engine and its own slightly faster JavaScript engine?
(Remember, Iron is the no-phone-home, no-spyware, privacy-assured derivative of Chrome.)
Despite that, I hope to see a version of Iron based on the upstream's beta soon. When it comes out, it would be announced on the SRware forums.
Also interesting: The Google Chrome download page requires javascript!
You need a JavaScript-capable browser to download this software. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Excuse me, but I think I reported this story first, yet it's not on the home page.. Very said indeed... :'(
See http://slashdot.org/~Ratscallion
Linux RPMs were built targeting LSB 3.2 :p
lsb >= 3.2 is needed by google-chrome-beta-4.0.249.30-33928.i386
I'll just add this to the list of reasons to upgrade this FC8 install.
Reply to That ||
who needs an "official" release? would you mess around with apt's keyring? i use this for about three months. it's fast and mostly stable on Debian lenny and squeeze. the v8 java script engine is a magnitude more powerful and faster than iceweasel's. put it in ~/bin or something. it's worth trying:
http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-linux/LATEST
Chrome for Linux (no idea about OSX, I don't use it) has been release quality for a long, long time now. I'm quite surprised that only now it's in Beta.
Please add a tar.gz/bz2 with a static build for 32 and 64 bits archs.
Thanks,
Diego
Use a proxy that blocks advertisements, like privoxy.
Maybe they will have some time to focus on the windows version now....im still waiting google...still waiting.
See http://adsweep.org/ - not nearly as flexible as AdBlock but does the job for the most part.
But most simply bury a crude description/reference to this in the EULA. Seems most developers are taught to do this and don't see it as a deceptive practice. I don't care if an application activates my webcam every night and sends photos to Russia as long as it tells me that its going to do so when I install it.
Remember Iron has a closed development process. The source is only released as an archive on rapidshare and I'm not aware of anyone ever reviewing it. There's no issue tracking either, just a moderated forum.
I wouldn't trust a browser from people that can't operate a source code repository.
Wine? What does wine have to do with it? Chrome for linux is a GTK-based (for better or worse) native linux app.
Sure, it might be cool on MS Windows, where IE really sucks and there is not free widely used stripped down browser, but on OS X we have safari and camino, and on Linux Opera seems pretty good.
I fear that Google is leading us into a MS like single vendor lock in. Your data is on the google cloud, your OS is google, you personal information is owned by google. Which is fine as long as we don't do anything that that we shouldn't. But who among us are never naughty online.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I can't believe I am the first one to comment on this but the official Chrome directly from Google only comes in deb and rpm flavours. That is particularly lame. Is there any difference between the official chrome build and the chromium builds that I've been downloading.
I've been running Chromium from the OpenSuSE build service for a couple weeks and have been very pleased. No bugs I've seen, but I haven't done any performance testing.
It didn't take very long at all for me to grow dependent on the multitouch gestures in Firefox. Why in the world does WebKit not support the hardware on new Macbooks as well as Firefox? Three-finger swipe (back/forward and top/bottom of the page) and pinch-to-zoom are incredibly useful.
I am glad Google is building a good browser... it will keep everyone on their toes (especially since Microsoft has pretty much bowed out of the next-gen browser market with their unwillingness to implement standards in a timely fashion).
What I find interesting is just how rapidly this is happening! For our intranet-style application, we've pretty much dropped support for IE altogether, telling our customers to use Firefox, Safari, or Chrome - pretty much "anything but IE". We just write standards-compliant code and almost never bother with IE weirds anymore, we just tell our users to "upgrade to Firefox or Chrome", and they do.
IE8 was Microsoft's big chance, and they blew it. It's *still* not actually standards compliant, at a time when standards compliance is what the marketplace actually wants. Now, they've dumped lots of money and mindshare into a product that still manages to underwhelm.
Microsoft tried to hijack the web development environment with their "dot net" framework, a proprietary application stack with its associated vendor lockin, and an incompatible browser with loads of marketshare.
The only thing they really had to sell was marketshare, and they are losing that as fast as the marketplace can move!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Those are all fine, they don't install the craptastic google updater. Google may know what you are doing, but is there really a reason to give them more information? I use 4 of those 5 and arguably they are all the best at what they provide so I should use what is the best? If there is a something (such as Iron) that has most of the benefits of Chrome, but not the downsides why should someone not use Iron?
And just as with Opera the total lack of SPNEGO support will ensure a whooping 0% adaption rate in the corporate environment. See http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=28282
Not that it's going to be my main browser, I just wanted a Linux build to muck around with that doesn't break Metacity, dammit!
Finally good news! Ive been using the development version of Ubuntu for months & i'm very happy using it every day. Is fast! & work without any prob.
Saludos, Anibal Ojeda http://anibalnet.nl
This one's a show-stopper for me (and, I suspect, others). Chrome offers to save your passwords but gives absolutely no protection on the saved password database. The discussion threads I've seen about this suggest that the Chrome devs don't even understand why this is such a serious problem. Chrome has a lot to like, but I'll be sticking to Firefox for now.
If you want apt functionality, and a free version of Chrome, and you are running Ubuntu, then you can use the PPA Chromium daily builds.
I have been running it on Kubuntu 9.10 64bits and it has been stable and very fast.
To do that, just add the repository:
# sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromium-daily
# sudo aptitude update
# sudo aptitude install chromium-browser
If you are running older versions of Ubuntu, then go to the Chromium PPA page for instructions.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Is there any chance of any (even unofficial) PPC release?
Not everyone has a new intel mac.
I think it's worth really thinking about how people really choose their browsers. Firefox, as good as it may be, primarily owes its popularity to the quality of Internet Explorer, or lack thereof. Firefox was, at the time, a much more lightweight and considerably more secure browser than Internet Exploder, and there were few other alternatives. Mozilla hadn't been updated in ages and was considered bloatware, Netscape was all but dead, Opera was also highly bloated. Not to mention it provided Linux users with a decent, expandable and up-to-date browser (I'd used Epiphany before FF). This provided the incentive to switch and this is the reason why FF enjoys such a high market share.
Nowadays, though, people see little reason to switch. Clueless IE users won't switch whatever you tell them, and users of Firefox, Opera, Iceweasel Epiphany et al. are for the most part quite content with their browsers.
I'm just not sure I see the need for another browser on the platform. Isn't Chrome on the Mac going to break down to a less pretty Safari? When I need Security and Ad-Free browsing, I'm going to use Firefox. When I'm checking my E-Mail and Facebook, I just use Safari. Chrome for Mac is missing everything that made me start using Chrome on Windows, it only retains the branding.