In addition to the Chrome 2.0 beta, work for the Linux version of Chrome is on its way. Its official name is currently “Chromium,” and Google Chrome for Linux doesn’t officially exist yet. For the sake of argument, however, Google Chrome for Linux is on its way whether it’s currently in a Chromium and pre-alpha state or not, and now Ubuntu users can get a hold of Chromium to take for a spin. In this article, learn how to install the current build of Chromium to test on your Ubuntu or Ubuntu-based system and see several screenshots of the budding browser.According to Lee Matthews at Download Squad, Chromium runs just as fast on Ubuntu as the current Windows version of Chrome does. Its only drawbacks are that there are several features, including tabs and bookmarks bars, that currently aren’t functional. Even still, excited young Linux buffs who also have a love of Chrome will give their eyeteeth to get Chromium. Thankfully eyeteeth aren’t required. All that must be done is the following, as instructed by Matthews:
Thanks to the PPA for Chromium daily builds team, getting the pre-alpha Chromium browser running on your system is about as painless as it can be at this stage. You’ll need to add repositories, of course. They are (substitute jaunty or hardy if needed):
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main<br />
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
Once they’ve been added, running sudo apt-get install chromium-browser in a terminal window will take care of the rest. After the package has finished installing, just execute chromium-browser to fire it up.
To excite those aforementioned Linux/Chrome admirers, below are some screenshots of Chromium itself in delicious 32-bit colors as run on Crunchbang Linux.
As always, we see Google includes its funny way of getting the word across integrated into the browser.
Oh, look. It renders.
Menus are a go.
Same Acid results on Linux as on Windows.
The download dialog is somewhat… decimated, one might say. However, remembering that this is a pre-alpha release, we know the best is yet to come.
Do you like these? You can see all twelve in their fuller resolutions.
First thing I tried was this:
http://www.benjoffe.com/code/demos/canvascape/
Silky, perfectly, smooth using the alpha builds of chromium.
Tried the same site using Firefox 3.1b3 with Tracemonkey enabled and, uh, very very choppy and unusable.
What’s the deal?? I thought both tracemonkey and v8 were comparably fast and equally capable of running such scripts.
In the article they said that some features didn’t work but otherwise the browser worked great. I beg to differ on that. Lots of features don’t work and I managed to crash it several times (espn.com for example every time).
Pretty exciting start though. If they add an extensions interface that allows adblock (I’ll believe that when I see it), Firefox will have real competition with this gtk native app. Cool.
hmmm. Now I don’t have a firefox build with tracemonkey on this machine, but I think this performance issue of yours might just be your machine. I just tried your link with 3.0.7 (thats the current stable, no javascript JIT) and it runs great with all settings except large textures in textured mode.
On the other-hand, maybe the issue is a tracemonkey regression. *shrug* I will install the beta when I have time to try it out and comment if I see a problem. Try disabling tracemonkey on your firefox beta and see what happens.
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9600 @ 2.80GHz
Linux 2.6.27-11-generic #1 SMP i686 GNU/Linux
I don’t know what might be wrong with my system. I have no addons installed for 3.1. Otherwise my system is a lot slower than yours, Intel [email protected] and 1GB RAM. Anyway chromium on the same machine runs fantastically. Maybe your machine is just so fast you can’t tell the difference.
Edited 2009-03-17 23:58 UTC
Yeah it’s smooth as butter in FF 3.0.7 for me too. I didn’t realize that there is a sound effect for the gun though until trying it in Opera and Konqueror. Firefox doesn’t render the sound effect on my machine.
I just tried it using Firefox 3.0.7 on Windows XP SP3 on an Acer Aspire One – very smooth; same situation with Archlinux and Firefox 3.0.7. There is obviously something very wrong with your setup.
ive a slow 2800+, multiuser system and it runs fluid in ff 3.07 without textures. its a bit slow with textures (1-2 sec reaction lag or something)
Calling Chrome an alpha is a laugh. The foundation is robust, mature and developed by WebKit proper.
Sensitive fanboi! I was talking about chromium. Webkit, don’t worry, everyone agrees it is nice and mature. Chromium is alpha, it is ok.
Just on a whim I did the dist upgrade to Jaunty and it is much better, still with 3.0.7 although it is still occasionally jerky compared to chromium. I haven’t tried with 3.1b3 yet.
I tried this on XP-SP3 on an old Pentium-M 1.2Ghz laptop with Firefox 3.1b3, Opera 10 alpha and Chrome 2.0beta, and all three ran fine and smooth, with Firefox taking the least CPU power (under 50% most of the time, the other two were nearer to 80%). Interestingly, Opera was the only one with sound effects when you press ‘b’.
The choppiness in the textured demo is probably caused by the bilinear image filtering Firefox does- look how much smoother the walls look in that browser compared to the others.
You’ll have to pry Firefox-with-ABP from my cold dead hands, unless your new browser has feature parity with Adblock Plus. To me, no other feature-list can ever make up for lacking ABP. Privoxy and other proxy-based alternatives just don’t cut it.
One animated-gif-hater’s opinion,
Cheers
That doesn’t really fix the problem. If a site has offensive ads, I wont go to it. If their ads are tasteful, I don’t mind them being there since bandwidth isn’t free, and they aren’t charging me money.
Things like adblock seems like stealing to me. But to each his own
Hey,
I can see where you’re coming from, but to me it’s no more stealing than mentally shutting off and ignoring the ads, just a more pleasant experience. But you’re right in the sense that if there were fewer obnoxious ads there’d be less reason to love ABP so much.
Cheers.
Edited 2009-03-18 00:28 UTC
I’m not sure you do see where he’s coming from…how about ignoring THE SITE? (one with obnoxious ads)
The way many people browse with adblock can actually make things worse…they don’t see over-the-top ads, so they don’t mind (don’t even know…) promoting (through traffic/linking) such sites, at the possible expense of sites with good ad habits.
PS. But if adblock is your main concern…it is widely ignored that Opera, for example, also has this capability (built in, no plugins, you just have to provide it with a list…):
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/
According to my buddy who moved from FF to Opera it works just as well as Adblock Plus lists when it comes to blocking; and the style works slightly better when it comes to hiding “empty spots”.
Edited 2009-03-18 02:27 UTC
google_ninja wrote:
-“That doesn’t really fix the problem.”
Sure does for me. I enable ads for those sites I regularly visit and wish to help (like actually clicking on the ads, which I believe is what generates the revenue).
Increased use of Adblocking is a result of increasingly aggressive advertisment.
google_ninja wrote:
-“Things like adblock seems like stealing to me. But to each his own”
Stealing? Then I guess you watch every commercial break on TV aswell? I watch ads on tv when they either interest me (very seldom) or they atleast don’t annoy me (very seldom). On the web I click on ads that interest me (very seldom), AND/OR when I want to help a site I enjoy (quite often). I don’t feel the least bit like a thief. But like you said, each to his own.
It could actually be the other way around. It is really hard to tell
I actually don’t have cable, the few shows I like I download illegally, and then buy when they come out on DVD. To me, the important thing is that someone is getting the money they deserve for the show, be that through ads or dvd sales. I know, I have an odd set of ethics, and I try not to beat others over the head with them. Ethics are one of those tricky things everyone needs to work out for themselves. This particular thing though is something I find a lot of people don’t think about at all.
Food for thought about TV; there is a certain class of person that just downloads all their tv shows now. With battlestar, that was a plus for them, due to the whole 6 month US delay to get the show, and because of the wide audience that enjoys the show. For something like Jericho, it murdered the show. Even though there were loads of people watching it online, that was completely irrelivent to the networks, since they don’t make money off of it.
google_ninja wrote:
–“It could actually be the other way around. It is really hard to tell “
No it’s not, atleast not unless you started surfing the web very recently.
The reason people bother with adblocking is because ads are really bothering them. OSAlert is an example of a site with non-intrusive ads (imo), had this been the norm on the web then I believe extensions like adblock plus etc would never have become widely used (perhaps never even existed). Same goes for noscript and flashblock. However, such is not the case which is clearly illustrated by just checking the download numbers on addons.mozilla
adblock plus: ~44 million downloads
noscript: ~43 million downloads
flashblock: ~6 million downloads
As for the rest of your comment about downloading shows and such, I don’t really follow.
I have been using the web for a very long time now.
When adblock came out, I distinctly remember seeing a big surge in flash based ads over animated gifs, nowadays animated gifs are relatively rare. The only other difference with regards to obnoxious ads between now and then is the whole DHTML fly into the middle of the page type ad has gotten alot more prevalent, although that can easily be explained with advances in technology and browser capabilities.
To say that before adblock came out ads weren’t so bad is completely false though. What drove adblock adoption is people would rather not see them then see them, and the impact of their actions on others do not factor into decisions they make.
There’s an easier and much more effective, long term, way…IGNORE those sites.
God forbid that a useful site has obnoxious ads! You puritans are incredible…
You can’t always avoid nasty things, and you can’t always persuade wrong-doers to do the right thing, dear vigilante…
You make the problem worse by assuring the authors their site is useful and/or popular (also by, for example, linking somebody to it not even knowing its true colors). If it’s irritating to use without modifications, it’s not useful. Ignore it. Only then such sites will go away.
You act like all the sites I visit are chosen by me, independently of other factors. Sort of like a free market.
Guess what, that’s not true.
A lot of obnoxious sites have valuable content. Content is king, remember?
And many, many times activism falls on deaf ears. The only one losing by being radical and not visiting those sites is me, not them – they only lose 1 visitor (unless I suddenly start a sort of mass migration…).
I’m not a martyr. Go ahead and be one, I’ll thank you for it. Cynical, isn’t it?
Using adblock + noscript is a must. I just got very irritated hearing the fan on my wife’s laptop always running full speed because of a stupid web browser. If anything the animated script heavy crap on web pages is stealing from me by jacking up my power bill.
Edited 2009-03-18 13:28 UTC
Try AdSweep and open Distrowatch.com
It beats ABP and it works with Chrome.
AB actually blocks ads. As in, it prevents the browser downloading them. AB is more like a mini hosts file directly in the browser.
As far as I can see, Adsweep just hides the ads.
Thanks for the hint, though
So now they have Windows, Mac and Linux I’m hoping we get an OpenSolaris version soon. I very much enjoy using Chrome on my work laptop but would love to have it on my Ultra 20 at home too
What I wasn’t able to see in the screenshots is the tabbed browsing experience in Chronium (Linux), anyone can show a screenshot of the tabbed interface?
Quote from the article:
“Its only drawbacks are that there are several features, including tabs and bookmarks bars, that currently aren’t functional.”
Was there already a large project for Linux called ‘Chrome’? because I see Chromium and Linux in the same sentence and I instantly think of the top-down shooter Chromium B.S.U (http://www.reptilelabour.com/software/chromium/)
Chromium is the OSS project name for Chrome irrespective of the OS.
http://code.google.com/chromium/
I tried building Chromium a few days ago until I found out that Chromium is 32-bit only. See here:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxBuild64Bit
I’m not going through the bother of building all the ia32 libraries and even when it’s packaged for my distro I’ll probably skip it. Having half the libraries on my system loaded twice because of one app is not cool.
It’s 2009! Even Flash has a 64-bit build! I hope they’ll remedy this.
Edited 2009-03-18 04:57 UTC
This Chromium Browser build does not not appear to support flash. Certainly it doesn’t find my Flash 10 plugin for Firefox which Epiphany-Webkit finds OK.
I have Codeweavers Crossover Chromium installed on my Hardy system and I installed the Flash plugin for Windows and it works a treat showing Youtube videos.