A Mixed Review For Google Chrome On Linux

omlx contributes this link to LinuxCrunch's short review of Google Chrome on Linux, writing: "The summary of it is that although Google Chrome is in a beta stage, it is fast, stable, and has a simple, clean, and effective GUI design. On other side, Google Chrome has a small number of extensions, doesn't support RSS, lacks integration with KDE, and doesn't support complex scripts very well. Personally, I didn't succeed in using Flash Player on Google Chrome beta 1 (I am using OpenSUSE 11.2) and I wonder how the quality of Google Chrome OS will be, especially if it's based on Linux and Google Chrome."

Google Chrome linux

[cavedweller96]

Personally, I disagree. Flash works flawlessly on chrome. More features can be added later, you have to remember it is a beta. finally, as a person who had compiled Chrome OS, It works great. My only problem with it is lack of wireless card support, but once again BETA.

Long (relatively) user here.

[pwnies]

I've been using a mix of chrome and chromium on linux now as my primary browser for the last six months. I'm surprised at how stable it actually is (especially now). When I first started using it, the chromium builds weren't integrated into the UI very well, and were very finicky (especially with plugins). Now though, I've had zero crashes with the latest build (4.0.266.0) that I'm using. Flash works great under Ubuntu 9.04 with chrome, the dom inspector is up and running, networking options are now available (an improvement from the previous chromium build I was using), complex scripts (hebrew, arabic, etc) are working, and UI is operating exactly how you'd expect it to. Oddly enough, the only problem I'm having with it, is if the width of a text input box goes larger than around 600 pixels, I can't select the text outside of that 600px with my mouse (not that it's a problem, I just click elsewhere and use my lovely keyboard to get me where I need to be). Other than that, zero problems. Very happy with it.

Mostly good here.

[headkase]

I'm running Chrome in Ubuntu under Gnome and Compiz, I have Adobe's flash installed from restricted and swfdec removed (was blocking Adobe's) and all the extensions I've tried work: Feedly, Chromed Bird, Adblock, and so on. The only thing I notice about Flash (it even plays video fine!) is that sometimes input events such as clicking on a button in a flash element will "fall through" and not do anything. Annoying when your trying to select another YouTube video after the current one has finished playing. Overall though, my opinion is that it is already in an excellent state and can only get better from here: in active development.

Getting Flash to Work

[Kelson]

I had two systems, both 64-bit Fedora, that I tried Chrome on. On one, Flash worked fine from the moment I installed Chrome. On the other, Chrome didn't even notice the plugin existed. Flash (32-bit, wrapped with mozilla-plugin-config) worked just fine in Firefox on both computers. When I compared the two systems, it turned out that one was missing a symbolic link. The file is in /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins-wrapped, but Chrome was looking in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins.

Adding a symbolic link solved it.

More info: Getting Flash to work on Google Chrome for 64-bit Linux [hyperborea.org].

Re:I would have tried it

[Enderandrew]

The entire Chrome application is open under a BSD license. You can check out the licenses of the dependencies as well here:

http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html [google.com]

Re:sigh

[bvankuik]

As far as the KDE thing, though, I agree. Exactly what sort of "integration" with KDE was expected?

I would appreciate it if Chrome took it's default font size/color from the KDE settings. What would even be better is if there was a KDE theme that also took over the KDE look and feel for the browser window and the tabs, and the buttons and dialogues that Chrome has.

Re:Nothing but praise here

[__aamnbm3774]

It not only has tons of extensions, (all the basics included, like Ad Blocking, Gmail Checker, etc) but has a fantastic way to search for them... on par with Mozillas plug-in search.

I agree, if I even bothered to RTFA, I would have stopped reading at that point.

Re:Getting Flash to Work

[Enderandrew]

I'm running openSUSE 11.2 64-bit. I installed the actual 64-bit Flash with 64-bit Chrome. It works well.

Fedora 11 and Flash works here...

[Rick Richardson]

Fedora 11 and Adobe Flash works here...

However, disabling IPV6 is not possible (unlike Firefox). So every access I wait for IPV6 DNS to timeout. It is really slow compared to Firefox.

Re:Not Chrome's Fault

[Hel Toupee]

Psshhh... ultra-stable? 9.10 is the worst distro Ubuntu has had since I started using it back at Fiesty (7.04). I'll give you one example -- Upstart. Upstart is absolute crap. It tries to do away with a convention (Init) that has worked for years, and is standard across many distros, and replace it with one that was never ready for prime-time. They didn't even get the script for frackin' X right -- they had to push a patch through to stop upstart from constantly restarting X if, for some reason, your configuration was bad. That really pissed off those of us that had intel on-board graphics that made the driver Karmic shipped with poo itself.

Re:Nothing but praise here

[Gerzel]

Indeed. I also have installed it on my machine and have had no troubles. Responsiveness is slightly better than firefox, though the difference isn't as great as when I boot into Windows on the same machine where I also have Chrome and Firefox.

In the end Chrome has several good features for general browsing especially speed but lacks the extendability of Firefox. Firefox has more available features but is slower. Both are likely to improve.

Did you try the tarballs?

[Sits]

I use a Chromium nightly tarball [chromium.org] unpacked to a directory in /tmp on Slackware 13.0. It wasn't straightforward but I did get it working by copying some libraries from firefox into the same directory.

Re:Getting Flash to Work

[Hel Toupee]

Adobe has an 'Alpha' 64-bit Flash player out for Linux. It's kept up-to-date (well, sort of). I would consider it mid-Beta quality. Actually, it works just about as well as the 32bit official version, so, draw whatever conclusions you like. It's available on their 'Labs' section. Don't bother with the installer, it breaks things. Important things. Instead, just extract the .so and link it up yourself.

Re:sigh

[Wintervenom]

This is not so much the job of Chrome as it is of GTK. Have you tried making it use the GTK Qt engine [gtk-qt-engine]? That -- and setting Use System Title Bar and Borders -- will at least get Chrome to match your text and Qt engine style.

Re:Nothing but praise here

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to what KlaasVaak mentioned, I would also cite "security" as a concern, as AdBlock Plus also blocks javascript and flash from blacklisted sites.

Re:Fedora 11 and Flash works here...

[KiloByte]

Uhm, if you have a criminally broken router and feel no urge to work around it, you should disable IPv6 system-wide. No program should deal with such type of configuration on its own.

And your configuration seems broken: if you don't have any IPv6 addresses better than link-local, glibc shouldn't even send AAAA queries, at least in any semi-recent version. If you have any better addresses (not necessarily globally routable), the queries will be sent but since they go exactly the same way A queries go, there's no way for A responses to come swiftly but AAAA having to timeout, save for something on the way sabotaging them and dropping them silently. And since you claim that this happens for every access, it's something near you.

Re:UI responsiveness

[DrXym]

Just compile the damn stuff into something faster! Like a library, but a bit safer (sandboxed).

It already does. On first boot XUL / JS is parsed into objects which are serialized as prototypes into XUL.mfl where mfl stands for Mozilla Fast Load. The next time the app starts it constructs the prototypes from the fast load file rather than the XML. The mfl file is regenerated when the XUL changes of course.