Google Releases Chrome Beta for Linux, Mac
More than a year after Google released the Chrome browser, the company has announced versions for Linux and Macs.
Chrome has been available to PC users for well over a year. Released in September of 2008, Google has long promised Mac users a version of the browser. Today, Brian Rakowski, Product Manager at Google, made good on those promises, announcing a version for both Mac and Linux machines while admitting that the whole thing had "taken longer than they expected."
Rakowski doesn't go into a lot of detail regarding the Mac version, other than to sing the praises of how fast Chrome for Mac launches. "(…) see how fast it launches — there's hardly even time for the icon in the dock to bounce!" But, the Googler is a lot wordier when it comes to the Linux version.
"At Google, most engineers use Linux machines, so we certainly heard loud and clear how much they wanted Google Chrome for Linux," Rakowski writes, adding that speed, stability and security remained top priorities for the Linux build. Brian promises Linux users tight integration with native GTK themes, updates that are managed by the standard system package manager, and "many other features that fit in natively with the operating system where possible."
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Excellent!
Of course, it will probably remain in beta for anther five years...
About time!
However, the "dev channel" version has been pretty stable on my linux machine and I think I will keep on using it, as that is the only one that supports extensions (for the moment, at least).
I've been using Chrome in Ubuntu (9.04) for four or five months now... Am I crazy? Or did they have an alpha release or something before this for Linux?
I've been using Chrome in Ubuntu (9.04) for four or five months now... Am I crazy? Or did they have an alpha release or something before this for Linux?
It was the "dev channel" release. There is one for Windows as well. It is not really an Alpha release but more of a "testing" release, including more functionality that will eventually be integrated in the "stable" channel (such as extensions).
Groovy!
Great news. When can we download?
Awaiting a mouse gesture plugin so I can finally switch from opera. Love both, but opera has been lagging in speed and stability lately.
Tried to install it, but did not work on Slackware. Hopefully they will release the source tar.gz.
I have been using the dev version in Ubuntu for the better part of its existence. Been pretty stable and much faster than Firefox overall.
not so integrated with themes, mine doesn't apply a single element under Ubuntu. It looks just like the windows version. Not even gonna mess with it, I'm just happy it's out and seems to work.
Awaiting a mouse gesture plugin so I can finally switch from opera. Love both, but opera has been lagging in speed and stability lately.
You could try this extension:
http://www.chromeextensions.org/ap [...] se-stroke/
But you need to use the "dev channel" version of chrome. Also, it is nowhere near the sophistication of Opera just yet.
not so integrated with themes, mine doesn't apply a single element under Ubuntu. It looks just like the windows version. Not even gonna mess with it, I'm just happy it's out and seems to work.
There is a GTK integration for Chrome, but it is disabled by default.
You can activate it in the "Under the hood" settings, but I usually prefer to use one of the themes already available for Chrome, as the GTK integration makes Chrome slightly uglier and just a tad slower on start-up.
Perfect timing! I have been using Chrome on Windows for nearly as long as it has been out and just this week I installed and started using Linux.