Blog

Linux and Chrome

Having heard so much about the latest browser into the field, I decided to give it a try. Now, being the particular open-source advocate that I am, all my computers run Linux. The only installation I have of Windows now is via a dual boot of my main computer, and is reserved solely for gaming. It's unrealistic to reboot the computer each and every time I need to test a site in this browser, so I began seeking an alternative. I stumbled across Chromium, which is a browser built upon Chromes source code, specifically aimed at Mac OS X and Linux users, who are yet to be able to run Chrome natively.

The install went without a hitch, and the start-up time, whilst not as fast as I was initially led to believe, (it was faster than say, Konqueror, but not by the degree I'd have thought,) it was fairly quick. The interface looked just like the screenshots I'd seen for Windows, and everything looked great. My first test was to fire open a couple of tabs and see how it handled different sites that I used regularly. Googles own search page was visible in instants, almost as soon as I'd hit the enter key. Pleased with this first result, I thought I'd push it with a site which relies heavily on Javascript; namely Facebook. Oh dear!

The browser crashed. I don't just mean the tab that Facebook was in, but the whole darned browser. A bit annoying, as I expected this to be a non-issue, as one of the main selling points of the browser was process isolation, which kept one tab from affecting another from all but the most serious of problems. Unfortunately, it all got a little worse when I tried to close the error (and Chrome); my whole computer froze. Now, this may have been particular to my computer setup, but I was not too impressed.

So, I'm just going to wait the next few months it takes for the official Google release. I doubt that Chrome will become my main browser, as Firefox, replete with all its plugins, is just perfect for my job, but it would be nice to be able to test in as many browsers as possible on a single computer (without resorting to virtual machines, for which I don't have an extra copy of XP.) Until then, I'll test on the ones I can.