Google Chrome For Linux Goes 64-bit

Noam.of.Doom writes "The Google Chrome developers announced on August 19th the immediate availability of a new version of the Google Chrome web browser for Linux, Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Google Chrome 4.0.202.2 is here to fix a lot of annoying bugs (see below for details) and it also adds a couple of features only for the Mac platform. However, the good news is that Dean McNamee, one of the Google Chrome engineers, announced yesterday on their mailing list that a working port of the Chrome browser for 64-bit platforms is now available: 'The v8 team did some amazing work this quarter building a working 64-bit port. After a handful of changes on the Chromium side, I've had Chromium Linux building on 64-bit for the last few weeks. I believe mmoss or tony is going to get a buildbot running, and working on packaging.' Until today, Google Chrome was available on both 32- and 64-bit architectures, but it appears that the latter was running based on the 32-bit libraries. Therefore, starting with Google Chrome 4.0.202.2, 64-bit users can enjoy a true x64 version!"

Chromium Not Chrome

[thejapanesegeek]

"Google Chrome" has not been released on the Linux platform yet. From the about:linux-splash on my chromium install:

Chromium [google.com] is an open source browser project. Google Chrome [google.com] is a browser from Google, based on the Chromium project.

And "Chromium" still doesn't have things like flash and printing, at least not in a stable, usable form.

"Iron" out the privacy bugs...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

And if we are lucky, there will soon be a privacy-enabled version here:
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_download.php [srware.net]

Re:Chromium Not Chrome

[MrHanky]

Wrong. While still 'un-official', a developer preview of Google Chrome for Linux has been out for a long time, freely available. Link [chromium.org].

Re:Chromium Not Chrome

[Jamamala]

Chromium does have flash support if you start it with --enable-plugins. It works pretty well, although admittedly I haven't tested the latest 4.0 builds or the x64 version.

Re:!x64

[NervousNerd]

From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

The terms x86-64 and x64 are often used as vendor-neutral terms to collectively refer to x86-64 processors from any company.

Re:Chromium Not Chrome

[pablomme]

And "Chromium" still doesn't have things like flash and printing, at least not in a stable, usable form.

Wrong about flash. Add '--enable-plugins' to chromium-browser's command line, and soft link the flash library into chromium's plugins directory (which they fail to tell you to do), e.g. in Ubuntu you would do:

  sudo ln -s /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/chromium-browser/plugins/

Works well, is stable and is usable, despite the warnings that it may melt your computer etc. Printing is still unavailable.

Re:Serious question

[larry bagina]

x86-64 has more registers. v8 compiles javascript into native code, so more registers means more variables stored in registers (instead of on the stack) and faster execution.

Re:Serious question

[Bert64]

There is already a 64bit version of flash:
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html [adobe.com]

Re:Wonderful

[andre_pl]

I dont know about this "Chrome for linux" thing, but Chromium is not a windows app with any kind of compatibility layer, or wrapper. Its a native linux browser that actually works REALLY well (unlike all of the other apps that google
'ported' to linux)

Wake up

[cecil_turtle]

Chrome supports user scripts, and scripts for all of those things already exist. Check out http://www.adsweep.org/ [adsweep.org] for one. And it is still "just another browser" like Fx, Opera, IE, etc.

Re:Serious question

[SSpade]

64 bit binaries consume more space than 32 bit binaries. That means they make less effective use of system memory and (just as importantly) CPU cache.

All other things being equal, a 64 bit binary will run slower, while using more system resources than a 32 bit binary, so it's something that you'd only want to do if you could actually make use of huge amounts of memory in your application directly.

All other things aren't equal, though, as x86 is rather a "special" architecture. There the 64 bit binary will get access to (amongst other things) more registers. It'll still consume more system resources (ram, disk, power), but may run faster, or slower.

So it's not as simple as "64 bit good, 32 bit bad".

Re:Chromium Not Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need the symlink anymore, the latest builds just work with the --enable-plugins flag