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CodeWeavers Package Google Chrome For Linux and Mac
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Sep 15, 2008 03:34 PM
from the not-to-be-forgotten dept.
from the not-to-be-forgotten dept.
jfbilodeau writes "The fine folks at Codeweavers performed an 11 day experiment in getting Google Chrome working on Linux and Mac. Their efforts resulted in the Chromium proof of concept. 'Not only does this give Mac and Linux users a chance to see what all the hype is about, it also lets the world see just how far Wine has come and how powerful it truly can be. In just 11 days, we were able to bring a modern Windows application across to Mac and Linux.' Caveat: their implementation is free as in beer but not free as in speech."
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pshuke writes "After 15 years of development, Wine version 1.0 has been released. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. While perfect windows compatibility has not yet been achieved, full support for Photoshop CS2, Excel Viewer 2003, Word Viewer 2003 and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 have been among the goals prior to the release. For further information about supported applications, head over to the appdb. Get it (source) while it's hot."
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Predictable, Really. (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's vision isn't truly understood by everyone, IMHO. Google knew that the Open Source community would fork and port Chrome anyway and that freed up time for developers to work out the system bugs and get the thing live. Releasing the source code is a redeemable action from the many gripes that flooded about Google not offering Linux or Mac support in Chrome on launch, among other [arstechnica.com] things.
Now I personally would like to see a fork that would upgrade Chrome to remove any significant Windows reliance. I don't trust Microsoft to put my interests first and therefore I don't like the idea of a browser that relies so heavily on Microsoft for security.
Re:Predictable, Really. (Score:5, Funny)
free as in beer
but not free as in speech
What of free from fear
Of corporate over-reach?
Yeah! Opera gives you corporate reach-around!
Parent
Re:Predictable, Really. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mac and Linux users should reject Windows applications and games. If they can't, they should question their OS of choice.
Why should anyone restrict themselves to native applications when they don't have to?
Ever heard of the best of both worlds?
Parent
Re:Predictable, Really. (Score:5, Insightful)
free as in beer but not free as in speech
What of free from fear Of corporate over-reach?
I'm getting pretty sick of the whole "drunk as in beer, not as in scotch" disclaimer crap. Everything has its limits, and petty squabbles about "mine is freer than yours" serve only to enrage a flock of wannabe first amendment lawyers. They fill the blog'O'sphere with masturbatory rants about "you published your peanut butter without my chocolate disclaimer!"
Can't we find something better to squabble endlessly about? Like why Firefox's spell checker didn't complain about the word "masturbatory"?
Parent
Your annoyance is misplaced. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your annoyance is misplaced.
The speech/beer convention was devised as a patch for a bug in the English language. One word, "free", has two distinct meanings. Normally people deal with these cases by using context ("Some atoms are ionized but most are unionized" vs. "Plumbers in many areas are unionized") but in this case both meanings are plausible. The two types are free are distinct, software could be free in either sense, yet English (unlike most other languages) gives us only one preferred word for both meanings.
This resulted in numerous exceedingly tedious flame wars that ended, if at all, with a lame "Oh, that's not what I thought you meant--why didn't you say so in the first place?"
Clarifying which homonym is intended right up front may annoy you, but trust me, it is far, far better than the alternative.
--MarkusQ
Parent
Re:Won't you take me.... to crappytown? (Score:5, Interesting)
> I suspect that's par for the course for a Wine-ported app
Wine apps are/can be much better than that on Leopard. I only have one data point, but I use it _extensively_ and it works super-well. And stably. And actually, maybe even better than on Windows.
The app? ies4osx [kronenberg.org] under Darwine. Specifically, I am running Internet Explorer 6.0 for web-dev testing.
The ONLY complaint I have is that it's under the "X" program, instead of it's own program, so I can't cmd-tab to it effectively. Web I'm doing web-dev, I also run Xemacs, so I have to ctrl-tab to get to IE, then cmd-tab to get to Safari and Firefox.
And it's such a small complaint that I haven't even googled for a solution yet.
Parent
Yeah! (Score:5, Funny)
Giving Google all your data is not just for Windows users anymore!
Native port? (Score:4, Insightful)
Please help with the port (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Please help with the port (Score:4, Insightful)
Does Linux users, especially the newbies who just comes from Windows land need such a potential privacy killer?
They moved to Linux because their Windows became impossible to use since they kept not reading EULAs and leaving "default options" checked.
Parent
Re:Please help with the port (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
In Just 11 Days (Score:5, Funny)
'In just 11 days, we were able to bring a modern Windows application across to Mac and Linux.'
How long would it take to send it back?
Re:In Just 11 Days (Score:4, Funny)
'In just 11 days, we were able to bring a modern Windows application across to Mac and Linux.'
How long would it take to send it back?
It's like the trash in your collage apartment; let it start stinking first and then someone will take it out.
I give it about three days.
Parent
All the vendors wave your hands in the air and say (Score:4, Funny)
BTW, we don't care about your hippy licensing schemes yet. Try back in 10 years.
First impressions (Score:5, Informative)
The Internet... (Score:5, Funny)
More technical details (Score:5, Informative)
Cheers,
Jeremy
The Fonts on Linux Suck (Score:5, Interesting)
Case in point: http://img140.imageshack.us/my.php?image=chromeox9.jpg [imageshack.us]
Ah well. I guess it'll give me something to play with until Google puts out an official Linux build.
Google Earth is native! (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Google Earth is native! (Score:4, Insightful)
What I'd like to know is why .kml/.kmz files created by Google Earth are incompatible with Google Maps.
Parent
Re:For those of you using Firefox on linux.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't work for me. "wine ChromeSetup.exe" gives
fixme:advapi:CheckTokenMembership ((nil) 0x12a078 0x33f930) stub! fixme:process:SetProcessShutdownParameters (00000280, 00000001): partial stub. fixme:ole:CoInitializeSecurity ((nil),-1,(nil),(nil),6,2,(nil),64,(nil)) - stub! fixme:winhttp:WinHttpOpen ((null), 1, (null), (null), 0x0): stub
Good for Crossover!
How 'bout you actually try the Crossover packages then like you were supposed to? http://www.codeweavers.com/services/ports/chromium/ [codeweavers.com]
Parent
Re:For those of you using Firefox on linux.... (Score:5, Informative)
Cheers,
Jeremy
Parent
Re:it is a remarkable achievement (Score:4, Funny)
Now, 12, that's just pushing it. And 10 would have been unrealistic.
Parent
Re:TANSFAAFB! (Score:5, Funny)
It does if you've been drinking.
Parent
Re:"just" 11 days? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, like a lot of :) For instance it does all the multi-process and security stuff. But then it also does what a lot of Windows programs do these days and replace the standard window management stuff as well. It relies on parts of Internet Explorer as well (like the HTTP library).
Windows apps Chrome does some, uh, interesting things that you might not expect a them to do
If you want an example of the sort of fun they had making things work, the bug this patch fixes [winehq.org] was "Chrome URL bar has a black background" yet the fix is to the low level assembly generated by Wines build process. That's because Chrome shims BeginPaint/EndPaint by patching the in-memory system DLL headers, so it can muck about with the Windows richedit control internals and the Chrome IAT patcher didn't support Borland style imports.
For a program that has such complicated interactions with the OS, and is so heavily reliant on it for functionality, 11 days is remarkably good actually. A good sign of Wines increasing maturity.
Parent