Chromium for Linux and Mac! (Well, sort of. . .)

I think I've made my opinion of the release of the Windows only Chrome beta pretty clear - but just in case you've not been paying attention - I'm less than impressed.

I did, however, point out that with the source being available someone might be able to put something together for those of us not stuck on Windows.



Codeweavers have done just that.

In eleven days they've used their Wine based porting tools to put together a version of the browser for Linux (and MacOS too!) based around the Developer Build 21 release of Chrome.

A couple of things to note however are that there is no automatic updater for this unofficial package. Another is that as this is almost a beta of a beta you shouldn't use it as your main browser, just think of it as a tech preview.

Packages are available for most major Linux distro's here.

I've not installed it yet, but once I've done so then I'll let you how it compares to the native Windows version.

So how well does it work? It is certainly a lot slower to use than a native browser such as FireFox on my trusty old Athlon XP 2200, but was certainly up to day to day browsing, in fact I'm updating this post using Chromium. I'm not sure if the lack of speed is down to Chromium itself, or due to the porting process.

More importantly - you can watch YouTube videos, at last once you've installed the Windows version of the Flash plugin (which you can do via the browser, just remember to quit and restart the browser afterwards).

It probably isn't worth using this as your main browser, but is certainly nice as a "fill in" until the proper native version of Chromium comes out.