Developers Getting Chrome To Work On Linux

[HardOCP News]

There are still a number of things to get hammered out but the crew at Google say they have Chrome running on Linux…sorta. Programmers admit there is a long way to go but hitting little milestones like this is defnitely encouraging.

The other three guys in my office all work on Chromium for Linux. Right now, they are working on bringing up the "test shell". The test shell is a very simple browser that the Chromium development team uses for testing our integration with WebKit. It is the first step of porting Chromium to a new platform.

 

[trickedoutwizard]

In some areas Linux is such a great platform, but it falls behind in a lot of areas necessary for it to be taken seriously. Right now, for browsing the web and using open office, it's pretty legitimately good, but anything media related it fails quite spectacularly. Device support for new devices is getting better but still has occasional big problems and many things still require command line to get the job done correctly.
You know, the flavors of Linux is a common criticism for why Linux has such a low foothold, and I never really put much weight behind that argument, but more and more that seems the chief hindrance. Even though it's debatable which Linux is the best, it would almost be more in the interest of the community to just back one platform and let the hardcore community port things to the other distros since they are comfortable with such work.
Ubuntu looks like the likely candidate for the chief Linux distro to support if only because it seems to really want to compete on the home desktop more than some of the other popular business oriented distros. Once they start getting Linux to a slightly better general state (implementing things like plymouth and other tech), I feel it would be in the Ubuntu teams interest to start making custom Linux applications to compete with things like iLife and iWork. An active directory type management program, would also be a big win (though this might already exist as far as I know).

 

[kllrnohj]

Right now, for browsing the web and using open office, it's pretty legitimately good, but anything media related it fails quite spectacularly.

I have to disagree here. One of the best media players on Windows, VLC, is also on Linux. MPlayer can play just about every format known to man with little trouble - it can play far more formats than, say, Windows Media Player. MPlayer will even play HD content just fine. Of if HTPC is your thing, there is MythTV.

Device support for new devices is getting better but still has occasional big problems and many things still require command line to get the job done correctly.

It is far easier and less troublesome to install drivers on Linux than on Windows. All it takes is a look at all the driver sweeper programs for windows, and all the people that recommend 2 or 3 reboots during the process to tell you that. In Linux you don't even need to reboot once for a video driver install if you know what you are doing (and if you don't, its still just a single reboot). Depending on the distro, you don't even need to know what card you have - just go into the driver panel and click "install the driver for me, please".