Google Chrome for GNU/Linux remains a work in progress
Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog
Eleven months ago, Google Chrome was announced as the browser that would revolutionize the Internet. Since then, everybody has learned that the browser is only part of a new operating system, and watched impatiently while the new browser has failed to mature as quickly as anyone would like. The result is that, while the first packaged developer build for GNU/Linux (specifically, for Ubuntu and Debian) has not bred contempt, it has produced a certain amount of ennui, going largely unreported. Most people have long ago satisfied their curiosity with the Windows version, and the result is that, eleven months after the drama of the initial release, the GNU/Linux build seems only mildly interesting.
That's not to say that Chrome doesn't have its moments. Even at the current state of development, it has several welcome touches, such as the ability to drag a tab to the desktop to open it in a new window, or the pre-loading of favorites into a new tab as thumbnails. I appreciate, too, the minimalist interface and the importing of Firefox bookmarks and settings.
However, these are minor enhancements. What most users are interested in is Chrome's speed in opening pages and running Javascript. If you believe the statistics, Chrome is supposed to be far faster with Javascript than any other browse, and to have distinct advantages in the speed of reloads, and loading multiple tabs. These statistics have been endlessly debated, but, to my subjective judgment, Chrome is noticeably faster than Firefox (or Debian Iceweasel, to be exact) in everything except initial loading of single pages.
Yet even Chrome's speed matters less than you might think. If you look carefully at all the comparative statistics and their graphs, Chrome's advantage is usually a matter of milliseconds, or of a couple of seconds at best. In daily practice, this difference matters far less than in theory. While the difference is often perceptible, it is not enough to make you immediately want to discard Firefox in favor of Chrome. Since you can do nothing about speed one way or the other, if you are like me, you soon start taking the small improvement for granted, and, after an hour or so, stop noticing it altogether -- except, perhaps, on notoriously slow sites like Facebook, where every bit of extra speed is welcome.
Otherwise, very little of what is unique in Chrome seems particularly exciting. For a moment, incognito browser seemed interesting. However, it proved not to be the anonymous browsing that the name led me to expect, but simply a setting in which your site visits are not recorded in the history or search. This feature might interest you if everyone in your household uses the same account or you want to hide your porn viewing, but since neither applies to me, I found the feature disappointing.
What is left is a browser that shows some promise, but is still very much in the development stage. You can see how unfinished Chrome is when you go to its settings and find tabs with such helpful names as Personal Stuff and Under the Hood, or when you open a folder full of bookmarks, and it opens upwards instead of downwards and shows only half a dozen bookmarks instead of the complete list.
An even more reliable guide to the current state of Chrome is what it is missing. Only a few of the dozens of options in Firefox can be found in Chrome. No reliable Flash or Gnash plug-in available by default, although you can start an unreliable one by starting Chrome with the command google-chrome --enable-gadgets . As for the hundreds of other plug-ins in Firefox, their Chrome equivalents have yet to emerge.
Try using Chrome for a day, and these lacks quickly become noticeable. In my own case, I run about a dozen plug-ins all the time in Firefox, and have another half dozen that I turn on as needed. Not only do I miss that same degree of customization in Chrome, but several of those plug-ins, such as Session Manager and Fine In Tabs, add functionality that I rely heavily upon in my work. Speed, I soon found, was not nearly as important as functionality, and, even if Chrome is eagerly adopted, it will not have the level of functionality of Firefox and its plug-ins for several years.
Of course, such lacks are not the fault of Chrome or its developers. You can't expect a polished interface or a full set of features in what appears to be an alpha release.
But it does mean that anything except the most preliminary evaluation of Chrome is both impossible and unfair. What Chrome will finally be, and whether it will become a major contender among browsers is impossible to guess. Perhaps Chrome's main influence will be to shake Mozilla out of its complacency to improve such aspects as its speed. But, for now, the most that can be said is that Chrome is a promising early release -- with all the limitations that implies.
Comments
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Gnome OS Adopting systemd-sysupdate
Gnome OS is about to undergo a major under-the-hood change that promises enhanced security.
-
Endless OS 6 has Arrived
After more than a year since the last update, the latest release of Endless OS is now available for general usage.
-
Fedora Asahi 40 Remix Available for Macs with Apple Silicon
If you've been anticipating KDE's Plasma 6 for your Apple Silicon-powered Mac, then you're in luck.
-
Red Hat Adds New Deployment Option for Enterprise Linux Platforms
Red Hat has re-imagined enterprise Linux for an AI future with Image Mode.
-
OSJH and LPI Release 2024 Open Source Pros Job Survey Results
See what open source professionals look for in a new role.
-
Proton 9.0-1 Released to Improve Gaming with Steam
The latest release of Proton 9 adds several improvements and fixes an issue that has been problematic for Linux users.
-
So Long Neofetch and Thanks for the Info
Today is a day that every Linux user who enjoys bragging about their system(s) will mourn, as Neofetch has come to an end.
-
Ubuntu 24.04 Comes with a “Flaw"
If you're thinking you might want to upgrade from your current Ubuntu release to the latest, there's something you might want to consider before doing so.
-
Canonical Releases Ubuntu 24.04
After a brief pause because of the XZ vulnerability, Ubuntu 24.04 is now available for install.
-
Linux Servers Targeted by Akira Ransomware
A group of bad actors who have already extorted $42 million have their sights set on the Linux platform.
So... it's still in development, in other words
And a lot of these issues should be really important to Linux users. What about the fact that the Web is so dependent on plugins like Flash, which are hard to get working properly in a browser? What can be made of the relationship of the Chromium project to Chrome? What's involvement like in the OSS community on Chromium? What are its benefits, and are there ways in which we should be getting involved?
Having done quite a bit of switching between Chrome and Firefox, partly because I quite like both, I'm also unsure of performance comparisons. To me, Chrome *does* feel quite a lot snappier -- and I'm curious about other real world tests. Does Firefox's performance degrade as you add tabs, add processes, and use the browser over the course of the day? Anecdotal evidence suggests that it almost certainly does (and does in Chrome, too, under certain circumstances). But I've never seen a real world test of that.
So I agree there's not enough information. Let's see more.