Chrome for Linux Moving Along

Google Chrome ScreenshotWithin the last few days, the development build of Google’s Chrome Web browser has made great strides toward being ready for prime time use. Within Linux Mint, at least, the browser supports plugins such as Adobe Flash fairly well, the ability to import bookmarks, history, passwords and other information from Firefox has been implemented and is working properly, and the chrome (the appearance of the window – not to be confused with the name of the browser) is now consistent with the Windows version. When maximized, the tab bar moves into the area normally used as the title bar by other programs, allowing you to use almost as much of the screen as you would in fullscreen mode with other browsers.

If you are running some version of Linux on your computer and you have not yet tested the development build of Chrome, you really should check it out. At this point, the only real issue I am experiencing is that it’s difficult to enable the plugins. I had plugins working properly for a while, but then had to make some adjustments to my Flash installation, which stopped the plugins from working within Chrome. I’m assuming, though, that once the plugins are officially supported by Chrome, they will begin working properly (which will, hopefully, be very soon).

3 Responses

  • Holden page

    I tried out Chrome for linux just yesterday on Ubuntu (which Linux Mint is a derivative of I believe)?

    Anyways, flash support was iffy for me. Youtube just about crashed every few videos and it doesn’t look like HTML 5 support is working all that well.

  • Good to know. As I said in the article, I was only able to use Flash for a little while, but I didn’t experience any issues while using it. I guess there still are quite a few bugs to work out, but the progress that’s being made is promising.

    Apparently, though, the Linux build must still be ahead of the Mac build, as I’ve seen people still reporting that the Mac build doesn’t support importing preferences from their other browsers. That feature worked without any trouble for me.

  • ryan

    when it is ready im moving from windows