Putting a Linux Shine on Chrome

This item is being written in Google Docs, running on the freshly ported, Google Chrome-like web browser for Linux, known as "CrossOver Chromium."

It's an impressively quick Linux-izing of the new Google browser. There is also a version of Chromium for the Mac; both were produced - - seemingly on the fly - - by the team at Codeweavers of St. Paul, Minn.

Codeweavers' motto is "CrossOver Products: Making Every Mac and Linux Desktop Windows-Compatible."

When Google launched its Chrome browser for Windows several weeks ago, it failed to bring a version of it to market for Linux or Mac platforms - - annoying users of those operating systems just a bit. Codeweavers is stepping up to, at least for now, fill the void.

The lightning speed in which Codeweavers delivered a version of Chrome for Linux and Mac stands in contrast to the old development cycle. Two years ago, it would have taken, well, two years to port even a browser over to the Linux desktop platform. Now, in 2008, it takes a matter of weeks. Codeweavers did it using Wine, an open source implementation of the Windows API.

I gave CrossOver Chromium a spin on Ubuntu 8.04, and it loaded and installed in about two minutes with extreme ease. The Linux version seems about as fast as the Windows version, and key features (including the "Incognito" function found in Chrome) are fully enabled.

There are a few caveats, though. CrossOver Chromium on Ubuntu is just a tad unstable. In the first 10 minutes of testing, the thing crashed three times while writing a simple Google Docs text document. Google Chrome on Windows, however, is a stable browser and in three weeks I've had it crash exactly once while running on Windows Vista.

In addition, the fonts and graphics in CrossOver Chromium for Linux are bolder and, frankly, sloppier than Windows-based browsers.

But Codeweavers describes Chromium as a project, not a product, and it's all open source. (It was developed using developer build 21 of the Chromium code base.) The developers advise against using CrossOver Chromium as your main browser and they say it was just devised for now as "proof of concept" and "for fun."

Over time, though, expect Chromium for Linux and Macintosh to improve. Considering how quickly Codeweavers brought the thing to the public, it shouldn't be much time, either.

The non-Windows development cycle is speeding up.