April 18, 2009 by keith
Google Chrome has been around for quite some time. Because of its V8 engine, it was mentioned that it execute java-scripted web-pages much faster than other browsers. All of us has the opportunity to try that out as it is available free for download. The only drawback? It's only available in Microsoft Windows environment.
Well, this may be good news for you if you belong to the Linux community. Ubuntu users, or to be precise, Ubuntu-based distro users can now get their hands on Google Chrome! Thanks to the PPA (personal package archive) for the Chromium daily builds team. The pre-alpha version of the Chromium browser can be installed on to your Linux system (Ubuntu) as easily as it can get.
To set up Google Chrome for your version of Ubuntu, you will need to add the following repositories to your system. For example, you can apply these on Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope, Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex or Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu XXX main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu XXX main
Simply CHANGE the above text, "XXX", to either "hardy", "intrepid" or "jaunty" for Ubuntu Hardy Heron, Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex and Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope, respectively.
Once you have added the following 2 repositories, run the following command in the Terminal:
sudo apt-get update
To install the Chromium browser, run the following line:
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser
The script will be taken care by the installation in the Terminal. Once installation has completed, type the following in the Terminal to fire up Chromium Browser:
chromium-browser
Note that, this is still considered in the extreme infant stage, where Chromium on Linux is still relatively unstable. The experience of Google Chromium is that it runs as fast as it does on Windows. Unfortunately, some of the nice features are still not working yet, e.g. tab, bookmarks bars and option menu.
Nevertheless, incognito, history, download manager and the new tab view are all functional. Web page rendering is also performed elegantly and fast!
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