Who should use alpha-status Chromium on Linux?
Note: As with all opensource projects, Chromium is in a continuous state of change. This article was published on the 13th June 2009. If you are reading this more than 3 months after it was written, you should take everything with a generous pinch of salt and check for updates. Who knows, in 3 months, maybe even my grouses about Firefox do not apply anymore 
Edit 2009-07-12: Chromium now supports Flash plugins.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to Mozilla and Firefox. Firefox effectively paved the way for competition in the browser monopoly scenario we had a few years back. Without it, I doubt web applications development would have advanced the way it did.
But I seriously abhor using Firefox right now. On my Kubuntu Jaunty laptop, my CPU utilization bottom-lines at 5-10% on average before firing up Firefox and shoots up to 30-40% after. Its memory issues are well-documented. Typing a URL in the address bar the first time after starting up causes the entire browser to freeze while it pulls up the address history. There have been experiments that show the Windows version of Firefox running faster on Wine than the native Linux versions.
Sad to say, what I have to put up with while using Firefox detracts way too much from the positives that it represents. I want out. I want a browser I can use without having to keep a timer on so that I know when to restart it 2-3 times a day. I want a browser I can middle-click 20 RSS entries in Google Reader in rapid-fire fashion without having it lock up on me.
There are many alternatives. Not many of them work too well. Konqueror has issues rendering sites, especially Google Apps which I use 50% of my online time. Arora slows down when I have more than 5 tabs open, for some reason. Rekonq doesn’t really show the speed that WebKit advertises. I have difficulty setting proxy settings in Midori, which I assume must be set in the global Gnome settings panel, which I don’t have due to me using KDE.
I’ve been hearing many good things about Google Chrome from my partner in work. It’s supposed to be blazing fast running Google Apps (duh, being developed by Google). I’ve been waiting eagerly waiting for the Linux version but no dice so far. Until the announcement on the Chromium blog came out. Alpha warnings be damned, I want it. And right now, I’m typing this blog entry on it.
Responses on the ‘net have been mixed. Practical usability is limited, according to some. For example, a blog commenter said “Honestly…. what can you do with a browser that supports no Flash?“. Well, I guess I don’t spend 90% of my time on YouTube and Yahoo flash games, so I don’t really share his views. I’ve got 15 tabs of various contents open in Chromium running right now and I’m happy with each and one of them. I use it on a daily basis to check mail, edit Google documents, read blogs and basically perform about 90% of the things I’d use a browser for.
Here’s a list of what Chromium in its current state is suited for:
- Practically everything related to Google web applications. GMail, Reader, Calendar, Docs etc all work very well. Video chats on GTalk doesn’t work yet.
- General surfing as long as you don’t need to view Flash videos. I read a ton of Linux and politics related blogs every day. It’s definitely good enough.
- In general, it’s fine for Facebook and all the social networking sites I visit. Just not the Flash bits (which I don’t use anyway).
I wouldn’t use Chromium for:
- Obviously, anything that relies on external plugins, as there’s no support for a plugin architecture yet.
- Any site that requires HTTP authentication. Auth dialog boxes don’t work yet. The issue has been documented here, help vote for it to be solved, please!
- Complicated bookmark management, it’s rather kludgy right now. Importing bookmarks from Firefox works though.
- Going through proxies that are authentiated using HTTP auth dialog boxes. I get by this by using Firefox to authenticate against the proxy and then continuing to browser using Chromium. Ugly hack.
- Sites authenticated using SSL certificates are defnitely out.
Update: As of 22 June 2009, the daily builds has been supporting HTTP authentication. W00t!
Don’t expect it to be too stable. However, a particular tab crashing due to any issue would just manifest itself in a “Oh Snap!” error message in that particular tab and not bring down your entire browser due to its 1 process per tab architecture, which mitigates the impact of any bugs an awful lot.
So do I still use Firefox now? Well, I still need it for various tasks. Firebug is still essential for web development work. My Trac installations are authenticated using SSL certificates so I have to fallback to Firefox. Yes, I do unwind after work by watching some documentaries on YouTube so I’d need it for that as well. But in general, Firefox has been relegated to serving only 10% of my web browsing needs. I completely understand the fact that Firefox has a superset of features compared to Chrome/Chromium and that contributes significantly to the difference in experience. However, Firefox just doesn’t have a configuration that suits me right now and that’s why I need to shop around for alternatives.
Firefox will continue to be relevant to most of the web browsing world for a long time yet. I don’t expect Chrome to attain larger market share than Firefox in the near term. But it’s seriously looking more and more like its predecessor the Mozilla suite, which was evolved out of existence due to its bloat.
Yep, Firefox get in my nerves sometimes. Right now it closes itself without warning when I watch flash movies in fullscreen. It might be related to the new ATI driver I’m using.
Compile your browser yourself!
I think you owe it to yourself to try the Firefox 3.5 release candidate. There are a huge number of fixes to the memory consumption issue, the new tracemonkey javascript engine is a definite step towards the Chromium speeds (although it’s not all the way there yet) and Linux builds finally get the profiled optimisation that the Windows Firefox 3.0 builds got which gave Windows the speed advantage over Linux.
+1 – We need a Linux Optimized Version of Firefox (KDE optimized even better). I think Firefox is the most widly used browser on Linux systems out there and the available plugins are unmatched on any other browser I know. I use Thunderbird too but haven’t noticed permormance issues there.
Regarding KDE I used have major performance issues to the point that I was about to switch back to Gnome. Many problems were somehow Kwin related though and since I switched the Compositing rendering from OpenGL to XRender I’m missing some effects but my CPU behaves much more responsible. (Currently ideling ~10% @ 800 MHz with 11 open tabs)
Glad to see someone talking about it. Have you tried FF 3.5 Beta yet? Some of the problems are solved at least. Typing in the address bar doesn’t lock up the browser and the overall performance is better….enough to make me dread using 3.0. But overall I’d love to have another browser to switch to in order to keep FF on the straight and narrow.
I am running the developer preview right now and I love it. It really is fast and the javascript engine in it is awesome.
Only using ff for flash.
[...] should use alpha-status Chrome on Linux? Many people are already using it on a daily [...]
Regarding my previous post. I had one guy in the ubuntu channel not being able to revert back to his OpenGL settings after changing to XRender. He had an ATI Grafics card, I have an NVIDIA with the binary driver. Don’t want to mess up anyones configuration.
I used to say Firefox is about 40% slower on Linux (than on windows), now the latest build proves that it’s (already!) at least 200% slower than the windows counterpart – the gap is growing..
The browser wars are so tough that Mozilla seems to have no time to pay any substantial attention to the Linux version, it’s true, just look at the performance difference, the JavaScript benchmark is almost 3 times slower on Linux than on windows, amazing.
So I completely agree with you. If Mozilla paid enough attention to the Linux version I wouldn’t be so happy about the upcoming Chrome release for Linux.
I watched a few Chrome related videos on Google I/O and Chrome’s upcoming extensions architecture seems to be easier to deal with than that of Firefox – often all you need is a simple HTML+JavaScript+CSS page. Extension created. Period.
Chrome comes after Firefox so it has the advantage to implement a more straightforward architecture by looking at the architectural deficiencies of Firefox.
The per-process tabs architecture is another example, in my experience it actually uses less memory – contrary to what the devs from Mozilla claimed.
Not to mention it’s considerably faster/better than Firefox 3.5(pre) from every point of view: startup, html/css rendering, 2D/3D, JavaScript performance, standards compliance, you name it.
As in almost anyone’s case, I’m waiting for the final Chrome release with plugins and extensions support, when released: Chrome in, Firefox out.
@Phil, Toby: am already using the PPA builds of 3.5 on my machine. yeah, it doesn’t lock up so easily, but the real acid test for me is when I load up LinuxToday on Google Reader and click, click, click to open in new tabs and that’s where it dies on me still
still, some improvement is better than none, I guess. I’m not giving up on it completely yet, but for the most part, I’m sticking to Chromium.
@Thomas: I’m using an Intel graphics chip. The problems Jaunty has with Intel is legion and KDE has been improving constantly, so I’d rather not pass the buck to KDE for now until I know for a fact that it’s not the Intel driver screwing things up. Taking KDE 4.3 beta for a spin lopped off an additional 3-5% from my baseline CPU usage. Coolness
I don’t appear to have the same issues as you do with Firefox. My fox ( 3.0.10 ) runs about 25 tabs on average and is responsive/fast, consumes about 10% cpu, and very seldom hangs. I certainly don’t have to put up with anything … in fact using the fox is a pleasure. Your issues might relate to you using (k)ubuntu; you may have a better experience using something like Slackware or Arch.
[...] Who should use alpha-status Chromium on Linux? We all owe a debt of gratitude to Mozilla and Firefox. Firefox effectively paved the way for competition in the browser monopoly scenario we had a few years back. Without it, I doubt web applications development would have advanced the way it did. [...]
[...] http://envb.sapphirewillow.com/writings/2009/06/who-should-use-alpha-status-chromium-on-linux/ [...]
I see two problems with your premise.
First of all, Firefox on Linux sucks compared to FF on WIndows.
I now use Opera instead.
Who is to blame for the difference in quality of the browser on Linux as opposed to Win?
Or the fact that it doesnt integrate well with KDE overiding settings and such?
Of course this other FLOSS browser is not even available on Linux so I shouldnt be surprised at that I guess.
Open source browsers that dont work well with Linux are becoming common place.
I forgot to add one more thing:
Kubuntu.
Not the best KDE distro around IMHO. Definitely not top3 and not stable enough to recommend to family and friends.
Id recommend you give another KDE distro like Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, OpenSuse a try instead.
[...] should use alpha-status Chrome on Linux? Many people are already using it on a daily [...]
@leo: given the premise that I use Linux exclusively should exclude any comparisons with how FF runs on Windows, I guess. I know that FF runs better on Windows, but if I were to take that into consideration, should I consider switching OS’s to make my browsing experience better? Nah… too high a price…
but I do agree with you that browsers on Linux in general are always playing catch in one form or another for some reason…
Regarding Kubuntu: At this point of time, I’m aware of it being less than ideal. I do find adding different repos to get the rest of the 3rd party packages I need much easier than any RPM-based distro though, which is why I switched from Fedora and OpenSuSE in the 1st place a few years ago. Have not tried PCLinuxOS yet. Right now, I’m willing to wait a while and see how the Kubuntu team takes it. I’ve not lost my patience with them just yet.
@Robby: good for you. but at this point of time, it’s not only me who uses Kubuntu that I’m responsible for. I have 20+ employees who use Kubuntu as well and well, it’s a bit more complicated than to just say “hey, let’s switch distros”. Especially on account of a browser.
@felcipet: fair enough – my comment was aimed more as a personal preference than something that may apply to many. I don’t know what other’s experience is beyond what is indicated in the media and don’t have any objective comparison to make with those vs. my own experience. Suffice it to say that my experience with Firefox on a number of platforms incl. MacOSx, Windows and Linux ( a few distros ) does not present any big difference in performance. I know of the Flash issues and Firefox under Linux but those appear to be a thing of the past ( at least AFAIAC ). Considering the large extension market for Firefox, the quality of these may have an effect on Firefox’s performance. Once Chrome has something similar in place, we may see it in a different light w.r.t. performance too.
[...] repo to update to the latest beta release of KDE 4.3 (currently at beta 2). I’ve also been using the daily builds of Chromium, the opensource project on which Google Chrome is based on. And on top of that, one more browser [...]