Comments on: Which Browser is Better?

By: Dan J

Dan J — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:26:59 +0000

…it would involve buying a copy of Windows

Oh; wait a second. No, I’m not running any virtual machines. That was just a virtual thought experiment.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:46:29 +0000

Google Chrome will update automatically with security updates. Crossover chromium, as with anything that is “crossover,” is “wine” but with some help to make it atually work. I’ve had good luck with earlier versions of crossover chromium and with crossover in general. The current version is still “proof of concept” but then gain sometimes I think Firefox is too, and IE is always “proof of the concept that you are a moron for using this sucky software”

I have not played with virtual machines on my linux box, partly because it would involve buying a copy of Windows.

By: Dan J

Dan J — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:16:15 +0000

I’ve been using a special version of Firefox 3.5 (Shiretoko) on Ubuntu 9.04 while the standard version is continuing development.

It turns out that Firefox runs faster in Wine than natively.

Unfortunately, I think this is the case for several programs whose developers continue to focus on the Windows platform almost exclusively.

I think “Crossover Chromium” might be a similarly good idea for those who want to try out Google’s Chromium browser in Linux.

I’ve found that Google Earth operates much more smoothly within a virtual machine than it does natively in Linux. I understand it also works using wine, so I may have to give that a try too.

By: hukrepus

hukrepus — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:35:04 +0000

When loading sessions with >50 tabs Opera (9.64) is much faster than Firefox (3).

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:53:26 +0000

What I should REALLY do is to compile all my software that would be fun.

I wonder, though, if swiftweasel would close the gab these stats indicate.

By: C. Chu

C. Chu — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:57:33 +0000

Greg, you might be interested in Swiftweasel since you're running Ubuntu. It turns out that Firefox runs faster in Wine than natively. The Windows builds are profile-guide optimized for your processor, but the Linux builds in Ubuntu aren't by default. The Swiftweasel Project is simply a guy who runs the 2-hour PGO Firefox compile for various instruction set architectures and rebrands it as Swiftweasel. Indistinguishable from Firefox, minus the fact that it's optimized for your particular CPU.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:25:15 +0000

Yeah, I do actually have installed, but I’m not quite into the paradigm yet.

By: Nathan Myers

Nathan Myers — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:55:58 +0000

If you go to the Chrome site and click “download”, you get a .deb file. “dpkg -i” it, and you’re in.

Chrome is still Alpha. It’s a Good Thing that apt-get doesn’t find it, because it still lacks lots of features you probably think are essential, and they’re mainly interested in finding out what makes it crash. As my brother-in-law at Google points out, “It’s not about you.”

To me what is worst is that it insists on using ugly default or page-specified fonts instead of the beautiful “Linux Libertine” that Firefox is willing to use if I tell it.