Running CrossOver Chromium aka "Google Chrome" under Ubuntu

Chrome is a free web browser released by Google few weeks back , based on open source Chromium codebase and WebKit engine for rendering web pages. It offers attractive user interface , integration of Google services in the browser ,out of box support for Google Gears , shortcuts for Web Applications , suggestions for web pages while typing them in address bar and other exciting features.

Now even though Google Chrome is based on Open Source Chromium, still Linux and Mac OS X version of Google Chrome were not released with the Windows version as they are still under development. This was a huge(hmm?) disappointment to both Linux and Mac OS users , who wanted to try the latest offering from Google.

However, a few days back Codeweavers( a Linux company specializing in developing customized version of Wine , which is a translation layer that allows running of Windows application atop Linux) released a easily installable package (called CrossOver Chromium) of customized version of Wine capable of running Chrome with minor glitches and Chrome package, providing an easy way for Linux users to try the Google Chrome browser before native version is released for Linux.

Installing CrossOver Chromium on Ubuntu

To install Crossover Chromium issue the following commands in the terminal window (Application-> Accessories -> Terminal):

Note: The package downloaded below is for 32bit version of the CrossOver Chromium , Codeweavers has released 64 bit version too. You can download 64bit version from this page.

wget http://media.codeweavers.com/pub/crossover/chromium/cxchromium_0.9.0-1_i386.deb

and

sudo dpkg -i cxchromium_0.9.0-1_i386.deb

CrossOver Chromium should be properly installed and you can launch CrossOver Chromium from (Applications -> CrossOver Chromium -> Chromium ).

Google Chrome running on my Ubuntu Desktop

CrossOver Chromium, though usable is extremely erratic,sluggish and does not integrate with Linux desktop properly owing to it being a windows application running atop Wine. On my system I found it to be extremely slow (at least compared to Mozilla Firefox and Opera) ,of the numerous problems I encountered while using CrossOver Chromium the major ones were problem maximizing browser window , also i had difficulty in setting proxy settings .

Strange looking Dialog Boxes (and yup i could not change my proxy )

CrossOver Chromium even though is a commendable initiative by Codeweavers to provide users of Linux(and Macintosh's) at least feel of Chrome before it is released natively, is far from being stable enough to be used as a replacement for any popular Web Browser available for Linux. At the present moment ,your best bet would be to wait for either native version of Google Chrome for Linux or continue using Firefox/Opera/Konqueror.


Article Written by : Ambuj Varshney (blogambuj@gmail.com)
For Desktop on Linux Blog , http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.com
(C) 2008 , Ambuj Varshney