google browser?

[Mihai Donțu]

(e-mails from the past always find me unprepared)

On Wednesday 23 July 2008 11:52:58 Devin Teske wrote:
> On Feb 16, 2011, at 12:39 AM, Mihai Donțu wrote:
> > On Wednesday 16 February 2011 09:09:44 Gary Kline wrote:
> >> Anybody know how to use this "Chrome"?  I don't see any places to
> >> plug in players ... like vlc, etc.  Can't find and back/Forward
> >> icons, nothing like firefox....    I give it all three thumbs
> >> down.....
> >> 
> >> Would still like to see GOOG have its own "twitter" and "facebook"
> >> tho.....
> >> 
> >> Anybody else have the browser on FBSD??
> > 
> > I haven't tried it, but maybe it works under the FreeBSD Linux emulation.
> > I found some build hints here too: http://wiki.freebsd.org/Chromium ,
> > however it definitely needs some love from a dedicated FreeBSD
> > developer.
> > 
> > I use Google Chrome (or Chromium - depends on how bleeding edge I want to
> > be) on Linux. I'm amazed by the speed with which the project progresses
> > and the incredible feel of the browser itself.
> 
> I've heard certain noises on this list that the current port-maintainer of
> Chromium has dropped the ball (not my words, just paraphrasing the
> sentiment from the below thread).
> 
> http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=890197+893402+/usr/local/www/db
> /text/2010/freebsd-questions/20101231.freebsd-questions
> 
> The OP's concerns about security vulnerabilities (though voiced over 30
> days ago) still appear to be of concern (that is to say, nothing appears
> to have changed except some _minor_ work on January 18th this year by
> rene).
> 
> However, Freshports still has a less-than-favorable status for this port:
> http://www.freshports.org/www/chromium/
> 
> Now... that being said, I have a co-worker that is running Chromium every
> day on FreeBSD-8.1 and he's very happy with it. Though, given the above
> consideration, both him and I have decided to _not_ deploy this browser in
> production (at least until we can get some love on those vulnerabilities).
> 
> So, I guess I'd like to throw the query out there...
> 
> If you had to pick between Firefox and Chrome for distribution to >1000
> FreeBSD systems running 8.1 in production... which would you choose? We're
> heavily leaning toward Firefox, but would love to hear other's opinions of
> Chrome (if it requires Linux emulation, that may be a death-knell, leaving
> Firefox the only real choice???).

I've been an avid Firefox user until ~1 month ago. I just couldn't put up with 
the sluggishness anymore. Tried to use Firefox 4 beta. No dice. The JS engine 
_is_ faster but that didn't solve the problem. The UI is just not OK. I used 
to think it was because of the multi-threaded design, until Opera rolled out 
version 10 which is just as snappy as Google Chrome. The only downside with 
Opera is that it's just too strict wrt standards. FF and Chrome use all kinds 
of quirks to make old websites render reasonably well. Still, given the 
current situation on FreeBSD, I'd go with Opera. I love Mozilla and its push 
towards a free/open web, but with version 4 they seem to have lost focus on 
what it matters for the majority of the people. Sure, fast web page rendering 
is important, but I for one wouldn't mind a slow[ish] render if I was able to 
quickly open another tab (page) to bash.org (just an example) while I wait for 
the other one to load.

Note that I use FreeBSD only on my servers. I use Linux for desktop, so take 
my suggestion with a grain of salt. :-)

-- 
Mihai Donțu