Google 'Chromium' pre-alpha available for Ubuntu users

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Google's Chrome browser has quickly become very popular since its release on September 2, 2008, but one issue many have is that it's currently Windows only. Well, it appears that this will all change sometime in the hopefully-not-too-distant future, as Google's 'Chromium' browser is now available as a pre-alpha for Ubuntu users. As you may have noticed, the browser is called Chromium at the moment, as Google's Chrome is a browser based on the Chromium project. Once this has been officially released, it will be called Google Chrome.

Image courtesy of Download Squad.

If you're using Ubuntu, or a distro based on Ubuntu, you can add the following repositories and get a chance to play with Chromium yourself:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Once this is done, sudo apt-get install chromium-browser in a console window should get you up and running, then followed by a chromium-browser [enter] to open the program. Neowin Ubuntu users, please post in the comments and tell us how it goes. A slight warning though: this is a pre-alpha, so it's obviously very feature incomplete, so if you don't mind going without the tab and bookmarks bars and options menu, you'll have a great time.

(1 reply) #1 SimNet on 06 Apr 2009 - 21:12

nice!!

this is def gonna take over all Loonix browsers.

#1.1 sphbecker on 07 Apr 2009 - 20:03

SimNet said,

I still perfer FireFox on Linux.

(2 replies) #2 Avi on 06 Apr 2009 - 21:13

GTK based? or Qt based?

#2.1 Marshalus on 07 Apr 2009 - 00:37

GTK I think.

#2.2 Bunio on 07 Apr 2009 - 12:29

Only GTK.

(3 replies) #3 Intelman on 06 Apr 2009 - 21:26

I wonder why they are really pushing to differentiate between Google Chrome and Chromium. Granted this isn't an official Google doing, but Chromium and Google Chrome are basically the same. Google does not add any Google only features...

Google basically "owns" Chromium.

#3.1 +Ned on 07 Apr 2009 - 03:19

Might be for the same reason Mozilla calls their nightlies minefield.

#3.2 br_ on 07 Apr 2009 - 03:36

It's because they publicly released an extremely unstable alpha. If they called it Google Chrome, it'd be able to get the REAL Chrome lots of negative press. It thus won't be called Google Chrome until it actually DESERVES to be. Mozilla does this with Firefox, too. They call the non-beta builds (excluding a VERY small percentage of alphas) by their codenames, and they call the trunk of the source Minefield (because it's about as unstable as it gets)

#3.3 brentaal on 07 Apr 2009 - 07:13

Intelman said,

Actually, they do add features.
Chromium doesn't have the updating utility. You have to update manually.

(1 reply) #4 DomZ on 06 Apr 2009 - 21:28

Ok this is pretty weird. Was this inspired by the digg submission? Because I submitted that

#4.1 Sam Symons Live on 06 Apr 2009 - 21:38

DomZ said,

I use the Digg toolbar and that story showed up, so I thought it'd be good to share, heh.

#5 Marshalus on 06 Apr 2009 - 21:57

Sweet, going to have to install this when I get home tonight.

(1 reply) #6 Jugalator on 06 Apr 2009 - 22:00

As you may have noticed, the browser is called Chromium on Linux

No. The browser is still Google Chrome on Linux, but it's not released yet.
The actual project -- yes, that's called Chromium on Linux. And on Windows.

#6.1 Sam Symons Live on 06 Apr 2009 - 22:23

Jugalator said,

And these so called "pre-alpha" builds are of course also available for Mac. They're really just svn builds, so you'll likely find more features that don't work than that do. If it crashes and burns and even causes data loss, don't come either here or to Google and cry. ;-)

Also, FTA:

No. The browser is still Google Chrome on Linux, but it's not released yet.
The actual project -- yes, that's called Chromium on Linux. And on Windows.

Very good point; I should have noted it's called Chromium until an official release, in which it will be called Google Chrome.

#7 Knad on 07 Apr 2009 - 00:47

Can't wait for Chromium/Chrome to be working fully in Linux. Still is awfully buggy though.

(1 reply) #8 cabron on 07 Apr 2009 - 00:58

I know that is an alpha but damn, I downloaded the OS X alpha version and I can't even read Google News, it give me a display error... lol what a piece of crap.

#8.1 neostyle on 07 Apr 2009 - 01:28

agree ...

(1 reply) #9 Solid Knight on 07 Apr 2009 - 02:13

Another win for Linux. Now with the pre-Alpha of Chromium Linux will finally be in a position to take over the desktop market.

More constructively, Chromium is nice but I hate how it handles bookmarks. Pretty much forces you to use a cluttered toolbar.

#9.1 ranasrule on 07 Apr 2009 - 10:19

Solid Knight said,

Another win for Linux. Now with the pre-Alpha of Chromium Linux will finally be in a position to take over the desktop market.

ur being sarcastic right ?

#10 Jimmerz28 on 07 Apr 2009 - 07:22

Thank goodness. I can't wait to have this baby fully developed!

#11 liberatus_sum on 07 Apr 2009 - 08:10

Gotta check this out

#12 Magallanes on 07 Apr 2009 - 13:04

Google's Chrome browser has quickly become very popular

I am not sure about this, i known several people that installed Chrome and played with it for a while then they left it unused or simply uninstalled.

#13 SharpGreen on 07 Apr 2009 - 15:55

Also the linux nightly builds that come straight fron build.chromium.org are much more stable and usable than the ones that come from Launchpad. Or at least in my exp. they have been.

#14 smooth_criminal1990 on 07 Apr 2009 - 18:37

only Ubuntu? thats distroism isn't it?

#15 redvamp128 on 08 Apr 2009 - 05:11

Well so far I hope they find time to fix this issue... Ubuntu Hardy- though I have read bits and pieces that say it is linked to using SSE2 function call . This is the error I get.

[7066:7066:28390628554:ERROR:/build/buildd/chromium-browser-2.0.173.0~svn20090405r13137/build-tree/src/chrome/common/temp_scaffolding_stubs.cc(194)] Not implemented reached in static bool FirstRun::IsChromeFirstRun()
Illegal instruction

#16 thealexweb on 08 Apr 2009 - 18:08

What about Solaris and OpenSolaris?

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