Google chrome stable is released for Linux and Mac

Well, I have been working with the beta version of chrome and the developer version of chromium since they were released and have seen them grow into great browsers that deserve their place amongst the best on the web.

So it was a momentous day when we got a full release version on the Linux - and Mac - platforms that will now be compared to other stable versions available for these platforms , like Firefox and Safari.

There are no particular new features in this release, as the last beta had most of the news, but this is just to give a base line from which to build.

They have mentioned that when Adobe launch their flash player in a few weeks - version 10.1 - then this will be built into the browser, which is great for us , but could be a major problem for Apple and Microsoft.

You’ll be able to synchronize not only bookmarks across multiple computers, but also browser preferences -- including themes, homepage and startup settings, web content settings, preferred languages, and even page zoom settings. Meanwhile, for avid extensions users, you can enable each extension to work in incognito mode through the extensions manager.

The stable release also incorporates HTML5 features such as Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop. For a taste of HTML5’s powerful features, try browsing through websites developed in HTML5 such as scribd.com, dragging and dropping attachments in Gmail, or by enabling the geolocation functionality in Google Maps. We’ve also given Chrome’s bookmark manager a facelift with HTML5.

I have been testing this Browser on my Ubuntu 10.04 laptops in both 32 and 64 bit versions and found it to be fast, stable and reliable. I do use Chromium on a day to day basis as I like to help debug the future of the browser, but will turn to Chrome for it's stability when I need to book flights or do my on-line banking.

I can recommend you give it a go and just see the speed difference you will experience.

Download it here Get Google Chrome Stable

Linux is now very well served by browser apps.

Most users have been happily using Firefox version 3.x which came pre-installed with whichever Linux distro they happen to prefer. This is an extremely well written and capable browser, which has just been given a marvellous speed boost by the latest 3.5 release. Have a look here on my blog for a simple install guide with Linux.

There are however other good browsers now available for Linux, and these include Opera and Chromium. I know the later is still in development, but it is developing extremely quickly and should be out in a beta form shortly. Opera on the other hand , in it's 9.64 release is a very powerful, full featured browser, which can be used as a complete replacement for Firefox if you should like to, and the current stable release is significantly faster than Firefox 3.x, and on a par with Firefox 3.5 in real world usage.

I have also now downloaded and started to use Opera 10 beta, and this has also been given a face lift with more enhancements, like the ability to drag open all your tabs to get at the thumbnails of each page, it's really very useful.



The performance with this latest release appears on the surface to be slightly faster than Firefox 3.5, and not that far of Chromium on.

So the days of just taking the Browser you are given and having to be content are well and truly over, especially when you throw Konqueror and Epiphany into the mix. This is real and tangible evidence that the popularity of Linux on the desktop has never been stronger.

I would love to compare Safari and Internet Explorer on my Linux desktops, but unfortunately the companies behind these products are a little afraid of the competition so are sticking to their legacy systems for now.